The Buhner.com Blog

Chris Candito died Thursday at the age of 33.

Had I written this two years ago, this news wouldn’t have been that surprising. Candito had his demons, and struggled with them as many other professional wrestlers do. The problems he went through with his girlfriend/wife/whatever Tammy Sytch were known my many “smart” wrestling fans. Candito could have easily down that route and had his life end as so many other professional wrestlers have. Candito didn’t though. He straightened himself out.

Candito, unfortunately for him, straightened himself out at a time when the industry didn’t necessarily need him. He had a gig with Titan (the horrible Bodydonnas thing) and made his money that way, but he wasn’t in it for the money - I can honestly believe that. The money was nice, but Candito seemed to really enjoy wrestling. He went back to ECW and he wrestled his ass off on numerous occasions, then eventually made his way over to the slowly dying WCW, where he could have been a real asset, had WCW not been run by complete morons.

He ended up coming back to TNA most recently, clean and willing to work. He broke his leg on Sunday at TNA’s PPV, working a tag match. The injury was a fluke - Sonny Sakai threw a dropkick and apparently landed wrong on Candito, breaking his leg. Candito ended up having pins placed in on Tuesday. He was dead Thursday, the result (apparently) of a blot clot due to his surgery. A completely healthy athlete, finally free of drugs, fallen by a complete fluke of an injury. Sometimes life really isn’t fair.

You could tell Candito loved wrestling. Small guys always get into wrestling for the love of it (unless they’re part of a wrestling family). Big guys are often former football players or just genetic freaks who get into wrestling because it’s an easy way for them to make money. Small guys don’t get any breaks unless they have a look, can cut a promo, and can work their ass off. Candito could do that.

Candito was involved in one of my all time “mark out” moments as a wrestling fan. I made it a habit to go to the ECW Arena for at least a few shows a year, and always the Cyberslam shows. 1999 promised to be a good show, but then again, any ECW Arena show promised to be a good show.

Midway through the card, Taz (then ECW Champ) came out talking about how great he was, how he could take out any of the boys in the back, how he’d beaten everyone in the company, etc. The beauty of Heyman as a booker was that when he got someone to make an appearance or work for the company, it generally didn’t get out, so there was actual surprise. In contrast, someone like Jericho coming to WWF was known months in advance.

Anyway, Taz cut his promo and finished it, standing in the ring. A couple of seconds later, AC/DC’s “Back In Black” pumped through the PA and I heard one of the best pops I heard at the Arena. Everyone pretty much knew about Candito and Tammy’s problems, and they kind of disappeared for a little while, but when the two came out, they looked great. Tammy looked incredible (and half-naked), which looking back is pretty sad, as it’s the last time I saw her as “attractive”. Candito was pumped up (in more ways than one) and the two had a great match, going into the crowd (something that ECW tried to play down more recently due to various lawsuits).

The crowd thing led to the markout. When we’d hit ECW Arena events, we’d leave from Queens as a group, and we’d get pretty good seats, generally in the bleachers on the “TV side”, so that there was a slim possibility that we’d get on TV. I was in the upper left-hand corner (TV-wise) so that you could barely see me - you might see my knees.

Anyway, Taz and Candito started brawling into the crowd, and when you’re in an ECW crowd, you generally move a little bit and let the two midgets fight (neither Candito or Taz was a legit 5′7″). They kept going further into the crowd and going up the bleachers, until they couldn’t go any further - because Candito had pinned me against the wall. Taz and Candito were brawling and going backward until they stopped and were brawling inches away from me - camera right there. For several seconds on ECW TV, I’m standing there like a mark kind of looking at the two of them brawling, trying to get a picture.

It was just a cool experience, and I always figured if I met Candito, I’d tell him about that day. I’ll never get that opportunity.

Dave Meltzer (he of the Wrestling Observer) had some good words. I’ll leave today’s post with him.

There are times when famous wrestlers pass away and everyone starts talking about what wonderful people they were, and sometimes, you almost have to bite your tongue. This is not one of those times.

Through thick and thin, through the bad times, and they were many, I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing whether Chris Candido was a really nice guy. He made a comeback at a time when everyone in the industry had given up on him. He was recently brought into TNA just as a test to put people over, and wound up winning a roster spot and was liked by everyone. If the circumstances of his death that are stated are accurate, it is one of the greatest tragedies of all. Practically everyone in wrestling who was at death’s door at one point in their lives will say or have their friends say that are reformed. As history has shown, the vast majority of the times, it isn’t true. What a lot of people don’t understand, is for the minority who it turns out to be true about, it is a daily battle, as some, like William Regal and Eddie Guerrero will openly talk about.

Chris loved pro wrestling, even though it came close to killing him at one point in his life. It was more living out his childhood dream than making money. I think he enjoyed it every bit as much when he was barely making ends meet than when he was under a six-figure contract. He was on the road right out of high school. He had a bright future. He squandered that future. But he was determined the end the story of his wrestling career on a high note and with respect of the people in the profession that he had at times let down. He was on the road to doing all that.

What happened is one of those things that happen in life. There is no rhyme nor reason. Life isn’t fair. You can question all you want about a guy who fought back from something that most never come back from, but then suffered a fluke broken leg, and suddenly, with no warning, this happened. Chris was very excited about his future in wrestling, particularly because he was starting to escape from the shadow of his past. The 6/10 and potentially 6/12 (if he was to be allowed to participate) were huge deals for him, and whether he would be able to wrestle or not, he was excited to be part of them.

Candido’s last pro wrestling appearance will air today on the TNA Impact show. I’m told they will do a tribute graphic for him on the show, I believe at both the beginning and the end of the show. Before the show started, Candido came up with his own angle, because in a cruel twist of irony, he had been in a wheelchair at a ruse for the last few weeks on television. Candido came up with the storyline that his real broken leg on Sunday was his karma for the ruse, which led to the tag team title change and what was told to me was the best Impact match in a long time. There was debate whether the match should air at all. Shane Douglas who was his best friend in the company, felt 100% certain Candido would have wanted it to air. So that was the decision.

No death of a people you know at a young age isn’t sad in some form, whether you know them personally, or followed their lives simply watching them work from a young age. Many people followed Chris from when he was a very young man, and some since he was just a teenager But for many reasons, this one is harder than most. It’s not just because it doesn’t appear to have been self-inflicted, but because this was the phone call for years that many people feared we could get at any time. And just when we thought we knew it would never come, it came.

Just an update here at the end of the month of players I talked about during the month.

Danny Bautista - Still retired.

Jonny Gomes - Gomes got called up April 22nd, and has made six starts in the last eight games, getting into the outfield rotation. Batting .263/.364/.474 with one home run during this run.

Joey Gathright - Called up when Sanchez failed his drug test. Batted .350/.409/.500 with 3 SB in six games in center field. Was then promptly sent down when Sanchez returned.

Alex Sanchez - Has since returned from his drug suspension and started 9 games in center field for Tampa. Batting .270/.289/.378 at the time of this writing, with one stolen base and one walk in 37 at-bats. Zero RBI. One fielding error.

Matt Diaz - Called up by Kansas City on April 22nd after sending down Calvin Pickering. 3 hits in 16 at-bats so far, good for a .188/.188/.250 line.

Barry Bonds - Still hasn’t played, and optimistic reports have him returning around the all-star break.

Darin Erstad - Has started every game at first base for the Angels this season. Batting .267/.315/.426 during that time.

Casey Kotchman - Celebrating his demotion by batting .178/.341/.205 for AAA Salt Lake. Currently has more walks than hits.

Steve Finley - Off to a rough April, batting .157/.237/.337 over the first 23 games. Playing very good defense in center field.

Scott Elarton - Proving the critics right (and me wrong), going through April with a 0-1 record and an 8.05 ERA. Hasn’t pitched past the 6th inning in any of his four starts so far. Scheduled to start Sunday - if he gets hammered, he might not be in an Indian uniform much longer.

Joe Mauer - Playing very good, 18 starts at catcher, only one at DH. .288/.392/.424 so far this season.

Corky Miller - Still on the Twins 25 man roster - the Twins sent down Terry Tiffee when Justin Morneau came off the DL. Batting .000/.000/.000 on the season. Made five appearances for the twins in April - 3 starts at catcher.

Mitch Jones - Still leading the Columbus Clippers in batting average (.366), on base percentage (.441), slugging percentage (.707), home runs (6), and strikeouts (25). Likely not to see a Yankees uniform any time soon, barring injury.

Colter Bean - Called up to the majors, where he made one appearance, pitching two innings and giving up one earned run, walking two and striking out two. Was promptly sent down due to the Yankees need to use the roster spot for Chien-Ming Wang, a starting pitcher, to take Jaret Wright’s spot in the rotation. Has yet to pitch for Columbus upon his return.

Jay Witasick - Jay hasn’t pitched yet for Colorado, but apparently Witasick’s contract assured him of being called up or allowing him to seek employment elsewhere. More info on Witasick’s contract is on the Rockie homepage here.

Poor Jay Witasick.

Witasick was called up by Colorado today to give them bullpen help. This normally wouldn’t be that much of a big deal, but it got me thinking about pitchers and career choices.

Take Jay Witasick. Witasick’s been a pretty ordinary right handed short reliever (or [finger quotes] set-up-man) during his career. Drafted originally by St. Louis, he was traded to Oakland for Todd Stottlemyre, getting a few cups of coffee with the A’s before getting dealt to Kansas City, where he was in the rotation for a year and a half before eventually getting dealt off to San Diego, where he started for the Padres for the rest of 2000, before going into a relief role in 2001.

In 2001, Witasick settled into his relief role by keeping his ERA under 2 and striking out more than a batter an inning. This got the Yankees to go after him, dealing no-longer-necessary infield prospect D’Angelo Jimenez to the Pads to get him.

(Note to Yankee haters: Jimenez was a year removed from a horrible car accident where some thought he wouldn’t play baseball ever again. He wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire in Columbus, and the Yankees had Alfonso Soriano and Derek Jeter blocking his way. He was expendable. San Diego didn’t know what to do with him either, and he went through the Padres and the White Sox systems before finally finding a home in Cincinnati.)

Anyway, Witasick (or the Yankees) killed any of the momentum that he had once he got in pinstripes, looking like a typical middle reliever and getting his butt handed to him when the Yankees made the playoffs, including a delightful one and one third inning, eight run affair against Arizona in game 6. Witasick was dumped off to San Francisco during the offseason and would play for the Giants for a season before rejoining the Padres for two more seasons.

This past offseason, he was with Baltimore, who cut him at the end of Spring Training. Looking at a 32 year old (33 in August) right-handed reliever in the mirror, Witasick had to be wondering if he’d ever see the majors again. That’s when Colorado came calling.

Now, here’s the thing. You’re holding onto the possibility of being a major league baseball player by a thread. Your previous season, not too bad (3.21 ERA in 61 2/3 IP, 26 BB, 57 K) albeit pitched in San Diego, you’ve got two choices - sign with Colorado, who wants you and probably gives you the quickest shot to get back to the majors again, or hope someone else contacts you.

What do you do? Signing on with Colorado (and pitching there) pretty much gives you a 75% chance that your ERA is going to look like a bus hit it after you’re done there, and no team is going to be impressed by those numbers and give you a shot. Ugly numbers at Colorado pretty much end your career. Granted, every GM in the league knows that Colorado numbers are inflated (except for Jim Bowden and maybe Chuck LeMar), but pitching in Colorado does something to a pitcher’s psyche.

Look at Mike Hampton, Denny Neagle, and Darryl Kile - three pitchers who were good to very good pitchers before coming to Colorado. All three were torn apart by Coors Field, yes, but they pitched just as poorly on the road as well. Hampton and Kile ended up leaving Colorado and were able to save their careers, putting Colorado somewhat behind them, while Neagle got hurt, and was released from a minor league contract by Tampa this past offseason.

Hampton and Kile got opportunities because they were very good pitchers before they hit Colorado, but what of a Witasick? Right handed relief pitchers are a dime a dozen. And what’s up with Colorado pitchers losing their ability to pitch even away from Coors? Can it be that damaging psychologically to have to watch your best stuff fly everywhere in Coors that when you pitch somewhere else, you forget how?

Signing on to pitch in Colorado is like making a deal with the devil - immediate reward, but after that’s over, you can never go back and you’re left wondering why you did it in the first place.

Good luck, Jay. You’ll need it.

I went with that over “Saving Bob Ryan”. They’re both lame.

Anyway, Bob Ryan’s getting ripped a new one over this article he wrote for the Boston Globe. For anyone that talks about it, one would assume that the article is pretty much just accusing Nomar Garciaparra of being on steroids.

Now, I’ll be the first one to say that the whole “steroids” thing is McCarthyism at it’s finest. It’s easy to point a finger at someone and say “STEROIDS!”, especially if they had an abnormal season or performed at a high level only to have injuries hamper their careers. It’s not like these things haven’t taken place before - there’s just an explanation for them now. Jose Canseco made a fortune doing that exact thing. Now, sports journalists (who are a step above Canseco, but a step below “journalists”) can make an easy story when they point a roundabout finger in someone’s direction and say the word. Generally, people lash out. Todd Helton was accused by a former Rockies broadcaster - Helton immediately denied it, and the broadcaster quickly took the statement back. Canseco’s comments in his book were pretty widely ignored by the players he accused, but not by outsiders, who seemed to take this book at Ball Four status and started up a federal investigation. So be it.

So the finger gets pointed to Nomar Garciaparra. Garciaparra would normally fit into the vague steroids definition - fit, very good offensive numbers, rash of injuries. If any other columnist had mentioned it in his column, maybe such a big deal wouldn’t have been made of it.

But it’s Bob Ryan. Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, talking about former Boston Red Sox player Nomar Garciaparra. Immediately Ryan is accused of taking a cheap shot at Nomar because Nomar’s not on the team any more. He’s now the enemy, and therefore we’ll take every opportunity to take shots at him since he’s no longer with us.

But there are flaws in that reasoning. First off, Nomar didn’t choose to leave the Red Sox - he was traded to the Cubs at the 2004 trading deadline. One could point to the Red Sox as being the ones who cut ties with Nomar first, before Nomar had the opportunity to. Perhaps he would have re-signed with the Sox - doubtful, but possible - but the Red Sox made the preemptive strike, and in doing so, actually may have made the move that got them the World Series they desired for so long. If anything, Boston should be a bit thankful to Nomar just for being able to bring the Red Sox the players they needed to complete their championship run.

Secondly, look at the article again. Ryan’s not a typical sportswriter - it’s a well-written sports article, carefully dancing around an actual accusation than coming straight out and implying anything. Ryan’s not dumb. He points to a change in physical appearance over one winter and Nomar’s body “breaking down” over a period of six years. He never actually accuses Nomar of the steroid use, doesn’t approach the libel that Canseco does when he talks about injecting teammates. He basically says “what if?”

Sportswriters do “what if?” all the time - that’s what makes for news stories, especially in places like New York, Boston, and LA, where there is more than one newspaper on the market competing for your 50 cents. Look back at a few days ago with the Helton to Baltimore rumor. There was no rumor - a sportswriter put out a “what if?” article. She took two facts (Helton being shopped by Colorado, Baltimore lacking productivity out of the first base position) and made a story out of it. That’s exactly what Ryan did.

Finally, look at who the article is coming from. This is Bob Ryan, someone quoted as saying he wanted to smack Jason Kidd’s wife because he thought she was a media whore, and when given the opportunity to take back the comment when he said it, instead relished the moment. Ryan knows that by doing things like this, he gets his name out in the public. It keeps him on shows like The Sports Reporters and Around The Horn. It makes him marketable, so that when it comes time to renew his contract (I’m assuming he has a contract, but this could also be applicable to salary reviews and what I’m sure is the highest payroll on the Globe’s sports department), Ryan can point to the fact that he’s a pseudo-celebrity, appearing regularly on television, and that the Globe can market him and people buy the paper because of him, and if the Globe lost him, someone else would jump all over him.

Which is true - I’m sure plenty of people actually buy the Globe to read Ryan’s articles, and I’m sure there has to be someone who watches The Sports Reporters (if you know of one, let me know.) But why rip Ryan from writing the article about Nomar just because it’s Nomar? Is he not allowed to talk about ex-Red Sox in his columns? Surely he can’t talk about current Red Sox in his columns - he’d never be able to walk into the Sox clubhouse and get another interview. Some have asked why, if Ryan had these questions about steroid use before, hadn’t he put out this article last year, or perhaps the year before? That exact reason. Accusing a current player on your hometown team - especially one that was as popular as Nomar was - is suicide for a sportswriter. It might have gotten him recognition outside of Boston, but it’d get him a one-way ticket out of Boston as well.

So maybe Ryan has had these thoughts in the past. Maybe he doesn’t say anything last season after the trade because that’s considered piling on Nomar - kicking him in the ass as he’s going out the door. Maybe he waits until this season, and maybe he doesn’t say anything because he still doesn’t feel sure of himself - it’s only a possibility.

Then Nomar gets hurt again, seriously. It’s an injury that might happen to a steroid user. Those thoughts in Ryan’s head pop up again. The story is there. Why can’t he write it? What does the team that the player is on have anything to do with whether the story should be written or not?

Exactly. Get off Ryan’s case for writing the story about Nomar - if you have an issue, make it with Ryan for writing the story at all based on assumption. But don’t rip on him for pointing the finger at Nomar.

With Jaret Wright heading to the DL, it looks like we’ll see a momentary glimpse of Bean. From ESPN.com:

Cashman said Triple-A prospect Chien-Ming Wang will probably start next Saturday against Toronto. In the meantime, reliever Colter Bean will likely be promoted from Columbus.

Of course, that’s just an assumption on the writer’s part. Wang’s going into the rotation, but they’re not going to need a 5th starter until Saturday, so Bean would make sense, although we likely won’t see him that much.