Andrew Toles is still on the Los Angeles Dodgers’ roster but hasn’t played baseball in three years.
The Dodgers won the World Series last year, but while they were celebrating on the field in Arlington, Texas, Toles was in a hospital room in Florida.
Toles is unaware of the Dodgers’ accomplishment, his family says, unable to watch baseball or anything else on TV, let alone talk about baseball.
Toles, 29, who has been in and out of too many mental-health clinics and hospitals to count, in and out of too many homeless shelters to keep track, suffers from schizophrenia, the cruel and ruthless mental illness that threatens to completely shred a person’s pride and dignity.
“He’s not really living, but just floating,” Morgan Toles, Andrew’s sister, an assistant basketball coach at Florida State, tells USA TODAY Sports. “It’s almost zombie-like. I don’t know if he’ll ever get better. None of us do.
“But, at least, we’re not worrying whether he’s alive.’’
Toles was arrested last summer when he was found homeless, asleep behind a Fed Ex Building at the Key West International Airport in Florida. He has been in at least 20 mental health clinics since 2019, a year after leaving the Dodgers.
Now, Toles is back home in Fairburn, Georgia. He lives just around the corner from a man who gets up at 2 a.m. most mornings, hauls chemicals in his truck for a living, and never lets a day go by without making sure Toles is eating, taking his medication and is safe…
