The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 97

continued AITt AlfiflK bell about making it to training camp. His weight was 170 and he never felt or looked better in his life. "Campbell didn't sound too enthusiastic about having me back," says Hiller bitterly. "As a matter of fact he was very negative. He said I would have to go to Detroit and be examined by cardiologists at Henry Ford Hospital.

The team had the bloody medical reports from St. Luke's and the University of Minnesota but they still balked at having me back. So, I went to Detroit. 1 passed all their damn tests. I was in better physical shape than anybody on the ball club but the doctors said they didn't know if I could play again.

They just didn't see how a guy who'd had a heart attack could play baseball." Hiller slams his palm down on the table. "They were trying to stop me earning a living. It wasn't democratic. They were passing judgment on my life and future, ignoring the evidence of experts. Who the hell did they think they were?" Hiller went home to Duluth.

Campbell phoned and said arrangements were being made for him to receive more tests from different doctors. "Again he offered me my release," says Hiller. "They wanted to dump me. They were scared. I said, 'Look, I can play again, don't you understand Finally, Campbell said I could come down to Lakeland as a pitching instructor in the minor-league system to work myself into shape and, if the new tests were negative, maybe they would have a place for me as a scout.

1 was so goddam mad I really wanted to quit then. And then he says they'll pay me $7,500 a year, less than half my regular salary." But Hiller went to Lakeland for that salary. "I was broke," he says. "Every two weeks I was sending $200 home to Janis to pay the bills. There was just no way.

I was going under. I owed about $60 a month on a snowmobile, $150 a month on the house, $100 a month on the car, I was paying $70 a month on a bill-payer's loan I got to pay some other bills and, let's see, I owed Sears $300. and $100 at another place and there was the phone bill, the hydro and fuel bill. Listen, it got so bad. Janis and the kids had to move out and into her parents' place.

I told her forget about the car, the stores and just pay the phone and electricity. If they don't like it, too bad. It's the best we can do. I'm telling you, I was sick with worry. I even owed the hospital $650, 1 remember." When the Tigers broke camp and headed north, Hiller was left alone at Lakeland.

"I worked like a dog to impress them and the only one who said anything was Billy Martin. He said he'd try to get me up later in the season. I was so depressed, I went off my diet. Yeah, I admit it. 1 went off it.

When I'm emotionally upset, I eat. I called Campbell and asked what they were going to do with me. He said it was still up in the air so I said send me a ticket, I'm going home." He was home a few days when Campbell phoned and said the club was sending him to Atlanta for a final diagnosis and decision by Dr. J. Willis Hurst, past president of the American Medical Association and one of the foremost heart experts in the U.S.

"I thought there is no way I'm going to pass this one," says Hiller. "Here's one of the biggest heart doctors in the country and he's not going to risk his reputation by saying yes only to have me drop dead on the mound." But Dn Hurst saw no reason why Hiller couldn't play baseball again. In fact, he said it would be the best thing for him. He said Hiller was in better condition than before the heart attack. Campbell sent Hiller a telegram saying he was back on the big club roster as a batting-practice pitcher at $7,500 a year.

Hiller, frustrated to the point of exhaustion, stopped fighting them. He joined the team as a batting-practice pitcher. And then came Chicago. "Les Kane, one of our lefthanders, had a sore arm and Martin called on me. First though, Campbell called me into his hotel suite in Chicago and offered me a playing contract.

I looked at it and. man. it was the last goddam straw. They had cut my original salary by $3,000. It sure did a lot for my confidence.

I mean, after all I had been through to get back in baseball! Well, I showed them. I took the contract, signed it, dropped it on his desk and walked out." Hiller played in 24 games for the Tigers the summer of his comeback (three of them as a starter) and he saved three of those games. His earned-run-average was a remarkable 2.05, his best ever. In the league championship series against the Oakland Athletics, he topped the Tigers pitching staff with three appearances and the fourth game he won. Today, he's a changed man.

"I have a whole new perspective on life. Things I considered important before are not so important now. The only thing that matters is your health. Without that, there's nothing. I used to get uptight and worry if I had a bad game.

Now, I try my best but if it's not good enough, then too bad. Get somebody else. "I'm closer to my family too. It used to be when my kids would say. 'Daddy, can you play with or 'Daddy, will you take us somewhere? I'd say I was too busy.

Well, not now. I got all the time in the world now." And he has plenty to do in the offseason. As honorary chairman of the Minnesota Heart Association, he travels far and wide telling his story. tube info the arteries while rapid-sequence x-rays were taken to determine the extent of the blockage. "It hurt like hell," says Hilter, lighting another cigar.

"Every time they pumped the stuff up into me, it felt like my head was going to explode. I had to grip a bar over my head. The damn thing lasted more than an hour." The arteriogram revealed both coronary arteries blocked by cholesterol, one 60 per cent and the other 30 per cent. Excess cholesterol in the bloodstream can lead to heart attacks. "If you want to play baseball again," Dr.

Henry Buchwald, associate professor of surgery at the University of Minnesota Hospital told Hiller, "you'll need an operation." Says Hiller: "If I just had to go back to a desk job, I would have said to hell with it. Or if I could do some other type of job. But without baseball, I had nothing, so said go ahead and operate.l had to put my faith in somebody." Dr. Buchwald performed an ileo-bypass, an operation in which one-third (about seven feet) of Hiller's small intestine was disconnected and bypassed. The portion disconnected is primarily responsible for absorbing cholesterol from food and the body into the bloodstream.

With the section bypassed, the cholesterol can't get into the bloodstream and is discharged with other wastes. Gradually, the cholesterol blockages in Hiller's arteries were reduced from 60 and 30 per cent to 30 and per cent respectively. His cholesterol count dropped from a high of around 200 to 95, about the same as a newborn baby's. After the operation Hiller had a tube running into his stomach through his nostril to suck out waste matter. He developed a throat infection.

Then he developed an infection in his arms from intravenous feeding and both arms swelled up. "I couldn't believe this was happening to me," Hiller says. "It was as painful as hell and I had to be given injections of painkiller. I knew how a junkie felt. I'd call for the needle and if they told me it wasn't time, I'd scream like hell until got a shot.

It was that or go crazy." The first time he was allowed to drink water through his mouth, "I choked for about five minutes. My stomach ballooned up like a pregnant woman's and I thought I was going to bust the stitches. I was very depressed at this point and I didn't want to see anybody) including my family. My hair was long and dirty, I didn't wash properly and I looked like hell. I was down to "Now, there's a dinner for a Hungry Man!" 2 Portions of meat with gravy, country vegetables and home-style dessert.

160 pounds and looked like a bum. They said I couldn't go home until my bowels started working again." Finally, he was released, but was home only four days when the stitches in his abdomen popped. He was rushed back to hospital and sewn up again. "1 felt rotten. I was so weak I could hardly walk.

I went golfing once in the middle of May but collapsed after one hole and had to be carried back." He stayed home in bed for five days, depressed, hurting, and then developed severe bowel spasms. "This was almost the end," says Hiller. "1 have never felt pain like that in my life. I can't describe it. It's just terrible, couldn't stand up.

I thought am 1 never going to get better for Christ's sake?" The spasms tearing at his insides, Hiller got put of bed, groped his way over to the bedroom window and thought seriously about smashing his head through the glass and ending his misery once and for all. He was convinced the heart attack and its aftermath had left him a mental and physical wreck useless to anybody and for anything. Desperate, his wife phoned the doctor who hurried over and gave him some pills. Hiller's spasms disappeared. In August he joined the YMCA in Duluth, determined to give life another chance.

He was working in a furniture store to supplement his reduced baseball income. Soon he was running two miles a day at the swimming a mile, weightlifting and doing calisthenics. In July he drove to Toronto to visit his family. "They nearly dropped dead when they saw me, 1 was so skinny." His father, owner of an auto body shop, was so shaken he quit cigarettes himself and hasn't touched them since. Hiller worked out in the during the winter, throwing a baseball against a target on the wall, and in the spring phoned Tigers general manager Camp Take this coupon to your grocer now! tit.

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