Overcoming adversity not new to Kotkoski

By Jeff Schuler
Of The Morning Call


With every home run he hits, Mike Kotkoski sails deeper and deeper into the Tri-County League's record books as the circuit's all- time leading home run hitter.

Quite a feat, to be sure. But these days the personable 1975 Palisades High grad is just happy to walk onto the field.

You might say Kotkoski is in the midst of a comeback year. Only he's not recovering from a broken bone or a torn muscle. Rather, the 34-year-old is recovering from a heart attack, one he suffered in the last game of the 1990 season.

"According to my doctors, it happened during our last playoff game (against the Allentown Angels)," Kotkoski said, recalling the events of last August 9 at Quakertown's Memorial Park. "I was having a little problems breathing, but I just thought it was swollen glands or something. It was humid, it was hot, and as a matter of fact we played that last game in the rain. We played them tough, and I even hit a home run in the game. But the next morning when I woke up I couldn't breathe, and I knew something was wrong. But I never thought it was anything close to that.

"My roommate took me to the emergency room, and after they did a bunch of tests -- blood gases, EKG, a bunch of other stuff -- they told me I had a heart attack. Never in a million years did I think that's what it was. Thought maybe swollen glands, some sort of throat infection, at the worst, maybe some fluid in the lungs.

"I wasn't worried until they told me -- as soon as they told me, I was scared to death. I was in intensive care for five or six days, and it was frightening -- I didn't close my eyes for the first two days ... I was afraid too, because I wasn't sure if I'd ever wake up again."

The heart attack was merely the latest in a long line of ailments that have slowed -- but not stopped -- Kotkoski, who has hit 57 homers, including two this year, in a Tri-Co career that began with Silver Creek in 1977. Herb Hemerly is a distant second with 44.

"I was born in `57, and you know medicine wasn't that far along. I had a heart murmur and back then, they told my mom she couldn't let me run around. And she said, `There's no way in hell; this kid won't stop,'" he explained. "I had a softball sized-tumor removed from my spine when I was seven -- they always go back to that for some reason. I just had a rough life for my body. I've had two knee operations, broken both ankles, a hernia, heart problems -- but nobody in my family ever gets sick except me."

Despite all those ailments, however, he's played baseball -- first for Palisades High, then for 12 years at Silver Creek before moving on to Quakertown two years ago along with several other Creeker teammates.

"I've missed vacations and, basically, anything else during the summer for 13 years," said Kotkoski, whose father, a career Navy man, was killed in a helicopter crash during his third tour of duty in Vietnam when he was 10. "But I've only missed two games in that time. The last game of the season, 1979, I broke my ankle running into the fence at Limeport chasing a fly ball and I missed the playoffs. But that's been it.

"I had a hernia operation four days before the start of the season in '85 and came out playing," he added. "I was all taped up and when I looked afterwards, I had blown out all my stitches. But, I want to play and win more than anything."

The heart attack was no competition for that inner drive to compete, said Kotkoski, who added that he talked his way out of the hospital 11 days after his attack to take part in a team golf outing.

"The doctor that first saw me, and in fact the first few I saw, recommended that I might have to stop playing (baseball)," he recalled. "But the specialist that worked on me told me not to give it up, because other than golf -- I love to play golf -- and my work, it's the only exercise I do. I'm not a jogger or anything like that, and he told me baseball is actually a good aerobic sport. I did stop lifting weights, though -- I used to do that a lot, but that was too much of a strain."

Kotkoski, who has a 14-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who attends Palisades, from a marriage that ended in divorce seven years ago, said he's made a few other concessions to his condition. He said he has cut back on his intake of alcoholic beverages, although he adds that he didn't really start drinking until he was 26, so doctors don't think that contributed to his problem. He also changed jobs, from a mason to a carpenter.

"The doctor said `you've got to change your job.' Well, that was easy for him to say -- he was driving home in his Mercedes, and I'm driving my Hyundai, and this is the job I'm trained to do. But, as a matter of fact, my boss' brother has a construction company and asked me if I wanted a job. So now I swing a hammer all day."

But the one thing Kotkoski, who has had two uncles undergo open-heart surgery before age 40, said he wouldn't change was his baseball.

"I'm not a quitter," he said simply. "I'm 34 years old, but never been a believer in quitting something when you can still do it. I've seen too many kids, 24, 25 years old, pack it in because of one bad year. Some day they're going to be 40, 50 years old and they won't be able to play, and then they'll be wondering what they would've done if they had stayed.

"It's tough to make a commitment," he admitted, "but the only thing is, if you make it, you gotta' show up. We've got guys on the bench who don't play, but we need them just as much as we need Bob (Drumbore) or Tom (Hartman) or myself. We had one game last week where we only had nine players. And, what happened if one of those guys didn't show up? Or if one got hurt in a game? We need those guys."

Commitment is why Kotkoski never joined the ranks of others in the area as two-league competitors.

"I've had a couple offers from Blue Mountain teams, but I'm not interested. It's tough -- I see a lot of guys who play both leagues, and they can't commit. And if I'm going to commit to these guys (in Quakertown), I've got to be here every day. If I was playing Blue Mountain, I'd be gone occasionally, and how would these guys who get to play when I'm gone but are back on the bench when I show up feel? I don't think you can't have it both ways."

Kotkoski, who rejected a chance out of high school to attend the Naval Academy -- then enlisted for a two-year hitch a few months later (incredibly, his entire tour of duty was spent at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago) -- admits the heart attack forced him to think about the end of his career. He says he won't be around as long as the league's elder statesman, 50-something year old Ishky Fatzinger of Limeport ("Ishky's body is still in good shape -- mine's falling apart left and right," he quipped) but he added that his most recent troubles won't send him to the sidelines any time soon.

"I'm not the best ballplayer in this league by any stretch, but I'm more or less durable, and I'm not a quitter."



jeff.schuler@mcall.com

From The Morning Call -- July 11, 1991

Copyright © 1991, The Morning Call