Lawyer Says Wiggins Suffered Relapse

Alan Wiggins has suffered a drug relapse, according to one of his lawyers, Edgar Paul Boyko.

Wiggins, the Padres’ starting second baseman, checked in to an unnamed drug rehabilitation center on Saturday after mysteriously disappearing for two days. And it was at that time that another of Wiggins’ lawyers, Roy Bell, said Wiggins “may well be stressed out” and that it wasn’t clear whether his disappearance could be linked to drug use.

But Boyko, a law partner with Bell at Miller, Boyko & Bell in San Diego, said Sunday that he was told Wiggins suffered a relapse. Boyko had been Wiggins’ lawyer in 1982 when the Padre was arrested and charged for cocaine possession. The charges were erased when Wiggins was admitted to the Care-Unit Hospital at Orange.

“I called my office and talked to one of my associates (Jim Waring), and he did confirm that there’d been a relapse in the drug problem,” Boyko said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

Team President Ballard Smith, reached at his home in San Diego on Sunday, said he still has not talked to Wiggins.

“Alan is in a treatment center, and he probably won’t talk to anybody (outside of the center) for another week,” Smith said. “That’s my guess. He’ll probably be in there for three weeks or so.”

Asked of Wiggins’ future with the Padres, Joan Kroc, Padre owner, had said Saturday: “I don’t think I’ll have a say. I think the commissioner will have something to say.”

Bob Wirz, the director of information for the commissioner’s office, said Sunday night: “Baseball will follow the complete circumstances of the incident . . . But it would not be right to make any immediate determination at this point.”