His closest friends and teammates don't care about Scott Spiezio the baseball player. They care about Scott Spiezio the man.

The one they believe is killing himself in front of their very eyes.

"It's so tough watching one of your friends fall apart," says San Diego Padres center fielder Jim Edmonds, a teammate of Spiezio's the last two years with the St. Louis Cardinals - the team Spiezio left for 36 days late last summer to enter a rehabilitation program for substance abuse.

"We saw it last year," Edmonds adds. "It was bad. And it turned real ugly. I'm not going to go into the details, but you saw the signs in person. Once he started, he just couldn't slow down. He was staying up all night, all day, all night, all day, and then (he'd) come in and couldn't play. He was missing a bunch of games for stupid reasons.

"You try to straighten him out. But if they don't want to be straightened out, you've got to let it ride itself out, knowing something good or bad was going to happen."

Something bad allegedly happened in late December. And when the Cardinals learned the full details of those allegations Feb. 27, they released Spiezio, 35, an 11-year major league veteran utility player who was part of World Series championship teams with the Cardinals in 2006 and the Anaheim Angels in 2002.

Orange County (Calif.) Superior Court issued a warrant Feb. 26 for Spiezio's arrest on six misdemeanors in connection with a sequence of events that began when Spiezio wrecked his car shortly after midnight Dec. 30. According to reports filed by the Irvine Police, he was driving under the influence, fled the scene of the accident and assaulted a friend trying to help him.