Otis Nixon's a born-again Brave

Tuesday, a Braves caravan bus pulled into a mall parking lot in this outpost of the team’s southern empire. And there was Nixon, like a rediscovered fond memory, climbing out along with the rest of the players and coaches sent on a mission to sell a new season.

Nixon’s presence on this swing of the preseason, interstate pep rally was a signal that he has reunited with the organization he so energized in the early 1990s. Wearing a generic Braves jersey — “It’s puffing out a little here,” he said with a smile, patting a barely noticeable belly — Nixon was dressed for the role of ambassador.

And being out front like this was a hopeful sign that his ongoing revival was on track.

They are tentative steps — he has been included in two caravan excursions, to North Carolina and Tennessee, but nothing closer to town. But they are steps, nonetheless, to bring him back into the Braves embrace.

“Why not invite him to subtly ease along his way back into the fold?” said team president John Schuerholz.

An immediate impact

Fans of a certain age will remember when Schuerholz, as general manager, dealt a minor league catcher to Montreal for Nixon prior to the 1991 season. He proved to be an important catalyst in that worst-to-first season, stealing 72 bases and hitting a career-best .297. But he did not accompany the team to the World Series that year, suspended for 60 days after a failed drug test.

Drawing significant fire for the decision, Schuerholz chose to re-sign the fallen star in ’92, giving him a 350 percent raise in a three-year, $8 million deal.

Repayment came on a July night in ’92 at Fulton County Stadium, when Nixon leaped impossibly high above the 10-foot, right-center wall to rob Pittsburgh’s Andy Van Slyke of a go-ahead home run. “The Catch” preserved a 13-game winning streak.

If Van Slyke’s ball had gone over the wall as it should have, Nixon’s place in Braves lore would be markedly different. But it didn’t. Nixon reached over and brought that ball back from the abyss, and thus secured a little piece of forever.

“He made one of the single greatest defensive plays in Atlanta sports history,” Schuerholz said. “He was the human exclamation point to the sentiment that these guys are good, these guys could really make plays like that and this is a team you could love.”

A play like that buys a man a lot of leeway. Forgiveness is a quality Atlanta fans seem to have in abundance, and one they have freely spent on Nixon.

“These fans have watched me go through the highest points in my life and the lowest points,” Nixon said, “and they’ve had a lot of compassion.

“Atlanta has been very forgiving. If you come clean in Atlanta, I believe they will forgive you.”

Atlanta has had to balance much conflicting data on the complex outfielder. Just like in 1991, when the brilliance of Nixon’s best season was interrupted by his drug suspension, his life has been an active war zone between talent and temptation. Reconciling his gentle public personality with the sometimes unfathomable behavior that spun off from his substance abuse has been most challenging.

You can call it a good sign that it’s been six years since he was in the newspaper following an arrest for allegedly chasing a man described as his bodyguard with a knife around a Norcross hotel. That charge eventually was reduced to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor.

Nixon cherry-picked from his past some of the key events in his battle with addiction and his eventual spiritual awakening and included them in a recently self-published book titled “Keeping It Real.”

Details about blowing off his first trip through rehab, after his arrest in Buffalo (where he played as a minor leaguer) for possession in 1987. And about buying cocaine from a dealer on Boulevard and partying with a woman in 1991, unmindful of the fact that it would cost him a World Series. And about the hold the drug had on him, and all the years it has taken to loosen its grip.

He describes the book as an effort to come clean with his past, as well as to help others whose lives require restoration. In it, he wrote: “I never liked the idea of my name [being] connected with drugs and alcohol, and even as I write these words now, I find myself taking deep breaths of nervousness, afraid that I’m tarnishing my on-field legacy. But God has strengthened me to know what I am today: A man of God that went through hell and can testify now that I made it through.”

Fourth marriage

Today, he can point to a new life, headlined by a new wife. On Jan. 9, he married gospel / R&B singer Candi Staton. They had known each other for years, having met during appearances on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Their relationship became closer as they took a common interest in a program for prisoners being integrated back into the real world.

It is the fourth marriage for both, having tied the knot at the Little White Chapel just off the Las Vegas strip. “This is it for us; we’re not going to do this again,” laughed Nixon. They have eight children between them, and are at the stage of watching grandchildren grow up too quickly — they were in the gym together when Staton’s grandson, Callen Hightower, led Grayson High to a district JV basketball tournament title.

For Staton, the decision to marry Nixon was a case of instinct overcoming caution.

“Everybody in the world told me horror story about him,” she said. “ ‘Oh, you better be careful,’ they said. My gut feeling was I knew I would be right for him and he would be right for me. We are best friends. We get along so well. We are all the company we need.”

Staton, who said she has been 30 years sober after her own battle with alcoholism, added, “I can understand a lot of his pitfalls and things he went through because I went through them. I can understand the cravings, the temptations. You really have to be strong to get past them.”

The couple has much to occupy itself with these days. They are in the process of moving into a new home outside Madison. Nixon has his own ministry and a production company and plans to accompany his new wife on her European tour this spring.

“We’re starting fresh,” Nixon said.

The key, he said, to reclaiming a worthwhile life has been the combination of his faith and the secular strength provided by AA. “I’ve tried them both, one at a time, but that didn’t work,” he said. “I guess I needed both. That is what I do. I go to church on a regular basis, we have a ministry. But I also have a very sound recovery program.”

Gradually, over the past two years, Nixon said, he’s has been able to become a lot more Dr. Jekyll and a lot less Mr. Hyde.

“Otis, at his core, has always been a very good man,” Schuerholz said. “And now he is living a life emanating from that good core.”

As Nixon signed autographs and relived “The Catch” for the gazillionth time on the stage in that Chattanooga mall, watching from the background was his younger brother Donell, himself a former major leaguer who lives in Atlanta. He often found himself picking up after his big brother’s mistakes.

“I saw the change in him a couple years ago,” Donell said, The determination “was in his eyes. The eyes don’t lie. I told him I didn’t want to hear [about changing], I wanted to see it in what he did day by day.”

“No doubt about it,” he said, nodding toward his brother, relaxed and happy with the fans, “that’s the real Otis right there.”

Nixon’s brief exposure to the Braves caravan has stoked in him a desire to do more. Young Braves outfielder Jordan Schafer, who also was on the Tennessee swing, asked Nixon to spend some time with him before spring training, so that the kid could pick his brain. As well as making a handful of paid Florida appearances this spring, Nixon has contemplated going to Orlando on an informal basis to offer his counsel to other green players.

In the meantime, there is something he’d like to say to you all: “Today, what I’m doing — with my relationship with God — is totally different from what I was doing before. I want to put it out there — I’m doing the right things.”