The truth of athletic greatness often becomes mythical.

Some hitters claimed they saw smoke rise when his fastball exploded in the catcher’s glove.

Others said you wouldn’t want to hit against him when he was wild. He’d knock you to the ground with a pitch and you’d get up with the seams from the ball tattooed onto your forearm.

Jeff was an All State pitcher for Colonia High School in New Jersey in the early ’70s. He threw seven no hitters, one in the state championship game when he was just 15 years old. Twice he struck out 18 batters in a game. He was drafted by the New York Mets, and in 1975, he was called up from the minor league to pitch for them in spring training. His manager was Yogi Berra. In the Mets’ team picture that year, Jeff stood near Hall of Famer, Tom Seaver, who after watching him pitch remarked, “Man, you throw hard for a little guy!”

Despite good performances in exhibition games, Yogi sent Jeff back to the minors with a promise that the young pitcher would get a call up to the Mets during the regular season.

Yogi’s call would never come. Jeff had a serious arm injury and just like that his dream of pitching in the big leagues was over.

His father was a raging alcoholic who could throw a beer bottle across a room like Jeff threw a fastball past a batter. He never came to see his son pitch a single inning. After Jeff came home from a high school game one day, his father sat at the kitchen table clinking the ice cubes inside his whiskey glass.

“How did you do?” He asked.

“Threw a no hitter.”

“How many did you walk?”

“Six.”

His father laughed, a boozy snort of mockery that Jeff had grown tired of hearing ever since he was 14 and had to drive him to a lineup of neighborhood taverns. No matter what Jeff did, it was never good enough for his father, who himself was once a rising baseball star.

Flying fists and breaking bottles were outbursts of his drunken anger, numbing his son’s senses until the boy felt no more fear and cried no more tears from the expected sting of his father’s hands.

Then came the night when Jeff got a call to hurry to the hospital. He took his father’s hand in his and he knew it was time.

“Dad, it’s your son, Jeff.”

His father squeezed his hand. Then he let it go with his last breath.

With his travel to baseball fame stopped at a dead end street and with only one squeeze of his father’s love, Jeff struck out at life and drowned his pain at the bottom of a bar glass. He stumbled into his father’s ghostly footprints until his metamorphosis into the stupefied man whom he had hated for his entire childhood was complete.

Jeff ingested drugs along with the booze, a deadly recipe for violent behavior. He’d smile through glazed eyes at you, but in the next moment something you might say would set him off and he’d make you his personal punching bag.

Weekly hangovers led to failed marriages and job losses leaving him at home plate without a bat in his hands and staring out at the devil who stood on the mound throwing fireballs into his soul.

He was left with only two choices: kill himself or save himself.

Then one day, with a clear thought from a rare sober moment, he walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

“Hi. My name is Jeff. I’m an alcoholic and I’m a scumbag.”

The epiphany empowered a resurrection to regain his life and to reclaim his dignity. While a member of the AA program, Jeff earned a college degree in education.

For several years now, he has been a high school English teacher. His classroom is a long toss to the same baseball field where his left arm had gunned down one hitter after another en route to setting school pitching records. He was once that flunking kid who sat in the back at the lowest level of learning, but now he stands in the front teaching literature and writing. He’s a master at throwing curveballs at his students to get them to think outside the box. In Jeff’s class, literary themes are the essence of resolving the conflicts of life, a reality check for this reborn man who sleeps in a comfortable bed instead of on a park bench.

We hear stories of men and women who have climbed out of the bottom of the bottle, usually with the help from therapy, loved ones, or best friends. Jeff only has to look in the mirror to find his first hero. On June 27, he celebrated 31 years of sobriety.

Before I retired from teaching, we were colleagues and now we are friends. While growing up, I lived with an angry drunk who I never got to know as my father so I hold an empathic respect for Jeff and for his courage to drive away the demons of the drink.

He is his own hero, but something spiritual might have helped save him, too. Jeff’s mother used to say about alcoholics, “ Some need to die so others can live.”

Could it be that when Jeff was sleeping off a drunken night with his face pancaked against the cold bathroom floor, he felt a familiar squeeze of his hand?

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.