PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- Jeff Reardon plunged into darkness after his 20-year-old son died of an accidental drug overdose in February 2004. His mind tormented with pain, guilt, and suicidal thoughts, the former All-Star reliever for the Red Sox shut himself in a bedroom and blotted out the sun with hurricane shutters.
"I was in that room all the time," says Reardon, 51. "For months I wouldn't come out of there. It's still a struggle not to go back in there."
Reardon, a Dalton, Mass., native who pitched for Boston from 1990-92 and became baseball's all-time saves leader in '92 (he's now No. 6 on the list), couldn't save his son. And he couldn't save himself.
In fact, the greatest save in Reardon's life may have been made by a trucker who was driving 70 m.p.h. down the Bee Line Highway in Florida last December.
"I pulled over and parked on the side of the road, got out and walked in front of a semi truck," says Reardon, matter-of-factly. "The thing swerved and missed me, and then for some reason I came home and told my wife." She took him to a mental hospital for treatment.
The man nicknamed "The Terminator" had lost the one thing he had had an abundance of all his life: control.
On Dec. 26, 2005, just three days after undergoing an angioplasty, Reardon strolled into Hamilton Jewelers in the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens and presented a sloppily scrawled note that said, "I have a gun. Please place $100 bills and jewelry in this bag and no one will get hurt. Thank you."
Reardon shrugs. "When I did the robbery, it came out of nowhere," he says. "It was the day after Christmas. I said I was going to go to the mall to get a coffee maker. So, from saying that, somehow I ended up robbing the store. And I don't even know why. That time of my life I don't remember, the robbery included. I don't remember making the note."
Reardon says he needed neither money nor jewelry. He wears three gaudy baseball rings, one symbolizing the Twins' victory in the 1987 World Series. He made $11.5 million in his 16-year career with the Mets, Expos, Twins, Red Sox, Braves, Reds, and Yankees. The four-time All-Star finished with a 73-77 record, 367 saves, and a 3.16 ERA.
But Reardon insists he was psychotic -- under the influence of 12 antidepressants, mood stabilizers, heart medications, and antibiotics -- when he committed the robbery.
"Something with the medication kicked in that day," he says. "I was going to different doctors, but they knew what I was on. I said, 'You sure it's all right? I'm taking this and this.' They said 'Oh yeah.' But it wasn't."
With $170 in a green Hamilton Jewelers bag, he approached a security guard in the mall parking lot.
