The widow and mother of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs testified Monday in their wrongful death lawsuit trial against the team, acknowledging his history with substance abuse, but saying they were unaware of him continuing to struggle with opioids until his death on a road trip in Texas in July 2019.
Skaggs’ widow, Carli Skaggs, testified that she had trouble recalling many of the text exchanges she had with her husband years ago when confronted by attorneys for the Angels. Her memory was hazy about how involved she was in caretaking for Skaggs after his Tommy John surgery in 2013.
In one text exchange, Skaggs asks for a pill because “my knee is killing me.” He had a ligament taken from his knee and placed in his elbow to repair it. Skaggs’ mother, Debbie Hetman, asked Carli to get the pill for him, Hetman said.
When questioned about a text exchange involving former teammate Mike Morin in which he said, “Ha ha, I’m about to crush a blue right now” because his wife wasn’t there, he texted.
“I don’t know,” what the message meant, Carli Skaggs said.
But “crushed” was a popular verb for him, she added.
“Tyler would say I crushed that meal,” she said.
Carli Skaggs was also questioned about attempts to get the drug Ecstasy while on honeymoon and drug use at his bachelor’s party.
Carli Skaggs said she learned during the criminal trial of former Angels public relations executive Eric Kay, who is serving a 22-year federal prison term for supplying the fatal dose of fentanyl to Skaggs, that cocaine was used at the party.
Carli Skaggs said she doesn’t know if her husband ingested cocaine or not at the party. She came to learn later that one of his friends was a “drug dealer,” she said.
She was also asked about his text messages to another friend days before he overdosed seeking OxyContin. Carli Skaggs said she found out about that during Kay’s trial.
When she found out her husband had OxyContin, alcohol and fentanyl in his system when he died, she said, “I was mad.”
When asked if it was wrong for someone to use those drugs, she said, “I don’t use those drugs. I don’t know anything about them.”
She said she was unaware of him using opioids at the time.
“If he had expressed to me he had a problem I absolutely would want to help him,” she said. “He didn’t share it with me.”
Hetman discussed childhood photos of her son, gushing over his “chubby cheeks” and his fondness for In-N-Out food.
“Ty and I would go there literally after every Pop Warner football game,” she said, adding that In-N-Out was served at his memorial service.
Skaggs was a “skinny kid” when he went to a Stanford baseball camp as a high school freshman, but “his mechanics were so well-tuned” that it caught the notice of scouts.
“It really put his name on the map,” Hetman said.
Skaggs befriended the girls’ softball team at Santa Monica High School where his mother coached. He promised them rings if they won a CIF Southern Section championship in 2009 and came through, Hetman said.
“He said ma, try to keep the cost down” on the rings, she said with a chuckle. “He was very generous.”
Skaggs likely would have gone to Cal State Fullerton if he hadn’t been drafted out of high school, Hetman said.
“He worked his butt off” to fill out and improve is game, Hetman said.
Skaggs loved being at home and “had a vibe in the house… He had a presence, bigger than life, always a smile on his face, always watching ESPN or a baseball documentary,” his mother said.
At 6-foot-4 his “feet would go off the bed, but he liked it,” she said.
“I think about Tyler every day,” she said. “Every minute I think how much I miss him… I talk to him literally every day… When he died a part of me died… I never thought I’d have to lie my life without Tyler. It’s painful. Every day is a battle.”
She never missed a home game, but regretted not taking time off work to see him pitch on the road.
“I should have watched him pitch in Wrigley and I didn’t,” she said.
In 2013, he confessed to his parents he had a problem with an addiction to Percocet, she said.
So Hetman and his stepfather helped him set up appointments with a general practitioner and a psychiatrist.
“He looked like he had the flu,” she said. “He was very thin… He looked very sullen and lost, crying out for help.”
Hetman said she knew nothing about opioids at the time so that is why they reached out to the physicians.
When Skaggs was prescribed Suboxone for his addiction, he said he would rather do it “cold turkey,” Hetman said. So she and her husband looked after him as he struggled with the withdrawal symptoms.
“We just surrounded him with love and support,” Hetman said.
Hetman insisted on him continuing drug testing through the next year.
When he had to get the elbow surgery, she said she told the team doctors about his Perocet addiction and she suggested extra-strength Tylenol, not knowing the more potent prescribed versions of it contained opioids.
But after the surgery he was “happy go-lucky” and “alert,” and “He looked amazing,” she said.