Matt York/Associated Press
New Minnesota Twins shortstop Andrelton Simmons opted out of the closing week of the Los Angeles Angels‘ 2020 season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday, he told Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register in a chain of Twitter disclose messages that he did so attributable to depression and suicidal tips he’s experienced since his formative years:
“It became tricky for me mentally to the set the considered suicide crossed my tips. It became something I vowed a actually prolonged time ago I’d never agree with about as soon as more. I became fortunate to seek the advice of with a therapist, which helped me let lunge of those tips. On the terminate when rather a lot of of us were silent going by draw of what most would agree with of as tricky times, the foundation of ending the season in a bubble became too great for me to take care of.”
Simmons, a four-time Gold Glove winner who signed a one-One year, $10.5-million care for the Twins over the weekend, stated he desired to remark overtly about his hang thunder to motivate others.
“Now seeing how extra and additional extra of us are struggling with depression, dismay and suicide I felt it might well per chance presumably well be time to allotment moderately allotment of my sage,” he wrote. “I became petrified of of us judging and of us twisting my sage.”
Seeing assorted of us’s struggles throughout the pandemic—alongside with Major League Baseball mandating a extra intense quarantine for teams silent in playoff contention the closing week of the season—precipitated Simmons’ dedication to now not play the Angels’ closing games.
“I became after all saddened by how great I became listening to about the loss of life toll,” he stated, “and seeing how smaller businesses were going out of business and I became moderately poor at how the effects of the total new rules and fears were gonna have an affect on of us’s livelihoods and how disconnected of us were changing into.”
A alternative of athletes have publicly been speaking out about mental health struggles, from Kevin Like and DeMar DeRozan within the NBA and Dak Prescott and Hayden Hurts within the NFL to swimmer Michael Phelps and MLB participant Drew Robinson.
