MLB: Retiring is hard enough; even harder, depression after retirement
By Jeff Kallman
Former MLB Players Suffering From Depression
Some of it might have made you laugh in the moment, but some of it now might make you think. If Haren could be that self-questioning while he pitched, you could only imagine until now what he’s had to fight in retirement.
The same holds for former San Francisco Giants pitcher Noah Lowry. He didn’t get to enjoy half the career Haren did, thanks to four surgeries on his pitching arm forcing his retirement at 26 after a five-year career.
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“In a moment, my identity crumbled, who I thought I was, the man my wife thought she had married, fell apart,” he told USA Today two years ago. “The innocence of my childhood turned to shame as I grew older . . . Leaving the majors was the final crack in the dam that had been holding back years of pent-up anger, doubt, and fear.”
Lowry today owns an outdoors-activity store, is a member of his local Chamber of Commerce, and works with his three children and other Bay Area youth in varied ways. He credits a group called the Revenant Process with helping him redefine life and return from feeling “dead inside.”
Another former Giant, outfielder Aubrey Huff, may have alienated himself from the team and perhaps the game with (shall we say) his recent rash of testy tweetings, but he began suffering anxiety after the Giants’ 2010 World Series triumph and—following his retirement after the 2012 Series conquest—sank into full-blown depression. He even contemplated suicide.
“Everything stops,” he said while trying to mount a baseball comeback in 2015. “That sound of 40,000 people screaming every day, it just stops. “You have to get to a point in your life where you’re just pissed off. You’ve had enough, and you either continue to go down this road, or you look to change something in your mind.”
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When changing something in your mind doesn’t work, depression to any degree can become fatal. Especially if you can’t stop keeping it inward no matter how often you talk to people, either professionals, friends, or family.