Just caught the news of Howe's death this morning...
Hmm, it would be tempting to gleem meaning from the passing of a guy whose record of substance abuse is on par with Robert Downey Jr. I haven't heard any news about him since the late 90s so I assume he found some amount of peace.
I do remember his struggles with drugs back in the 80s and it's instructive to focus on the number of times that Howe was suspended by MLB for drug use: seven.
That's right: seven. Seems like a joke, no? What with all the tough talk coming out these days about "three strikes and yer out" and 100-game suspensions, etal. (Delmon Young probably picked the wrong time to throw a bat at an umpire.) Clearly, Howe was someone who was busted again and again and again... Jeez, I thought he'd be dead before the mid-90s.
How/why'd he get so many chances? Me thinks: for the same reason that Jesse Orosco, a NON-hall-of-fame pitcher if there ever was one, was able to set a record for most games pitched in MLB. Left-handed relievers were and still are a valuable commodity. They're probably an OVERRATED commodity and too many roster spots are wasted on guys who pitch a few innings a month, but that's what's important to those guys.
Howe WAS a good pitcher, which brings up another instructive point. If you're going to break a bunch of rules, make sure you've got talent. If he couldn't get batters out, MLB would have thrown him to the feds long ago. The double standard of star player treatment lives on to this day.