Momentum, it is a buildin’!
Today, Sam McDowell of The Kansas City Star, published an incredible article (I’ll link to it in stories), that chronicles the battles that a CURRENT player, in his PRIME, in the MLB is facing, related to mental health. That player, is pitcher Danny Duffy, of the Kansas City Royals.
We are seeing a sea change happen. For a while it was the former/retired players in sports opening up, exclusively. But with #SameHere Alliance members like Robin Lehner, Hayden Hurst and Imani McGee-Stafford, also sharing their battles – while they are in their primes/in the midst of earning contracts, the road is being paved for universal openness around this topic.
Duffy’s story is very relatable – feelings of anxiety when being rejected by a girl at only age 13…bullying in the clubhouse at different levels of baseball…panic attacks while big crowds surrounded him at team events. It’s amazing to see this transparency – showing the rest of the world, that even the “high performers” struggle w things at times.
Are we fully “there” yet? No. Hopefully we get to a point where this isn’t even a big deal when someone of this stature opens up. Critiquing the angle of the story a little bit, the actual headline from the paper talks about Anxiety, Depression & Panic Disorder, specifically. These disorder names pop off a page, but they don’t bring us together around the core of our common life challenges – they only talk abt disorder level.
As is the case when most of these articles are published, the stat “1in5” is used yet again, & that’s further broken down into: the odds related to the # of Royals players dealing w Mental ILLNESS, specifically.
Still a ways to go to normalize that #5in5 face challenges that affect MH…even w star athletes. But this article/Danny’s bravery are excellent steps.