FIRST!

Who's going to take care of Farney now?

Awful news. This hasn't reached the level of NFL suicides, but we've now heard about Freel, Mike Flanagan, and Hideki Irabu over the past two years.

If you needed SB, he was tremendously valuable due to his eligibility at SS, 2B, and OF.

I seem to recall that he had an issue with alcohol; apologies if I have the wrong guy. That would make this a little less surprising than if it occurred to (insert squeaky-clean rep player), but of course, still absolutely horrible. RIP.

Just very sad. I also remember Freel had an issue with alcohol (maybe a DUI?).

This hasn't reached the level of NFL suicides, but we've now heard about Freel, Mike Flanagan, and Hideki Irabu over the past two years.

It hasn't reach the NFL level and if I had to guess the suicide rate among MLB players (both present and past) is among the lowest of any profession.

If you had asked "Ryan Freel, retired or no?" I'm sure I would have said no, thinking he was a bench player on some team I hadn't been paying attention to.

Upon first reading the headline I thought it was David Freese.

Edit for wrong name!?!

Terrible news. RIP and condolences to the Freel family. On the NFL connection, supposedly Freel had several concussions during his career, including a really serious one in 2007.

Very sad. A lot of athletes get depressed when their playing days are over because they feel that they have lost their identity, meaning, and importance.

Terrible news. Freel was a decent enough player if never a star.

Depression continues to be the sort of thing that I wish we could just do without as humans.

This one hits home. Although not a Reds fan, I was a fan of Freel and tried a couple times (unsuccessfully) to trade for him in my DMB league. He was the kind of player you enjoyed rooting for.

How sad. Depression is awful. According to wikipedia he was arrested twice for DUI, so alcoholism is also a possibility. The combination is really really awful. I hate stories like this.

I was horrified to find this out. God....

RIP. Awful, awful news.

Just very sad. I also remember Freel had an issue with alcohol (maybe a DUI?).

Yea, but I seem to recall him being a big party animal, not necessarily someone that was drinking alone in a hotel room. I know those are stereotypes and he very well may have been drinking to mask some pain. Really sucks though. In his prime, I thought he was a useful little player who could get on base a little, steal bases, and add some positional versatility. Great NL bench guy.

I've been a reds fan for 23 years, and freel would have been on my short list of favorite players. The way he played the game, the energy and hustle he brought to the park everyday was reminiscent of a 10 year old playing little league. While not a star, it was always a good game to watch when ryan made into the starting 9. He gave us fans our money's worth.

So sad.

So very sad. I knew Freel when he was in the minors before he caught on in the bigs. He had serious issues that were glossed over and likely enabled by the soulless parent club. At one time in history, I sponsored his BB-Ref page with the line, "It's fun to be a little crazy." I couldn't have been more wrong.

Jeez. Damn tragedy for a life to be extinguished so young. Thoughts with his family and friends.

Freel was an incredible defensive player. On my stadium tour in September 2003, (either 9/23 or 24,) was sitting in LCF bleachers when a Cubs player hit a shot to CF. Freel, who I'd never heard of at that point, made the best play I'd ever seen. He just outran the ball to make a diving catch laying out straight towards the CF fence.

Kept an eye on him after that. Saw him on many highlights throughout career. Very sad.

This is awful. Can't imagine what his friends and family are going through today. RIP

RIP to very good bench player, the easy to root for kind.

I was as this game, where Freel made a diving catch of a Pujols drive to the gap. There were 40,000 people in the park, and all of them except me went bonkers. Some players seem to have a connection with fans, and I think Freel was one of them.

Re: 2 - farney was freel's imaginary friend. really.
Always liked watching that guy play, though the duis and a little too high energy-ness gave me pause. RIP, Ryan...

The kind of player fans connect to because he was a scrapper who got the most out of ordinary talent. Really crappy news. Dealing with personal demons (I've been to the edge of the abyss) is a real #####. There should be no judgment; it really can happen to anyone. Sorry to see you go Ryan. Prayers for you and your loved ones.

The Reds had a Ryan Freel "dirty" shirt giveaway in 2007. It was a really cool tribute to a fun player.
http://gameops.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/dirty_shirt.jpg

he had a really good glove. i remember him very well and am surprised to find out that he wasn't a utility player on some DH team. didn't know he was OOB

poor guy, looks like he had some kind of bipolar or some kind of mental illness and an alcohol problem. probably wasn't treated. and he had that serious head trauma too.

it won't get real too much attention because who cares if the mentally ill kill themselves? it's when they kill others that it gets attention and then it's all about the guns. instead of the non-treatment of the ill...

It's a lot harder to kill 26 children/teachers without guns, especially semiautomatic assault rifles. Obviously mental health issues need to be discussed in that debate, but base ball chick, let's not turn this thread about Ryan Freel into an argument about Connecticut wrongly being "all about the guns"

If you had asked "Ryan Freel, retired or no?" I'm sure I would have said no, thinking he was a bench player on some team I hadn't been paying attention to.

I caught the end of the story and saw "Freel played 9 years..." on the crawl under an MLB network show and thought he was retiring earlier than he had to. I rewound it, expecting he was retiring because he'd finished medical school or something like that.

Yeah, he couldn't have done it with two 16 round clips in 9mm Glocks. He had to have a .22 rifle that Connecticut law doesn't even classify as an assault weapon. Please. Base ball chick is right, the thing that consistently gets overlooked in these tragedies, and in the tragedies of the poor Ryan Freels, is that modern drug therapies treat depression and bipolar disease astonishingly well. And these diseases are chemical, not emotional. They are not evidence of any personal failing and should not cause any social stigma. But they do, and the stigma and the social awkwardness that accompanies it keeps people from getting treatment. And the lack of treatment leads to terrible endings. And of course, uncontrolled guns can make those ends much worse. But I agree wholeheartedly that identification and treatment almost never get talked about in these stories, and they are extremely critical issues.

Mental illness will always be difficult to treat because the person ultimately responsible is the one who is ill, and the illness directly affects judgement. Even so, I question 'astonishingly well'. The side effects are not insignificant, and the actually chemical efficacy questionable as well. The greatest importance may be one's social support networrk, and depression works against a person there as well -- it's an isolating disease, even removing all stigma from the equation.

Well the drugs do work wonders. And the fact that it is difficult to reach the right people because they are introverted, isolated, awkard, scared, etc is all the more reason to talk about it, not less of a reason. The biggest topic for discussion here is what happened to Adam Lanza? What happened to Ryan Freel? Not what guns should or should not be allowed, what magazines, cops in all schools (lunacy) and all of the political posturing over gun control.

My condolences to the Freel family and Ryan's friends. He gave great enjoyment to millions of baseball fans.

Well the drugs do work wonders. And the fact that it is difficult to reach the right people because they are introverted, isolated, awkard, scared, etc is all the more reason to talk about it, not less of a reason. The biggest topic for discussion here is what happened to Adam Lanza? What happened to Ryan Freel? Not what guns should or should not be allowed, what magazines, cops in all schools (lunacy) and all of the political posturing over gun control.

Anti-depressants work well for about 80% of cases. There are a lot of people in the other 20%. I think it would be most respectful toward Ryan Freel to discuss Ryan's life and career here, and less so other recent events.

There should be more attention to mental illness. It's not easy, however. Andrew Solomon's NYT piece says that psychiatrists given case files of suicides to review only diagnose 20% of them as likely being depressed. The warning signs aren't always so coherent until there's some kind of sad event. A woman at my father's hospital--a mother of 3--killed herself this week and she works around doctors all day and was widely liked and admired, and none of them had a freaking clue, including the psychiatrists.

There's also the apparent fact that people with bipolar are more likely to attempt suicide when they're on the upswing, rather than sunk in depression. It's even more complicated than it appears to be at first or even second (or third, or ...) glance.

Guns or magazines didn't kill anyone in Conneticut. Two things killed people there: an insane man, and stupid anti-gun laws that assured the killer that everyone at that school would be unarmed and therefore easy prey.

Not allowing holders of concealed carry permits to carry at schools makes schools into target zones full of clay pigeons for nut jobs.

And no amount of gun control will stop or even slow down criminals or nut jobs. Gun control only disarms the sane and honest, who don't want or need any of it. And FYI, the single deadliest weapon for close combat work is the shotgun, not a semi-automatic rifle. And for everyone's edification, an assault weapon is a fully-automatic weapon, not a semi-automatic one. Only ignorant gun control whack jobs think otherwise.

take the guns to the political thread.

I agree with 34, move the Newtown/gun discusson to another thread.

Where are you guys getting your information about anti-depressants from? The best studies show them working at all about 30 to 40 percent of the time (compared to 20 to 30 percent for placebo). In severe depression the numbers are even worse. The drugs, while helpful, most certainly do not work wonders.

Anti-depressants work well for about 80% of cases. There are a lot of people in the other 20%.

I bet they're not even that good. And even if anti-depressants do work in the chemical or mechanical, as it were, sense, if they alter or transform the patient's identity then what good are they? I mean, I'm sure there are suffering people who would welcome that sort of fundamental change, but for me personally -- no thanks.

The teaser pic for this story on Yahoo shows Freel during his brief stint as a Cub. At a glance, the uniform, along with his face in that picture and his first name, briefly had me thinking Ryan Dempster was dead.

jonk

it's not hard to kill a whole lot of people with poison or bombs - who needs guns? and with whatshisname football player guy who killed his wife then himself, would we all be so much happier if he had strangled her then hanged himself? seeing as how it would have been gun-free?

my point is simple - freel had some kind of mental illness even BEFORE a history of repeat head trauma and if he ever DID get treatment, it wasn't real too successful. the suicide rate (successful) of people with untreated mental illness is something like 30 - 40 times greater than people who do not have mental illness/end stage diseases and pain. (and even with the people who want to commit suicide because of their end stage disease - if you treat the depression, you reduce the suicide risk significantly).

AND

that basically nobody cares about ryan freel because he's some nobody ex-baseball player (unlike Famous And Important Football Player junior seau) and he didn't take anyone with him. people only really get significantly excited when the deaths happen with guns. it shouldn't be the weapon that creates all the talktalk. it SHOULD be that
1 - the mental condition wasn't treated
2 - people are dead - and it wouldn't be near as exciting, would it, if mass murderers/suicides used poison instead of guns, now would it? which is beyond disgusting.

and sure there are side effects of ANY medicine. but you have to look at side effects of medicine vs side effects of untreated schizophrenia/depression/bipolar.

people only really get significantly excited when the deaths happen with guns. it shouldn't be the weapon that creates all the talktalk. it SHOULD be that
1 - the mental condition wasn't treated
2 - people are dead -

Amen to that, Lisa. I've been yakking on the politics thread because I saw a lot of illiberal stuff that offended me, but I wish the national conversation after Newtown would concentrate on better mental health services than omggunsgunsgunsomg.

I've never seen a mental health professional in my adult life until early last month (this is where everyone should point and laugh and snark). I walked in for a "crisis appointment" and saw a therapist who I have since seen a couple times but I'll have to wait til the middle of freaking January to actually see a doctor. I have no insurance and haven't been able to work since September. Fortunately I have a bit of money saved but I wonder and worry about others who don't -- and while the clinic has a sliding scale for uninsured people even with that the fee is probably close to impossible for a lot of people in this area (untermensch slowly destroyed in such fashion is no doubt a small but still precious consolation to social darwinist libertarians who have been deprived of their former joy of watching the poor starve to death). To be fair the people I have dealt with so far seem perfectly nice, but Jebus. And what's with the drug pushing? I was adamant that I would refuse any anxiolytic or anti-depressant, and that if they made my treatment conditional to taking such drugs I would cancel everything full stop. It blew my therapist's mind and I have reason to think I'm the only patient at this admittedly small clinic who has ever refused drugs.

If it was so easy to kill students and moviegoers and shoppers with poison and bombs, how come we only see it happening with guns? In 2011 - the latest year for which detailed statistics are available - there were 12,664 murders in the U.S. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms.

I think the gun violence debate — and Ryan Freel's thread isn't the place for it — certainly must include both a rational discussion of gun laws and a rational discussion of mental health. The fact that some of you seem to feel that it's not a multifaceted problem, that nothing should be done on the gun side of things, that's really sad.

To get things back on track since folks have somehow turned this into their own political debate: Ryan Freel's Highlight Reel

I dont even remember he was a cub. what year was that? also I didnt know he was out of baseball

Where is this "politics thread" that a couple of you have mentioned? I just clicked on Forums atop this page and the Politics & Current Events board there hasn't seen an activity since last March.

Where is this "politics thread" that a couple of you have mentioned? I just clicked on Forums atop this page and the Politics & Current Events board there hasn't seen an activity since last March.

It's the huge one called "OTP December 2012: etc etc", and it should be easily spotted on Hot Topics.

This is sad news. Condolences to his family and friends, and I hope he rests in peace.

Alcoholism, depression and anxiety tend to work together. I think the feeling is that some alcoholics start out self-medicating, but with alcohol being a central nervous system depressant it simply adds fuel to the fire. Chronic alcohol abuse is going to cause an increase in anxiety. The sad truth is that a lot of alcoholics commit suicide, including those that stop drinking. Those that can't lick the obsession with alcohol and find themselves wrestling with an overwhelming desire to drink are at greatest risk.

Royalsretro, this comment

Yea, but I seem to recall him being a big party animal, not necessarily someone that was drinking alone in a hotel room. I know those are stereotypes and he very well may have been drinking to mask some pain.

shows little understanding of the nature of alcoholism. Where, how and why someone drinks is neither here nor there. Alcoholism is being unable to stop drinking after the first drink, and being incapable of skipping the first one. It's about drinking despite knowing that one is damaging one's self, one's loved ones, and others around you and not being able to stop. It's about being powerless against alcohol, in the sense of having no control or defense.

If you're not an alcoholic I think it's a very hard thing to understand. Everyone wants to ascribe a reason for why someone is one, including the alcoholic. They're in pain, they're depressed, etc. I find that more often than not there is no reason, and most alcoholics that I know will subscribe to this theory. It's simply something you are, like you're right handed or tall. It's like being helplessly in love with a beautiful, crazy person who you know will wreck your life but who you have an all-consuming passion for.

Fortunately, help is there for those who want it.

Speaking of baseball alcoholics, Dennis Eckersley was a guy who liked to hit the bars and be merry. He was a happy drunk, so people kept inviting him to drink and join the party. I don't think he drank alone very often, if at all. It was only when he watched a home movie of himself being drunk at Christmas that he realized he got drunk at virtually every social occasion and that was a problem.