Chumps to Champs by Bill Pennington

Author:Bill Pennington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

19

Lost Promise

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reporter called Bill Livesey at his Florida home on Sunday, December 19. “The guy from the AP wanted my reaction to Brien Taylor’s shoulder injury,” Livesey said. “My first reaction was that this is a gag, because guys in the business would do that—make gag phone calls to be funny. To make a joke.”

When Livesey recalled the moment nearly twenty-five years later, his voice grew quiet and melancholy. “But it wasn’t a gag. It was a tragedy.”

The previous night, eight days before his twenty-second birthday, Taylor got in a fight defending his older brother, Brenden. The initial details were hazy, but something had happened to Brien’s shoulder.

His agent, Scott Boras, told the Yankees it was a bruise. “Boras called me and said Brien would be fine—he’d come back 100 percent,” Gene Michael said. “I didn’t believe him.”

The Yankees immediately called the Carteret County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina, because several men had been charged, including Brien, who was unquestionably the area’s most prominent citizen at the time. Police had not witnessed the altercation, but a sheriff told the Yankees that Brien left the scene in an ambulance and in great pain, his right hand grasping his $1.55 million left shoulder.

“No one knew what was certain,” said Lukevics. “But the first report was that it was probably really bad. And your heart just sank. Yes, I felt bad for the organization, but I felt worse for the human being.”

Even after a quarter century, facts about the fight are hard to come by. The criminal charges were eventually dropped or pled down to minor misdemeanors, so there was never any court testimony or depositions taken about the incident.

Taylor has never given an interview about the precise details of what happened. He answered phone calls to his Beaufort home in 2017, but hung up whenever he learned that it was a reporter calling to ask about his days as the greatest pitching prospect in Yankees history. Others involved in the fracas gave interviews in 1993 and for years afterward, but their versions have always differed in small but meaningful ways.

Everyone agreed that on December 18, 1993, Brien was at home in the brick and frame house he had built for himself and his parents on the plot of land where the family trailer had been when he was drafted by the Yankees. It was Saturday night and after 11 p.m. Although many reports later described the incident as a bar fight, Brien had been at home for several hours, perhaps even all night.

But earlier that evening, in a town twelve miles away, one of Brien’s friends, Ron Wilson, had been in a heated argument with Brenden Taylor. The dispute escalated to pushing and shoving and then Wilson twice punched Brenden, knocking him down.

Brenden called Brien about the confrontation. Over the years, Brien’s friends revealed to reporters that Brenden told his brother that he had been jumped from behind. Incensed, Brien drove to Wilson’s home with a cousin, Donnell Johnson. It was past 11:30 p.

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