Sammy Stewart’s life story is filled with chapters documenting his athletic successes, including a World Series championship with the Orioles in 1983, and tragedies that left him incarcerated, homeless and broken.
A childhood friend wants to pen the final one.
David Cody grew up with Stewart in the small town of Swannanoan in western North Carolina. They played baseball together. Everyone in the community had a bat and glove. None were better than Stewart, a major league pitcher for 10 seasons, the first eight with the Orioles, who signed him as an amateur free agent out of tiny Montreat College.
Stewart and Cody attended Charles D. Owen High, a 2A school where former NFL quarterback Brad Johnson and NBA center Brad Daugherty also roamed the halls. Johnson won a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay. Daughtery was the first-overall pick in the 1986 draft and a five-time All-Star who retired as the Cavaliers’ all-time leading scorer and rebounder.
Why isn’t Stewart included in the Charles D. Owens and Buncombe County Halls of Fame?
Cody knows the reasons but won’t accept them.
Stewart’s addiction to crack cocaine created a violent downward spiral that he finally pulled out of before his death in 2018. Reports strewn across the internet detail the dozens of arrests between 1989 and 2006 and the more than six years imprisonment.
The “Throwin’ Swannanoan” hit rock bottom so hard that it knocked him out of consideration for the honors that Cody is fighting for him to receive posthumously.
Cody has spent the past seven years collecting votes on a petition to get Stewart inducted into the Halls of Fame. The idea came after he performed a song at Stewart’s funeral and was contacted a few months later by the former pitcher’s wife, Cherie, who had requested that he sing.
“She was upset that Sammy wasn’t in the Hall of Fame,” Cody said. “That’s when I started the whole thing. I put it up on Facebook and I was just basically asking the people in the Swannanoan valley and western North Carolina how they felt about Sammy getting inducted here. Considering everything he accomplished in Major League Baseball, to some folks this might be a very small thing, but to his family, his sister (Linda Banks) and his widow and his first wife (Peggy), it’s a big deal. And to a lot of people in this valley, it’s a big deal.
“There’s just a few little things holding it up. No. 1 is, one of the guys that’s on the committee who makes the decisions, for some reason he has it out for Sammy and he would not forgive him and allow this to move forward. He kind of threw up some obstacles in the way since we started. When I put this petition up, basically I was just asking everybody, if you think Sammy deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, just say ‘yes.’ If you think he doesn’t deserve it, just say ‘no.’ And if you want to keep your vote private, just sent it to me as a private message and I promise I will submit it how I get it. And I have like 1,500 people saying ‘absolutely, absolutely,’ and I had three people say ‘no.’
“There’s a lot of people in this area who believe, and I’m at the top of that list, that he’s the best athlete to come out of his whole county in any sport. It's just something that I wanted to do. I let it go for a while. I’d think about it again, then I’d put it back up. I met a few people along the way and they encouraged me to keep trying, don’t give up, maybe you can help this happen.”
Cherie said that Stewart “absolutely talked about it.”
“I think he felt cheated,” she added. “Of course, his drug use, that had nothing to do with his baseball career. I think it would have been validation for him.”
“There was a disappointment,” said his sister, Linda Banks. “They had named a baseball field after him and then when he got into his troubles, they took the name off and changed that. He lettered in three sports. He was the quarterback of the football team and he was one of the high scorers of the basketball team and he pitched on the baseball team. I mean, I can’t imagine anybody not being in your high school Hall of Fame.
“There’s some people in the valley there that are very narrow-minded and they just can’t let go of things. It’s like somebody throwing stones at the glass house, you know?”
Cody explained that the decision of the seven-member committee must be unanimous. Stewart was a three-sport prep star. He set the major league record by striking out the first seven batters he faced in Game 2 of a Sept. 1, 1978 game against the White Sox at Memorial Stadium. He threw 12 scoreless innings over six playoff games, including five in the 1983 World Series. But it no longer matters to some people. Other factors override these accomplishments, as if they never happened. He isn’t in the Orioles’ Hall of Fame, either.
“The fact he broke that record, that alone should get him in any Hall of Fame out there,” Cody said.
“I remember when he played in the World Series. Everybody in this valley was just glued to the TV, you know? Pulling for him and cheering for him all the way.
“I’ve known him since we were kids. We played baseball together and grew up together. Back before he got into the drugs, you couldn’t ask for a better human being. He was a great guy. Everybody where we live just absolutely adored him, loved him.”
The story can’t be told without delving into the tragedies that many believe led Stewart into becoming a criminal, selling his championship ring, losing his homes and boat, sleeping underneath bridges in the Asheville area.
The loss of a child is the nightmare of any parent. Stewart had a son and daughter with cystic fibrosis. Colin died in 1991 at age 11, with Stewart holding his boy in his arms. Daughter Alicia underwent a double lung transplant and died in 2016 at 34.
“I think that that just crushed him,” Cherie said, “and drugs were a way of getting away from that, where he didn’t have to think about that so much.”
When Stewart passed away in 2018, his body was found in his residence in Hendersonville, N.C., with no marks on him and no illicit substances. The cause of death was listed as hypertension and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He was 63.
“Sammy, he had a tormented life. He really did,” Cody said. “People here that are judging him because of what he did once he got on drugs and all that, and his life changed, they don’t stop to consider that they may have done the same thing had they been in his shoes.
“When he was playing for Baltimore, he wasn’t doing drugs back then. He was pretty focused. But everybody’s aware of what Sammy went through. He was arrested for shoplifting several times. I kind of knew the story better than a lot of other people do because I knew him personally. I know that he lost his World Series ring. He was a big vinyl record collector. He had thousands and thousands of albums and he lost them. There at the end, until he met Cherie, his second wife, for a while he was homeless.
“You would see him around and you’d read about him in the paper. He wanted help. He would go in and shoplift something really stupid, something that nobody would even need. And it didn’t matter what you were taking, it was just the fact that you were taking. As far as the authorities were concerned, it was the same. It could have been something worth $10,000 or something worth $10. It didn’t matter to them. So he would end up back in the county jail.
“We had a district attorney who was voted out of office who didn’t like Sammy very much, so he really levied some pretty intense sentences. One time, he actually sent him to a federal prison where murderers go. He didn’t deserve to be there. He was a guy who was addicted to drugs and by that time had lost both of his children. He didn’t have anything. It’s just sad. It’s just really a terrible story. And I think he deserves (the Hall of Fame). That’s the main reason I’m pushing for it.
“I wish people could remember the old Sammy before he got on the drugs, before he went down that road.”
Stewart began coaching young players in the area in his later years, posting all of his accomplishments with the Orioles in his bio, “and they all loved him, they all adored him,” Cherie said.
“He was doing better and he had found some peace,” Banks said. “And I don’t really know how you would ever find peace with that, but I guess he did.”
Cody’s last interaction with Stewart confirmed how far his friend had come in his recovery following a few relapses.
“We were so proud of him,” Cody said. “We have a town festival here every year, a little street festival where vendors come and they do arts and crafts and all kinds of things. They have a stage and do live music. The year Sammy died, we had the festival.
“When he was incarcerated, he loved music and he taught himself how to play the guitar. The last time that I saw Sammy, he came up to the festival in Black Mountain and I was performing on stage and he hung out there. He looked like the old Sammy. He wasn’t on drugs of any kind. We talked for about 30 minutes after I finished my show and he said, ‘You know, I’m finally doing OK.’ And I said, ‘Man, I am so proud of you.’
“He always wanted to get together and play music, and I said, ‘Let’s do that, let’s plan on getting together,’ and it wasn’t long after that that he died.”
The memories keep fueling Cody to convince the committee, once and for all, to do the right thing.
Asked how much it mattered to Stewart, Cody said, “It was always important to him.”
“Sammy was very proud of the fact that he was here. He loved growing up here in this valley, and all his family was from here. He even went to college here because wanted to stay here. He could have gone to any college in the country and played sports, and he chose to play at this little school here.
“It’s very important to Sammy's family and friends that he's remembered and honored in his hometown.”
“I personally gave up,” Cherie said, “because I thought, we haven’t heard anything and it’s been 7 ½ years since he passed and it’s never gonna happen. But I do believe in miracles, too.”