Gabrielle Schoeneweis: Digging Deeper Into Cause of Death

We are the children of our own actions.  Look recently at Steve Phillips.  His marriage is ruined, his career in the toilet (for now, at least).  Who knows what his relationship with his kids is like.  Then there's Tiger Woods.  A little infidelity here and there, a foolish voicemail, and now the Billion Dollar Man is an international headline for reasons other than his putting.  Fritz Peterson had years and years of financial hardship trying to support two families after his and Mike Kedich's "wife swapping" episode from 1972.  Alex Rodriguez got his face plastered on every tabloid in the country for his sexual exploits as a married man.  It happens, no doubt.  Those who play must understand that somehow, in some way, they will eventually have to pay a price.

That leads us to where we left off yesterday.  The cause of death for Gabrielle Schoeneweis was determined to be an overdose of cocaine and an anestheic called lidocaine.  Lidocaine is used on patients during minor dental surgery.  It is a numbing agent designed to block nerve signals in your body.  According to drugs.com, an overdose of numbing medications can cause "fatal side effects.... Overdose symptoms may include uneven heartbeats, seizure, coma, slowed breathing or respiratory failure."  You can buy it without a prescription.  According to Random Facts.com, "Cocaine is nearly always diluted by dealers in order to increase the overall quantity and maximize profits.  Common additives include lactose, lidocaine" and others.  People use cocaine for its euphoric effect.  In fact, famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud recommended cocaine as a useful treatment for depression.

Knowing this, two questions come to mind.  The first is how did Gabrielle Schoeneweis get the drugs that killed her?  While we know from above that lidocaine can be purchased without a prescription but can also used as an additive in cocaine, she either had access to someone who dealt her pure cocaine and she combined the two drugs on her own, or the coke she acquired already contained the lidocaine as an additive.  One item in the investigation we haven't seen yet (in fact, we haven't seen much of anything, just the release of her cause of death) is a theory on how she had access to cocaine. 

Strictly based upon hearsay, meaning there has been no public proof of this, it is believed that in Gabrielle Schoeneweis's past she had had a problem with drugs.  This information is based upon a couple of anonymous reader comments made shortly after her death, months before the cause was publicly released.  "Crystal meth" was the accusation back in May.  If we allege her past drug use was true, then it is reasonable to assume that she still had a means of access in 2009.  Whether her supplier was a friend or a dealer, somehow illegal drugs were available to her.

The second question is Why.  Why would she use this lethal combination of drugs?  Assuming (that's all we're doing here) the recession or poor financial management didn't destroy the millions of dollars Scott Schoeneweis has earned over the last 10 years (according to Baseball Reference.com, he's made more than $20 million since 1999 pre-tax), Gabrielle, Scott and their four children would never have to worry about money.  They would always have a home, always have food.  From a typical baseball fan's perspective, this is all one needs to live happily ever after.

But put yourself in Gabrielle's shoes.  There will be no happily ever after for her.  The key word here is "happy."  One must assume, again, that she was not happy.

Possible reasons for this unhappiness are out there if you look hard enough, or read what others are saying.  First, there's postpartum depression.  Last October, Gabrielle gave birth to a premature, but healthy, baby.  Seven months later, she was dead of a drug overdose.  One could argue postpartum depression could have had a hand in this.

There may have also been a pre-existing condition we don't know about.  Remember, if she had used drugs over a decade ago, there had to be a reason then as well.  We haven't really mentioned that maybe her alleged drug use in the 1990s was prescription-based.  What if she had a clinically depressive personality and a doctor prescribed various drugs back then?  If so, it is  possible that the seeds for Gabrielle's overdose began a long time ago.

Another reason for her unhappiness may have been rooted in her marriage.  It is alleged, by two separate sources, that Scott Schoeneweis was involved in an extramarital affair.  The first source is a website that posted a picture of various Mets girlfriends in 2008, during a short-lived "scandal" involving Jose Reyes and an affair he was allegedly having.  The caption for the picture, from left to right, reads "Jose Reyes Girlfriend, Luis Castillo Girlfriend, Scott Schoeneweis Girlfriend and David Wrights girlfriend."  True, a website called Dirty.com may not be the most trusted source for news, but it does show something that ballplayers have to put up with as public figures.

If you scroll down and read the comments, a couple of them support Scott and state the accusation in the photo's caption is false as it relates to him and Luis Castillo.  Still, suppose you were a baseball wife and you saw that picture and you saw that caption and it included your husband's name.  And suppose you were a baseball wife who was going through a spell of depression.  Can you imagine how vulnerable you could feel at that moment?  Can you imagine how you might begin to question everything about your marriage?

Donna Candiotti, an ex-MLB wife who lives in Arizona, has stated numerous times publicly that there was something going on outside of the marriage for Scott.  In answer to the question of Why Gabrielle Schoeneweis died, Candiotti wrote this: "WHY?  Because her husband is a cheating ass who traveled on every road trip with a 22 year old and she (Gabrielle) couldn't handle it!"  Alluding to the Tiger Woods rumors, Candiotti continued that Gabrielle Schoeneweis "should have taken a golf club to his head!"

There is no smoking gun, no woman who has come out and stated she was in the middle of an affair with Scott Schoeneweis.  There are no text messages or voicemails that have been somehow leaked to the world to definitively prove this is true.  Donna Candiotti is so far the only person to speak out.  Others have sent messages to me stating they have known Scott for years and, while never fans of him as a person, do believe he has sufferend through this ordeal as any other husband and father would.

The final question that comes up, one that may never be answered, is whether Scott Schoeneweis used legal tactics to try to block the cause of death from being publicly announced as a means of keeping this news from his children or as a means of saving himself from embarrassment and blame.  In the words again of Donna Candiotti, "What kind of guy tries to seal his wife's death records to protect his own image and turns his back on his wife as he travels the world with his 20 year old girlfriend?"

Those legal tactics failed and the cause of death is out there.  Whatever the true cause of death, beyond the physical drug overdose, friends of Gabrielle Schoeneweis remember a person who was upbeat, funny and always laughing.  The hope is that right now, she's somewhere in heaven laughing right now.