Ex-Jays reliever McLaughlin to receive kidney from son in life-saving surgery

November 1, 2021

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

When Joey McLaughlin was pitching for the Blue Jays back in the 1980s, teammates, media and fans didn't know he suffered from a medical disability.

It was kept a secret. Only his doctors and team trainers knew.

All these years later due to battles with weight problems that put him over 300 pounds, that disability has led McLaughlin to a coming date with a kidney transplant operation.

The donor is a special person in his life: his oldest son, Joey II, a Blue Jays farm hand from 2004 to 2006.

"I was projected as a first-round pick and I got kidney disease after my junior year of high school,'' McLaughlin said. "I've had kidney disease since I was 17. I got a staph infection. Some people get over a staph infection but mine went to my kidneys.

"I remember my doctor telling me, 'We won't let you die. That we can promise. We will put you on dialysis.' It was very traumatic. I started healing with blood-pressure medication. It got better real quick. My kidney function went from 30% to 70% It was a battle I had to do because of my life's desire.''

And his "life's desire'' was to pitch in the major leagues and that he did from 1977 to 1984, including with the Blue Jays from 1980 through until early 1984.

The fireballing McLaughlin was drafted in 1977 in the second round out of McLain high school in Tulsa, Okla. by the Atlanta Braves but it was the Blue Jays who employed him through most of his career.

The Blue Jays took notice of McLaughlin after he posted a 5-3 record with a 2.48 ERA in 69 innings with Atlanta in 1979. That prompted the Jays to acquire McLaughlin and Barry Bonnell from the Braves in exchange for Chris Chambliss and Luis Gomez on Dec. 5, 1979 at the winter meetings. The call came from neither Braves manager Bobby Cox nor general manager John Mullen. Rather, it was the eccentric team owner.

"It was Ted Turner. That's the kind of guy he was. He'd come into the clubhouse and talk with the players. I wasn't surprised that he called me,'' McLaughlin said.

"I'm sorry we had to trade you,'' Turner told McLaughlin.

"You have absolutely broken my heart,'' McLaughlin replied to the cable-television mogul.

"I'm sorry. We will try and can get you back,'' Turner answered.

"I was a big, tough kid from the north side of Tulsa but I ended up crying,'' McLaughlin said. "This was around the time of the hostage situation in Iran. It wasn't a good time. I was complaining about my major-league job. I had no idea about Toronto when I got there. It took me over a year not being in Atlanta.

"I had a good year in Atlanta and I was going from the 31st worst team in the majors to the 39th worst team. I had grown up with the Braves with great people like Dale Murphy and Mickey Mahler.’’

McLaughlin's dissatisfaction with the trade was reflected in his first season with the Blue Jays. After pitching strictly in relief for Atlanta in 1979, McLaughlin was given 10 starts by Toronto in 1980 to go along with 45 relief appearances. The experiment had mixed bag of results. He was 6-9 and his ERA was 4.51.

McLaughlin rebounded in 1981 in the strike-shortened season, this time strictly out of the bullpen with a 2.85 ERA and 10 saves. He was pretty solid again in 1982 and 1983, the highlight of his Jays tenure coming on the NBC Game of the Week, Saturday, May 28, 1983 at Exhibition Stadium.

McLaughlin came on in the seventh inning to work 2-2/3 innings for his fourth of nine saves that season and what impressed him most was striking out Yaz, an iconic symbol of the Red Sox franchise.

"Growing up, I wanted to be Carl Yastrzemski. He was my hero,'' McLaughlin said. "We had 30,000 people at Exhibition Stadium standing and cheering that day. In those days, we were known as short relievers, not closers.''

On May 13, 1984, almost a year after striking out Yaz, McLaughlin was released by the Jays. Ten days later, he caught on with the Texas Rangers but that season was his swan song in the majors.

McLaughlin looks back on his Toronto days with positivity except that he was perplexed by the midnight curfew in Toronto when you couldn't fly out of Pearson Airport.

"We had some good years and bad years,'' he said. "I fell in love with Toronto and the Blue Jays organization. It's a beautiful city. It was a great place for my family. I had a lot of great teammates, just a good bunch of guys. These guys were the best people in the world. Barry Bonnell came with me from Atlanta. There was Garth Iorg, Buck Martinez, Willie Upshaw, Ernie Whitt, Alfredo Griffin, Damaso Garcia.''

McLaughlin played a few more years in the minors, packing it in following the 1987 season. He embarked on a career tutoring special education students in Tulsa. It was an awakening, "a calling for him,'' a desire to work with people, who weren't as gifted as other people in life, people with learning disabilities.

That 13-year tenure in Rush Springs, Oklahoma came to an end in 2003 when his kidneys started acting up, just like when they began causing problems 33 years earlier when he was a teenager.

"My kidneys started deteriorating and I had to quit school and go on disability,'' McLaughlin said. "I went on dialysis. I led a pretty normal life until I was about 50. Then crazy things happened to me and my blood pressure and my kidneys failed.’’

Five years after he quit his school job, McLaughlin visited the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for testing along with his wife and his sons. Tests proved his son Joey was a "match, a perfect match'' although initially Joey Sr. wanted none of his family members to donate a kidney to him. McLaughlin did some research and found that Joey or anyone from his family could leave a "healthy life'' if they donated an organ.

Then 10 years ago, his health got even worse, all because of toxins from the environment and an unhealthy lifestyle that he said seemed to permeate in Oklahoma. It didn't take long for him to go from 200 pounds to over 300 pounds.

"I was raised to eat fattening food in Oklahoma,'' he said, without so much of an apology but as an astonishing admission. "Oh God, fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, fish fries. I ate a lot of bread. I was just a fat guy. I was a hundred pounds overweight.

"I tried losing weight but I couldn't so I had gastric surgery and lost 100 pounds.’’

Soon his health will hopefully improve with a new kidney. He was told it was a necessity for him to cast aside 100 pounds.

"The doctors in Oklahoma City told me that I will get a transplant soon because I have been on dialysis so long,'' McLaughlin said. "My son and I would be in the hospital at the same time in different rooms. They'd remove his kidney and then they would put it in my body. He'd go home in couple of days and it would be a week or two before my kidney would start to work and I would go home.

"It's a good idea to take a kidney from a family member, who is alive. The prognosis with a living donor's kidney is 15-20 years of health. Both my kidneys are gone, failed completely. The dialysis is a taxing procedure. I’ve been on dialysis for 10 years, about four times a week, three and a half hours a day. I’m hooked up to two blood lines. It drains my energy. It takes a day for me to feel like doing anything.’’

Despite the inconveniences he’s enduring, McLaughlin doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him, saying, “I’ve had a wonderful life. I have a wife (Robin) who amazes me. I accomplished my goal of pitching in the major leagues.’’

Joey Jr. said that once he knew he was a suitable match to donate an organ, he was all in to help his dad.

"Once I knew there was a possibility I could donate a kidney, my mine was made up,'' the son said in an interview. "It's the least I could do. My parents have sacrificed a lot to provide for me and start me out in life.’’

Joey Jr. said it's "definitely nerve wracking'' knowing that he will lose a kidney but he's "super excited,’’ although at this point, he doesn't know whether his left or right kidney will be removed in the surgery at Integris Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City.

"If anything, the surgery will free up time for my dad not hooked up to a dialysis machine. That leaves you worn out when you do that five times a week on average,'' Joey Jr. said. “Knowing my dad’s kidney doctors, who have given him the level of care and concern to keep him alive these last few years, I trust them.’’

In order to prepare for financial costs involved in hospital care and the kidney operation, McLaughlin Sr. for years has been paying $900 U.S. per month out of pocket for health insurance because the MLBPA doesn't provide players with such insurance when they retire.

"Knowing that this day would come, I've kept paying insurance for 35 years,'' he said. "I've been paying insurance on my own. It's quite expensive. Some players dropped their insurance coverage but I never dropped mine. It's well worth it, though, for this surgery and dialysis. My wife is retired. I’m on disability and Social Security. We’re not rich by any means. We do fine. We’re not stressed for money.

"What I would like to do is tell everybody in Canada that if you're getting a driver's license that you make sure you help someone to live,'' McLaughlin said. "If you feel it in your heart to donate organs, I would ask you to do that.

“I can’t wait to get a kidney and come to Toronto and watch a Blue Jays game.’’

When this reporter suggested McLaughlin could throw out the first pitch some day at a Jays game, he replied, “That would be a wonderful tribute for me. That would make my heart happy.’’

Danny Gallagher’s new book about the Montreal Expos is called Never Forgotten.