He has been charged in the on-field beating of a coach during a White Sox-Royals game in September, but William Ligue Jr. said he's not the monster caught on television that night at Chicago's Comiskey Park.

And for the trouble he has caused, Ligue said, he apologizes.

In a telephone interview from Cook County Jail with The Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago newspaper, Ligue said Wednesday he was under the influence of alcohol and five drugs -- including cocaine, marijuana and Valium -- on Sept. 19. That night, he was the chaperone of his 13-year-old nephew's birthday party, which was attended by his son and other youths, at Comiskey Park.

In the top of the ninth inning, a shirtless Ligue and his 15-year-old son stormed the field, tackled Kansas City first-base coach Tom Gamboa and began punching him. The Royals' entire dugout cleared and their bullpen rushed in from the right-field bullpen, with several players jumping on Ligue and his son.

He also said he was armed with a knife, though it wasn't used in the attack -- shown over stations nationwide in the following days.

"I looked at the videotape, and I started crying," Ligue told the Daily Southtown. "To think I put my family and friends, Mr. Gamboa, his family and friends and the city of Chicago (through that), I am sorry. I can't believe an inner demon could come out like that."

Gamboa, 54, left the field bruised and bloodied and had suffered some hearing loss, which Ligue called "tragic."

After leaving the park in a police escort and taken to jail, Ligue told the Daily Southtown he was beaten by police. The police department told the newspaper it has no knowledge of that happening.

Ligue's son has since pleaded to one charge of aggravated battery and two counts of mob action for striking Gamboa and an off-duty state trooper who was working security at the game. At his sentencing Nov. 7 he could face probation or incarceration until he is 21.

Ligue, 35, has been held at Cook County Jail since the attack. He will be taken to a court hearing the day after his son's sentencing. He said he isn't sure what plea he will enter

"I definitely want to apologize from the bottom of my heart with everything I have," Ligue told The Daily Southtown. "I regret what happened. If I was in my right state of mind, this would never have occurred. I am so sorry for Mr. Gamboa. I disgraced Chicago and myself. I apologize with my heart."

Ligue told the newspaper he doesn't remember hitting Gamboa. He did not proclaim his innocence either, but spent most of the interview trying to explain his actions. He said his life was turned upside-down in May when his weeks-old daughter Tabitha died.

According to the newspaper's account, his baby girl was due on April 6 and born that day. A father of three sons, Ligue says he was ecstatic when he learned his girlfriend would bear a daughter. For nine months, ultrasounds showed a healthy child would be born, he said.

But on April 6, Tabitha was born missing several fingers and her clavicle bone. Her lungs collapsed. She had a hole in her heart.

"I just snapped right from then. I was devastated," Ligue said. "Every time she breathed, her chest sucked in. I fell to the floor."

He said he sat in the hospital shocked, spending night after night watching Tabitha sleep. Doctors explained to him Tabitha's problems in language Ligue couldn't comprehend.

Before she was to go into surgery, Tabitha died. It was May 15.

"I snapped," Ligue said. "I threw things around the hospital."

At Tabitha's funeral, Ligue snapped again, he says. As final prayers were being said over Tabitha's tiny body, he shouted out, "God, why did you have to do this to me?"

"I stormed out of the cemetery," he told the newspaper. "I didn't even see my baby get buried."

Ligue, who told The Daily Southtown he used marijuana before Tabitha's death, resorted to heavier drugs, trying to overdose to kill his pain and kill himself. Alone in his apartment, Ligue, who never married, did drugs steadily to overcome the misery he felt.

"I was really trying to kill myself after my daughter died," Ligue says. "I was traumatically stressed out."

Ligue said he never should have been the adult in charge of a children's birthday party at Comiskey Park that September night. He said he thought he saw Gamboa make an obscene gesture in his direction, something he said he doesn't tolerate in front of children.

Gamboa has said he never verbally or physically acknowledged the people in the stands. But again, Ligue said, he snapped when he rushed the field.

He doesn't remember hitting Gamboa or any of the other details of the incident on the field. He also says he was unaware he had a knife in his belt.

"That was not me that night," Ligue told The Daily Southtown. "I was going through so much stress. ... I see on the videotape (that) I was out of my mind. I had to let anger out and it came out that way."

Ligue has been under a suicide watch while in jail. He is charged with three counts of aggravated battery and one count of mob action and given a $200,000 bail.

Ligue regrets his son was involved in the fight but hopes the incident will straighten the troubled boy's life out, too.

"Right now, I just want to apologize to the coach and to the fans of Chicago," Ligue says. "I'm not really that person I was that night."