From Phillies icon to ‘time traveler’: Darren Daulton’s family believes his struggles and cancer were linked to the Vet’s turf

Something was terribly wrong with Darren Daulton.

It was the late 1990s, and Daulton was in Harbor Bluffs, Fla., where he and his then-wife, Nicole, shared a picturesque, three-story home overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. Daulton always felt drawn to the water, his Hollywood features bronzing in the sun.

For 14 years, he’d been the affable face of the Philadelphia Phillies, admired by teammates as much for his talent — he was selected to three All-Star teams as a catcher — as his heart. Not even nine knee surgeries could keep him from running, sweating and bleeding on Veterans Stadium’s unforgiving artificial turf.

In 1997, Daulton found a storybook close to his career: He won a World Series as a late-season addition to the Florida Marlins, then retired.

But now a different side of Daulton had emerged, one that worried Nicole. He gave millions of dollars away to grifters who glommed on to his celebrity, and started to experience hallucinations.

On one occasion, Daulton told her that he’d won a fight with God, and could turn invisible, even travel through time.

During another conversation, he explained that he was a lizard king, capable of communicating with lizards in their backyard. “He told me they watch everything I do, and they tell him everything I do. … So he knows when I’m safe or when I’m not safe,” she told The Inquirer during a recent interview.

“I started laughing, and then started crying, because I realized just sitting there, listening to him, he was dead serious,” she said. “It was like I watched him slowly descend into madness before my eyes, and I didn’t know why.”

In 2013, Daulton was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Surgeons removed two tumors, and Daulton announced that he was cancer-free in 2015. But the disease returned, and in 2017, claimed his life at age 55.

Six former Phillies — Daulton, Tug McGraw, John Vukovich, David West, Johnny Oates, and Ken Brett — have died from glioblastoma. All of them spent parts of their careers playing at Veterans Stadium, which was demolished in 2004. The rate of brain cancer among Phillies who played at the Vet between 1971 and 2003 is about three times the average rate among adult men.

A recent Inquirer investigation, Field of Dread, found that AstroTurf used at the stadium between 1977 and 1981 contained 16 different types of PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances — so-called forever chemicals, which the EPA has said cause “adverse health effects that can devastate families.” (Subsequent generations of artificial turf have also contained PFAS.)

The turf trapped intense heat; during summer games at the Vet, the temperature on the field sometimes climbed as high as 165 degrees, releasing vapors that could be inhaled.

“It was really unbearable, physically and psychologically,” Daulton said of the hot turf in a 2005 book, Veterans Stadium: Field of Memories. “... It was always on your mind. I saw guys pass out. I almost passed out one time. I’d lose 10 to 15 pounds a game.”

Timothy Rebbeck, an epidemiologist who researches the causes of cancer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has said that experts will never have a good measure of the toxins that Phillies players were exposed to.

The turf industry insists its products are safe and do not cause cancer.

“The materials used in synthetic turf have been thoroughly reviewed by both federal and state government agencies and are considered to be nonhazardous,” Melanie Taylor, the president and CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, has written in an email.

Nicole Daulton and some former Phillies players and coaches, though, believe that further study could prove otherwise.

“In my heart, I am now 100% certain that his personality changes were from brain cancer,” she said. “And if there was more research done, I am sure that they would find a link between glioblastoma and PFAS.”

She recently retained Robert Bilott, a lawyer with the Taft law firm in Cincinnati, who has spent much of the last 24 years exposing, through litigation, the risks that PFAS pose to the environment and to human health. In the mid-Ohio valley, Bilott has secured more than $750 million in compensation for residents whose water supplies were contaminated with PFOA, a type of forever chemical, released by DuPont.

In an interview, Bilott said the chemical companies that manufacture PFAS have waged misinformation campaigns to sow doubt about how dangerous their chemicals are. But his research into the companies’ own records found that they have known for decades that PFAS cause cancers and other serious human health problems, and withheld the information from government agencies.

“PFAS are incredibly dangerous, and pose a serious threat to public health,” said Bilott, who has detailed his work to expose these dangers in a book, Exposure, and also became the basis for the 2019 film Dark Waters, which saw Mark Ruffalo portray him. “And they’re still not fully regulated. There’s a continuing perception of, ‘That must mean they’re not that bad.’ It’s very difficult to break through that, and have the public understand the full scope of the public health threat.”

» READ MORE: FIELD OF DREAD: Six former Phillies died from the same brain cancer. We tested the Vet’s turf and found dangerous chemicals.

The pervasive forever chemicals are in an array of products, from turf and nonstick cookware to firefighting gear and food packaging. While the danger of drinking PFAS-contaminated water has been established, experts say that there aren’t sufficient data to fully understand the potential risks of inhaling chemicals or getting them on the skin from repeated contact with playing surfaces.

The Phillies have said the organization shares “the frustration and sadness of losing six members of our baseball family to brain cancer,” but noted that brain cancer experts told the organization there’s no evidence of a link between turf and cancer.

Among Daulton’s former teammates – and families of other baseball players and umpires who have died of brain cancer – there is deepening concern about the artificial grass they once played on, and whether there might be a connection between the devastating illnesses.

“We’ve talked for a long time, and it’s not like we’re speculating,” said Gary Varsho, who played for the Phillies in 1995, and then was the team’s bench coach from 2002 to 2006.

“We know something is wrong here. But none of us are scientists. As time goes on, now it’s like, OK, we know there is more to this. We know the chemicals are bad. But why is it just targeting certain individuals?”

Daulton was not a household name in 1980, when the Phillies drafted him in the 25th round of the June amateur draft. The skinny 18-year-old from Arkansas City, Kan. — population 13,201 — was no phenom-in-the-making, like Darryl Strawberry, who’d been selected with the No. 1 pick by the New York Mets.

In Philadelphia, all eyes were on Veterans Stadium, where the Phillies, featuring franchise icons Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Larry Bowa and Tug McGraw, would later that year win the franchise’s first World Series. The team led major-league baseball in attendance, drawing more than 2.6 million fans to the Vet.

Three years later, the Phillies invited Daulton to spring training, where the catcher met pitcher Larry Christenson, who was entering his final season.

“He was that young stud. Handsome, tan,” Christenson said. “He had an infectious laugh, an infectious smile. We hit it off right away.”

Christenson noticed in Daulton a willingness to show teammates compassion and affection, a trait often in short supply among competitive, self-conscious athletes. “If Darren liked you,” Christenson said, “he loved you.”

Daulton had a brief taste of the majors in 1983 — two games, three at-bats, one hit. That same year, in the June draft, the Phillies selected Kevin Ward, an outfielder from the University of Arizona who’d once been a two-sport standout at Central Bucks High School West. Ward grew up rooting for the Phillies, and he hoped, like Daulton, to one day be good enough to belong on the field at Veterans Stadium.

Then-outfielder and first baseman Von Hayes was among the Phillies who took an interest in Daulton’s career, which was interrupted by a torn knee ligament in 1986, and a broken hand in 1988.

“You knew he had the talent. You knew how hard he worked. And he kept getting hurt,” said Hayes, now 64. “I couldn’t wait until he was going to be healthy.”

The same year Daulton was sidelined by the hand injury, the city paid the Monsanto Chemical Co. $2.1 million to replace the Vet’s AstroTurf for the fourth time. Hayes still remembers the misery of playing on the surface when the temperature soared above 100 degrees.

“The hardest part about the day games was, if you dove for a ball when it was that hot,” he said, “the turf disintegrates your uniform, disintegrates your flesh.”

By the end of the 1990 season, Daulton had proved that he could stay healthy, and provide some middle-of-the-lineup thump. The Phillies hoped that Daulton and center fielder Lenny Dykstra, whom they obtained in a trade with the New York Mets in 1989, could provide them with a spark.

And then both were almost killed.

In May 1991, Dykstra and Daulton left teammate John Kruk’s bachelor’s party in Wayne, and drove off in Dykstra’s Mercedes. Dykstra, who had been drinking heavily, lost control of the car, and slammed into two trees.

Dykstra was left with three broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a punctured lung. Daulton suffered a broken left eye socket, a scratched cornea, and a bruised heart.

A year later, Daulton led the National League with 109 RBIs, won a Silver Slugger award, and was selected to his first All-Star team.

“Daulton was a f-ing Greek statue,” said Dykstra, 60.

Daulton’s professional and personal lives soon reached new heights.

His megawatt smile graced the covers of newspapers and magazines, and greeted fans who waited in lines for his autograph outside the Vet and inside department stores.

Daulton — “Dutch” to his admirers — was again an All-Star in 1993, and the leader of a team that, even now, sounds like a dream. With Dykstra, Kruk, Dave Hollins, Curt Schilling, Mitch Williams, and David West, and a coaching staff that included Bowa and Vukovich, the Phillies hit on a magic formula — mullets, pitchers of beer, some Clint Eastwood swagger — and romped to the World Series, where they lost in six games to the Toronto Blue Jays.

It was a euphoric experience, unlike anything Daulton had ever experienced. Then, during spring training in 1994, Nicole Garcia, a pre-med student at the University of South Florida, and a girlfriendwalked into Carmine’s, a popular bar in Ybor City, Fla.

Nearly everyone in the bar seemed to be in their early 20s. A band thundered in the background. Nicole looked across the room, and spotted “all these old guys” at a table: Daulton, Dykstra, Hollins and a few others.

The men bought the two of them lemon drop shots, their conversation lost in the thrum of the bar. When the women left for the night, a white stretch limousine was parked at the curb. Daulton leaned out a window: Would they like to join him and his teammates — just to talk? No pressure.

They stepped inside the limo.

The men stared at them, but said nothing.

“I broke the silence and I asked, ‘What school do you guys go to?’” Nicole Daulton recalled. “And they all just kind of started laughing.”

One said they played baseball. She and her friend rolled their eyes; they wondered whether the men were actually drug dealers. Daulton explained that they played for the Phillies.

“I laughed even harder,” she said. “I asked him, ‘Who would name their team the Phillies? Like what is that? What even is a Phillie?”

“I think ever since that night, Darren and I became best friends.”

Months later, in late June, Daulton was struck by a foul tip during a Phillies game, and suffered a fractured clavicle. Daulton, in the throes of a divorce, asked Nicole whether she’d come help as he recovered. She agreed, and a Phillies staffer picked her up at Philadelphia International Airport.

At the Vet, Nicole — who’d never been to a baseball game — got a sense of how famous Daulton was.

“All these people are running after him,” she said.”They’re all over the car.”

Daulton stepped into his black Mercedes 600 SL convertible and drove them to a Wawa — and was mobbed again.

“I started crying because I was scared. I thought I could get hurt, he could get hurt,” she said. He comforted her. “I ended up not going home because I honestly just fell in love with him.”

Daulton paid for her to fly back and forth to Florida so she could complete her senior year and graduate. “He was a sweet soul,” she said. “I had never felt so safe.”

They married in his hometown on Nov. 25, 1995, and bought a four-bedroom home in Harbor Bluffs near Clearwater, with a pool, boat slip and elevator. When the Phillies went on the road, Daulton took her with him. “We were never apart,” she said.

Gary Varsho and his wife, Kay, often spent time with the Daultons after Varsho joined the Phillies as a free-agent outfielder in 1995.

“He loved Nicole. Deeply,” said Varsho, 61. “They were a tremendous couple.”

Like Larry Christenson and Von Hayes before him, Varsho was taken aback by Daulton’s warmth. “Every time he saw me, he’d kiss me and say, ‘I love you,’” Varsho said. “I was an outsider, and he took me under his wing.”

Varsho’s wife gave birth to their son in 1996, and the couple decided to name the boy Daulton John, an homage to both Daulton and Vukovich. Varsho shared the news with the Phillies’ veteran catcher by phone.

“There was a lot of silence on the other end,” Varsho said. “Finally, he goes, ‘Varsh. I’m honored. So honored.’”

The younger Varsho is now an outfielder for the Blue Jays.

Daulton’s career, meanwhile, was nearing its end. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament in 1995, and then missed all but five games of the 1996 season. He managed to return to the Phillies in 1997, primarily as an outfielder, even though running across the Vet’s fake grass was hell on his knees.

“The turf was the worst. It was a complete joke,” Dykstra said.

» READ MORE: A TANGLED TIMELINE: Artificial turf was once touted as a “magic carpet.” But some scientists are sounding the alarm because it typically contains “forever chemicals.”

Veterans Stadium was managed by the city, which spent roughly $8 million to have the Vet’s turf replaced five times during its 33-year history. Nearly $4 million went to Monsanto, which pioneered AstroTurf in the 1960s, and marketed its product to professional sports teams and schools across the country.

“It took five years off my career,” Dykstra said. “And there was always an odd smell. We used to talk about it, but when you’re playing, you don’t think about things like that too much.”

The Phillies traded Daulton in July 1997 to the Marlins. Nicole was by his side at a news conference after the trade was finalized.

“I grew up from a boy here,” Daulton said, “to being a man.”

In retirement, Daulton’s easygoing country demeanor changed. Nicole noticed it first, and then old friends such as Varsho, Hayes and Christenson did, too, quirky behavior that snowballed, and led to Daulton’s life unraveling.

When Nicole was pregnant with the couple’s firstborn, Summer, in late 1998, Daulton began to pal around with “greenflies” who clung to him for his fame and money.

Daulton, who made $25 million during his playing career, gave $1 million to a “fake preacher” with a cheap toupee and a sweat-beaded face, and then lost $2 million more to real estate developers. He even gave away treasured jerseys, bats, World Series mementos.

“He was preyed on by people,” she said, “and his judgment was so off.”

At first, she thought he was lost, struggling with retirement. Then she suspected drugs and alcohol might be to blame. Soon, they could no longer afford their home. Daulton bought a less expensive home, a 12,000-square-foot mansion on seven acres with a pool house in Ocala, but lost it in an auction.

“We ended up with nothing,” she said.

Daulton landed a job with what were then the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a bullpen coach in November 2000.

Varsho, who by then had transitioned into coaching, met his former teammate for dinner, thinking Daulton might want to talk about baseball. Instead, Varsho found it difficult to follow much of what Daulton said.

“It was like a science fiction conversation,” Varsho recalled. “It was so confusing. I thought, ‘Why are we talking about this?’”

Daulton quit the Devil Rays, and made headlines for three drunken-driving arrests.

It was his violence, though, that imploded their marriage. Sometimes, Nicole chose not to dial 911. “I was trying to protect him,” she said. “I know that sounds like battered wife syndrome. I just kept thinking he was going to come out of this.”

On a Sunday in May 2003, she was holding Darren Jr., youngest of their three children, when Daulton slapped her in the face. He pushed her to the ground while she desperately clutched their 1-year-old against her chest. “I was like, ‘You could have killed the baby!”

Daulton was charged with domestic battery. A caseworker for Child Protective Services told Nicole that if she didn’t separate from Daulton, she would lose her children.

Despite a stay-away order, Daulton sneaked into her home one night. She found him sleeping next to their three kids. “There is one thing that is the most important thing in my life,” he said at the time, “and that’s my children.”

Daulton’s behavior grew more bizarre.

“He thought he was invisible,” she said. “We had a slat missing in the fence and I could see him peeking through. Then he would sneak around on his tiptoes, slithering up against the fence. He thought we couldn’t see him.”

He often believed that Nicole was in grave danger. One time, he called the police, and claimed that she was being raped on Sand Key Beach. Officers found her safe at home — but spotted Daulton wandering the beach with a baseball bat.

Nicole Daulton filed for divorce, but remained worried about her husband. She sought help for him from Major League Baseball, but said she felt as if the league dismissed her concerns.

Dickie Noles, a former Phillies pitcher who has spent decades helping players who struggle with substance abuse problems, heard her pleas, and helped Daulton get into a rehab program.

But no one surmised that Daulton’s erratic behavior might have had a deeper, more serious cause. “It wasn’t like he went into the hospital and got scanned,” she said.

Experts say glioblastoma is typically an aggressive, fast-growing tumor. But personality changes can precede a brain tumor diagnosis, Harvard epidemiologist Rebbeck said.

In 2013, Daulton called Nicole after he finished a radio interview.

“Nic,” he told her, “I just went on the air. And I tried to talk and I couldn’t remember my name or anything. It was jumbled.”

She told him to go to the hospital immediately. When she heard that doctors had discovered that Daulton had brain cancer, “everything made sense,” she said.

She fell to her knees, crying, consumed with guilt.

“I felt like I had left him,” she said. “My vows went through my head, like in sickness and health. He’s been sick this whole time.

“And I just left him, left him to die.”

Each Phillies brain cancer death has spread heartache and worry through a community of former players and their families. They wonder whether the artificial turf — or some other environmental factor — is a link between the cases.

Hayes said the illnesses are a topic of discussion among ex-Phillies who participate in a fantasy camp in Clearwater.

“You want to know if somebody is having any kind of symptoms, other than just getting older,” he said. “It definitely raises a few eyebrows. I was out there [on the turf] for nine years. I think about it.”

Dykstra, who calls Daulton his “best friend,” is more blunt.

“I’m not afraid of nothing,” he said. “But I’m scared now, dude. These people, my teammates and friends, are gone.”

Brain cancer has claimed the lives of others who spent years around artificial turf. Michael Ferretti, a reporter who covered the Phillies for the Bucks County Courier Times in the 1970s and ‘80s, died of the disease in 1993.

Harry Wendelstedt was among the umpires who officiated the 1980 World Series, which was partly played at Veterans Stadium. Wendelstedt spent 33 years as a major-league umpire, working an average of 77 games a year on artificial turf, said his son, Hunter Wendelstedt, who is also an MLB umpire.

The elder Wendelstedt died of glioblastoma in 2012, at age 73.

Kevin Ward, the Bucks County star athlete whom the Phillies drafted in 1983, finally got to play at the Vet in 1992. By then, though, he was with the visiting San Diego Padres, after an injury-plagued career that included six seasons in the Phillies’ minor-league system.

“It meant everything to him to be able to play there, after everything he’d been through,” said Ward’s wife, Christy.

In 2019, at age 57, Ward died from glioblastoma.

Christy Ward said she hopes a study of the brain cancer cases might provide some answers for families who want to know why otherwise healthy and physically fit former athletes have been struck down by the same disease.

“I feel like there’s a little community of people talking about this,” she said, “but no one knows how to connect it all together.”

Scientists became aware in only 2019 that artificial turf contained PFAS. There have been no studies to determine whether the chemicals that are present in turf have caused cancer in humans, but a handful of international studies have found PFAS present in brain tumors.

“It’s sad to go back and think about the suffering they all went through,” said Christenson, 69. “... Who’s next, to have [cancer] affect them later on? One of us? One of the players from Darren’s era?”

Nicole last saw Daulton a few days before his death Aug. 6, 2017. She walked into the bedroom of the Palm Harbor condo that he shared with his third wife, Amanda. She saw a shadow of the man she’d called her soulmate.

He lay on a hospital bed, shirtless and motionless under a blanket. Cancer had stripped the 6-foot-2 Daulton of his chiseled features, brawny chest and rippled muscles.

“I went into his room and just buried myself into his chest, my favorite place to be,” she recalled, weeping. She hugged him.

“I remember tears were rolling down his face and he couldn’t move his one arm. It was so skinny,” she said. “He’d progressively gotten thinner and thinner, but by then he looked so tiny.”

He had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but his eyes opened to almond-shaped slits. “Over and over, I told him how much I loved him,” she said.

A few moments of silence passed. Then, she said, he muttered one word, just one:

“Love.”

News developer Chris A. Williams contributed to this article.