Donnie Moore's dad recalls son's demise

NEW YORK — Conaway Moore and his wife, Willie, live in a one-story house on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, a small, wood-frame place with open land on each side and a sprawling yard out back.

It is where their only child learned to switch-hit and pitch and to fall in love with baseball, and where Conaway Moore was on the afternoon of July 18, 1989, tinkering with his lawnmower, when the phone rang.

"That's how we found out that all that tragedy happened," Conaway Moore said. His voice was soft, with a deep Texas accent. "Donnie never did say a lot to us if anything was wrong. I guess he didn't say much to anybody."

During Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS, Donnie Moore had the Angels one strike away from their first World Series, before Boston's Dave Henderson hit a two-run homer over the left-field fence.

The shot gave the Red Sox a 6-5 lead, but who had any clue of its graver consequence? That it would precipitate a three-year descent into despair that would ultimately induce 35-year-old Donnie Moore to shoot and critically wound his wife, Tonya, with a .45-caliber pistol in the kitchen of their Anaheim Hills home, before ending his own life with a shot to the head?

That Moore would be distraught enough to commit the crime with their 17-year-old daughter looking on, and two other children in the house?

"I was so saddened and shocked when I heard the news," former Angels second baseman Bobby Grich said the other day.

Conaway Moore was in Anaheim for that Game 5 against the Red Sox, and still remembers his son's burdened quiet on the car ride home from the park, as well as his words of candor, uttered in the garage before they left for the game. Moore had been a 31-save All-Star the year before, and signed a multi-million dollar deal after it, but was wracked by shoulder pain all through '86, and beyond.

"I hope they don't call me tonight," Donnie Moore said. "I've got terrible pain." Moore, who had had a cortisone shot the night before, got the call, but not the final strike, his split-finger fastball failing to dive.

Saying no to Manager Gene Mauch was never an option.

"He wanted the ball and he was going to come right after you, no matter how much he hurt," Grich said. "That's the way Donnie was. It was a gallant effort. I don't think anyone on the team thought Donnie Moore was responsible for that loss. Any one of us could've done something to win the game."

Police were already in the Red Sox bullpen, set to escort the players to safety, when Moore came on to go at Henderson, a defensive replacement, with a man on first. Former Angel Don Baylor had just belted a two-run homer to make it a one-run game. Grich won't ever forget how the crowd of 64,223 went from full-throated roar to absolute silence in a span of seconds.

"It was almost scary," Grich said.

The Angels tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, before Doug DeCinces and Grich popped out with the bases loaded to end the inning. In the 11th, Henderson hit a sacrifice fly off Moore to win it.

The series switched to Boston, where Roger Clemens won Game 7, and Moore's weight began to take on Titanic proportions.

"From the time he started playing, the main word we understood is that there is always going to be winning and losing," Conaway Moore, a retired truck driver, said.

Donnie Moore struggled through two more years in Anaheim, never remotely the same. General Manager Mike Port publicly questioned Moore's injuries, and the fans' boos were relentless.

In 1989, Moore signed with the Royals, and began to pitch for Class AAA Omaha. He paid for his own room on the road so he could be by himself. He felt pressure mounting. He and his wife had separated, and some investments hadn't worked out. It all seemed to be happening at once. He was cut by Omaha after seven games, in June.

In the hospital, Tonya Moore had her husband's body wheeled into her room, and she said later that she whispered words of love and forgiveness to him, thinking of the sweet man who kept too much inside.

Conaway Moore couldn't watch a ballgame on TV for five years after Donnie died. Even now sometimes it isn't easy.

"You always have memories when you watch a game," Conaway Moore said. "It's going to bring the (pain) back more than other things."

Near the front door of the Moore home is a display case, a collection of caps and cleats, gloves and balls, jackets and trophies, keepsakes from a dream baseball life.

Conaway Moore looks at the items now and then, especially this time of year. His favorite is a photo of his son in an Angels uniform, his face round and determined, his right arm about to fire a ball toward home plate, a pitcher in pursuit of a strike, a kid with a ball again, just the way he used to be in the backyard.