Angels PR Executive Testifies About Co-Worker’s Connection to Skaggs Death

The top public relations executive with the Angels testified Monday in the trial for the wrongful death lawsuit against the team stemming from Tyler Skaggs’ overdose that he was unaware his “mentor” was using illegal drugs and provided pills for the pitcher.

Adam Chodzko, the team’s senior director of communications, testified about the night weeks after Skaggs’ overdose death in a Texas hotel room on a road trip when his boss at the time, Eric Kay, told him he’d seen Skaggs snorting three lines of crushed up drugs on a hotel menu the night before he was found dead.

Kay, who is serving a 22-year federal prison term for providing a fatal dose of fentanyl to Skaggs, confided in Chodzko, who was driving Kay to his home in Orange following a difficult day at work.

Referring to Kay’s penchant for making noise in his office on a bad day, Chodzko said he’d been “hearing those noises in his office” so he went to check in on him.

“It was the worse I’d seen him,” Chodzko said.

The “disheveled” Kay had “sweated through his polo” shirt, Chodzko said.

Chodzko decided to give Kay a ride home, and that is when Kay “started telling me he walked into his room” the night Skaggs died.

Kay said when Skaggs told him that one of the lines of drugs was for him, Kay, who was fresh out of drug rehab himself, told him he was sober and took a beer offered to him and left, according to Chodzko.

Chodzko, who had persuaded Kay to write him a letter of recommendation just after college even though he had only job shadowed him for a week, said his “stomach dropped” at the news.

“I was shocked, stunned, my head was spinning,” Chodzko said. “It was a lot to take in.”

Attorneys for the Angels are trying to make the case that the team’s executives were unaware of any illicit drug usage by Kay and Skaggs while plaintiffs’ attorneys are trying to prove they covered for a valued employee and the team should be held liable for Skaggs’ death.

Angels attorneys also argue that Skaggs had his own drug addiction issues that were concealed and that he contributed to his own death beyond the fentanyl dose.

Chodzko said the lurid scene Kay painted was “like something out of a movie” and that he could not have imagined it.

“I never would have guessed Tyler was doing something like that,” Chodzko said.

Skaggs never betrayed any issues with drugs, Chodzko testified.

“He was a great guy, funny,” Chodzko said. “It never crossed my mind Tyler would be doing something like that.”

As soon as Chodzko heard Kay’s confession, “I knew I’d have to tell somebody,” he said.

But, “I needed reassurance to get there,” he added.

Because former public relations director Tim Mead had just left the team to head up the Baseball Hall of Fame that season, Chodzko said he turned to team traveling secretary Tom Taylor, who was also friends with Kay.

The two decided to call Mead in Taylor’s car outside the stadium, Chodzko said.

“If we were trying to be sneaky we could have just closed Tom’s door,” he said, trying to explain why the two called Mead from the car instead of the office.

Mead told them, “This is bigger than our friendship here,” Chodzko said.

Chodzko said, “This was going to end Eric’s career. We knew that.”

Mead and Taylor were “stunned” to hear Kay’s revelation, Chodzko said.

When Chodzko went to Kay’s home the next day to convince him to call Angels President John Carpino, Kay was angry.

“He slammed the door,” Chodzko said, adding he ultimately convinced him to come out of the house.

Kay agreed to speak with Carpino, but as the minutes ticked by while Chodzko was working to get the team president on the phone, Kay “changed his mind,” Chodzko testified.

So Chodzko followed through on his ultimatum to Kay and related Kay’s news on Skaggs to Carpino, who got then-general manager Billy Eppler on the call.

Eppler “was supportive. He told me I had done the right thing,” Chodzko said.

“It still is the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Chodzko said of telling on his friend and co-worker.

Chodzko was nervous what it would do to his reputation in the clubhouse, he said. When he confessed that to Eppler, the general manager was “angry in a good way. He said this isn’t the 1980s Mets.”