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player ready...Cynthia Alzado knows what people will think. They will call her a vengeful ex-wife. She doesn`t care.
The sun shined down on the tiny backyard of her Cedarhurst, Long Island, condominium Wednesday as her mood swung from regret to relief to rage. She had known Lyle Alzado since she was a teenager. They had lived together for 3 1/2 years before marrying in 1985.
The relationship and 15-month marriage was carried out in the fast lane. It was filled with violence. She said living with Alzado was both ”heaven and hell.” She spoke of beatings Alzado administered and of his drastic mood swings. She remembers how her ex-husband first took steroids orally before injecting them. She remembers injecting him with the juice herself.
Those memories pale in comparison to the plight of her son, 9-year-old Justin, Lyle Alzado`s only child. As Alzado battles brain cancer, his second wife is appalled by what she calls the father`s lack of caring for his son. Last week, she saw Lyle being interviewed by ESPN`s Roy Firestone. Up to that point, she suppressed her feelings about what she called Alzado`s refusal to take a financial stake in his son`s future. She alleges he has missed child support ($1,500 per month) and alimony payments ($1,000 per month) for 18 months, but now he was dying.
”How can you pressure him during a time like this?” she said.
But when she saw the interview, she snapped.
”The thing that made me wild was seeing him beg for money during the interview,” she said. ”Why should anyone help him? He doesn`t help his own child.”
Alzado`s representative, Greg Campbell, had no comment.
She said she remembers reading Lyle a Sports Illustrated story on steroids and how they affected an athlete`s life.
”He ignored it,” she said. ”He just said, `Whatever it takes.` I told him he could die. He said, `If I die, I die.` ”
She said Alzado was volatile following games, win or lose.
”He could walk into the house after a game, stop on a dime and, all of a sudden, he`s grabbing my hair and throwing me across the room.”
Justin saw his father a few weeks ago in California and refuses to believe he will die.
”He wonders why he doesn`t have the same things other kids have,” she said. ”I started to realize I should tell him where the blame lies; maybe it`s time for him to know.”
”People love Lyle. They will probably ask what I did to make him hate me so much. I don`t care what they think. Maybe we were the victims of steroid abuse. Lyle left victims on the football field, we were his victims off the field. He left us in his wake, he left his only child in his wake.”