John Wetteland, Kiddie Diddler?

[Guy Incognito]

Wetteland charged with child sexual abuse

Disgusting.

 

[Guy Incognito]

Texas Rangers Hall of Fame pitcher John Wetteland arrested on child sex abuse charge | Crime | Dallas News

Wetteland, 52, is accused of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14, according to Denton County jail records.

 

[huskers1217]

cut his dick off. sick bastard

 

[PEOPLESCHICKEN]

Wetteland charged with child sexual abuse

Disgusting.

Dude I just saw that a few minutes ago. Fucking dooshe

 

[Guy Incognito]

cut his dick off. sick bastard

 

[jjc2009]

Acid burn off his junk and then throw him in the incinerator

 

[Ojb81]

Acid burn off his junk and then throw him in the incinerator

what incinerator??! we have an incinerator on the hoop??

 

[jjc2009]

what incinerator??! we have an incinerator on the hoop??

Are there pedos here?

 

[Ojb81]

Are there pedos here?

no idea. I hope not

 

[Zooky]

Another freak bible thumper who likes to have sex with kids.
What a shock.


BASEBALL; Wetteland Is Just a Closer Who Walks With the Lord

BASEBALL; Wetteland Is Just a Closer Who Walks With the Lord
By JACK CURRY
APRIL 16, 1995


This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems to [email protected].




April 16, 1995, Page 008001 The New York Times Archives
John Wetteland is drinking coffee from a large mug with the words "Jesus Lives" emblazoned across it in big, black letters. He grins and nods when someone comments on the mug. His Bible is resting on a shelf in his locker and he has a personal computer at his disposal so he can retrieve morning devotionals from an on-line program and pray before the Yankees begin another day of baseball.

"I honestly try and walk with Jesus Christ every day," he said, describing his most important relationship, more important than his relationship with his wife.

John Wetteland is throwing fastballs. Hard, sizzling, tiny fastballs that Bernie Williams either misses, dribbles along the infield grass or fouls into the screen. Finally, Williams pummels one pitch to the outfield wall and Wetteland goes ballistic inside his pinstripes. His blue eyes blaze. He pumps the next pitch harder than any he had thrown, causing Williams to whisper, "I saw fire in his eyes."

"I understand that it's batting practice, but I don't like it, man," Wetteland said, trying to explain his behavior. "I mean Bernie Williams is a great guy, but I felt like killing him. You know what I mean? I don't know. Something happens to me. Something changes."

Something happens. Something happens to Wetteland when he walks his determined walk to the mound in pursuit of a save. Something happens when he closes his Bible, shuts off his computer and picks up a baseball to chuck it 97 miles an hour in the ninth inning.



The personable player who quotes scripture, who sometimes spends two straight hours in uniform signing autographs and who invites indigent people to live in his home in Cedar Crest, N.M., becomes, in his own words, a warrior. Asked what fans should know about him, Wetteland replied, "That I'm nuts when I'm on the mound."

Nuts. Just what any closer who has 105 saves in 130 chances in three seasons, who averages 1.1 strikeouts an inning and who has a fastball, curveball and slider that make coaches drool, should be. Just what Wetteland, whose wife, Michele, thought he might vomit before his first workout with the Yankees, wants to be.

On the mound, that is. He did not want to be nuts off the mound, but sometimes he was. He was a drinker, a drug user, a flake, a rocker, and he grew up outside San Francisco in a family that he called "strange."

"He was really wild and really out there at one time and it was so opposed to my beliefs as a Christian," said Michele Wetteland, who married the born-again John in June 1990. "I knew we wouldn't be compatible."

Now he denounces drugs and alcohol, considers himself different, but not flaky, favors Christian rock music and is rebuilding a relationship with his mother.

The Yankees grabbed the best closer in baseball from the Expos 10 days ago, according to Kevin Malone, Montreal's general manager, who traded him because of self-imposed budgetary constraints. Wetteland made his debut today and pitched one scoreless inning as the Yankees defeated Montreal, 4-2, at West Palm Beach.

"Well, I'm not nuts," Wetteland said, seconds after having designated himself so. "It's funny because I'm a real nice guy in everything and easy to get along with. I will serve you until I die off the field. But, on the field, something happens, something changes, man."

A lot has happened with Wetteland in his 28 unusual years. He has not always walked with Jesus Christ. Sometimes, he has walked such a crooked line that he almost never made it to the next morning. Sometimes, he really acted nuts, and it had nothing to do with firing a shabby curveball in practice, angrily kicking a protective screen and breaking his right big toe, as he did two springs ago with Montreal. It had to do with life.

"You think I'm intense?" asked Steve Howe, one of Wetteland's new bullpen buddies, who has been suspended from the majors seven times for drug violations. "I got a reprieve. You got him here now."

John Karl Wetteland was born in San Mateo, Calif., on Aug. 21, 1966, and adopted his father's passions for music and baseball. Ed Wetteland pitched in the minor leagues for the Cubs and is now a pianist and cabaret performer in San Francisco. A libertarian whose family lived in a one-room cabin he built in Sebastopol, Calif., Ed housed his wife and five children in a tent beside the cabin while he was constructing it, yet he made sure John had the fanciest baseball glove around. Wetteland's parents divorced when he was 16 and he was crushed and confused. Still is.

"I guess I haven't," Wetteland said when asked if he had adequately dealt with his father's remarriage. "But it's not like I can't stand him or anything. My dad and I have a good relationship. We had to live with it."

Wetteland preferred that a reporter not interview his father or his mother, Dorothy Wetteland, because he "didn't want anyone digging into my past again." But his father told Sports Illustrated last July that his approach was to let John select his own path in life. "I emphasized the responsibility of the individual toward society," Ed Wetteland said. "Beyond that I allowed John to find his own way. John did not grow up in a disciplined environment. I grew up in a disciplined environment, and maybe I went the other way because of it. At times we destroyed each other, as I imagine most fathers and sons do, but I love him dearly. Life is life. The head trips are going to be there."

The head trips were there. Wetteland almost died twice around the age of 17. Once he nearly overdosed on a combination of drugs, including LSD, at a Grateful Dead concert. Another time, Wetteland was in the front seat when a drunken friend rammed his car into a telephone pole. Something happened. He trudged on. He kept playing baseball and guitar. He kept walking crooked.

"It was difficult for him to forgive his parents for some things he had to go through as a kid," Michele explained. "He wishes they would have protected him from some of the things he experienced."

Unaware of Wetteland's occasional struggles, the Dodgers signed the 18-year-old right-hander out of Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 1985. He lost 10 straight games in his second minor league season, but was promoted from Class AAA Albuquerque to the Dodgers three years later and went 5-8 with a 3.77 earned run average. Jay Howell, a friend and former teammate, still called him a "lost soul."

Wetteland's transformation to someone who carried Bibles everywhere and read prayers in a bawdy clubhouse started because he wanted to impress Michele. He sent her what she called "a kind and eloquent" note while she was working as an usher at a Class AA game in Shreveport, La., in 1988 and tried wooing her by feigning interest in Christianity. Slowly, his interest became legitimate. He traces his turnaround to the moment he found money. Before the 1990 season, the Dodgers offered him a $142,500 contract and Wetteland thought he had reached nirvana. He was wrong and knew it before collecting a dollar.

"The realization when I got my first major league contract changed everything," Wetteland said. "Being without money, I thought it was the answer. Money is a tool, not an end. It doesn't matter if you have a million dollars or $10,000. It's how you use it. My priorities and perspectives completely changed. That's what Christ changed for me."

Now the man who called himself "an absolute mess" during stages of his life focuses on fastballs and faith. Unlike some born-again Christian players, he is aggressive on the mound. He is also aggressive about discussing Christ.

"My relationship with Jesus Christ is not lip service," he said. "It is of utmost importance to me. It is even more important than my relationship with my wife. I know that my wife considers her relationship with Him more important than her relationship with me. Ultimately, that's who I'm going to have to face. That's going to be a great day."

Wetteland bounced from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to Montreal before the 1992 season and then made a huge splash by saving 37 games for the Expos, almost twice as many as he saved in his entire minor league career. After one of those saves, Wetteland was driving home when he suddenly cried for his mother, whom he had not spoken to for seven years. John and Michele both wept until he called his mother, expressed his love for her and they reconciled. During the off season, Wetteland filled a U-Haul truck and moved his mother from California to Albuquerque, N.M., to care for her.

"I've asked her for forgiveness for my actions as the son I wasn't," Wetteland said. "She's a cool lady who's had a really tough life. I just failed to see that for so long."

Something happens. Something changes. Since joining the Yankees, Wetteland has cruised around the parking lot on in-line skates, fiddled with his computer while trainers massaged his back, signed thousands of autographs and caused teammates to dread his pitches in batting practice. They might also dread debating him about post-game beers.

"Say players on a baseball team want to go out and have a good time and be men," Wetteland said sarcastically. "Yeah, right. You wake up the next morning and you think that an athlete, with what alcohol does to a body, will be able to contribute 100 percent of his abilities to a club?"

Actually, Wetteland does not foresee conflict with thirsty teammates.

"I leave it right here," Wetteland said. "I'm not going to go up to guys and say, 'You're wrong.' They're men. They're able to make choices for themselves."

John Wetteland is making choices. It is all about choices since he discovered Jesus Christ: He chooses to be a giving person, to avoid alcohol, to throw hard and to devote himself to his creator. In the before and after pictures of Wetteland's outrageous life, he is smiling in the second photo. He has burned the first photo.

"It really is two different persons with John," Michele Wetteland said. "God's word says the old man is cast off. John's old man has been cast off. If you asked me if I sit here in awe of John and how obedient he has been to God's word, I'd tell you that I do."

Something happened. Something changed.

 

[packerzrule]

Da fuq

 

[Rod Freakin' Dangerfield]

Wetteland charged with child sexual abuse

Disgusting.

Did he play college ball at Penn St.?

 

[thedddd]

Disgusting and hopefully he gets put away forever. Luckily he will get it good behind bars.