PEABODY — In what seems like another lifetime ago, Joel Levine was part of a Peabody High baseball team that came close to winning a state championship.
That was the year — 2003 — when the Tanners could trot out Jeff Allison and Mark Shorey every other game and blind the opposition with high heat.
But Levine, among others on that team, got tangled up in drug problems that derailed college and pro careers, and in some cases cost kids their lives.
Levine was the featured speaker Wednesday night at the Saugus and Peabody Lions Clubs’ pre-Thanksgiving game dinner at the Holy Ghost Hall outside Peabody Square.
Levine, a physical education teacher and a baseball coach in Everett, has been in recovery now for 14 ½ years. In addition to his teaching, and raising his three children with his wife, he speaks to middle and high school students such as the seniors from both teams who were in attendance Wednesday in hopes they can avoid what happened to him.
“I grew up with value instilled into me by parents,” he said. “But along around the seventh or eighth grade, I started to veer off a little bit and rebel.”
It started, as he said, by “smoking a little weed,” and from there, graduated to other drugs such as oxycontin until he ended up being a full-blown heroin addict, to the point of injecting it and even sharing needles — activities he’d vowed he’d never do.
“I’d wake up in the morning,” he said, “angry that I hadn’t died the night before.”
In June of 2004 Levine saw the light.
“I got the right kind of treatment, and I’ve been sober (since),” he said.
Though things seem to be working out for him, and for some others he grew up with, he sadly spoke for other boys from his circle of friends — two from the same family — who did not make it. They all died of overdoses, one as was preparing to be married.
“Can you imagine,” Levine asked, “the parents of those two brothers, losing two of their children a year apart?”
Later in the evening, Peabody coach Mark Bettencourt alluded to Levine’s talk.
“I experienced some of that, because at the time I was a policeman in Peabody,” he said. “I have so much respect for Joel because he got help and straightened himself out.”
Bettencourt also gave his Saugus counterpart Mike Mabee — and the Saugus seniors — a shoutout for making something out of what could have been a horrendous season.
The Sachems’ coach, Anthony Nalen, was first suspended then fired before the season started. Mabee was appointed to take over and the Sachems go into Thanksgiving with a 4-6 record, the same as Peabody’s.
“Whatever happens (next Thursday), you guys have all my respect,” Bettencourt said. “You guys won four games in middle of that situation, I’m sure during a lot of those weeks you had no idea what was even going to happen the next day.”
Bettencourt recalled some of the rivalry’s more memorable games, including one at Stackpole Field that started out on a sheet of ice and ended up two inches deep in mud.
“We won the game when we stopped Marc Fauci on a conversion attempt,” he said. “I guess our fat guys were just a little tougher than their fat guys.”
Mabee, a 1996 graduate, said he never beat Peabody during his time in Saugus.
“Hopefully,” he said, “that changes this year.”
He also talked about the joy of playing next to kids he grew up with — something the seniors will never experience again, even if they play in college.
“It’s a lot different,” he said. “So all you guys, play this game for your teammates.”
Each team presented an end-of-year award. Saugus’ Heisman Trophy went to co-captain Jake Morgante while Peabody’s award — given, as Bettencourt said, to the person who shows up to practice every day without any assurances that he’ll play on Friday night, went to Evan Bun.