Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
The story of Drew Robinson is heartbreakingly sad and soaringly uplifting and remarkable and stunning all at once, filled with lessons and astonishments that pile up in a mountain of life-affirming wonder.
The story, told thoroughly by ESPN on Tuesday, is there in the open for consumption to an enormous audience both in long-form format and in a documentary for the visually inclined. It’s presented to all audiences because Robinson, a Giants minor leaguer who shot himself in the head, lived to tell his story and wants as many people to hear it as possible.
It is easy and traditional to hide from mental-health issues, which absorb individuals in a way that physical injuries do not. A baseball player does not go on the injured list with a brain that needs healing like he would with a leg that does. Keeping issues bottled up until they explode in any number of ways is entrenched in so many, viewed more as a reality of life than an obstacle of life.
For years, decades, generations, admitting a person needs help has been a sign of weakness rather than a sign of humanity. Robinson was sucked into a world he could not escape until he felt he had to escape this one, which led to his pointing a gun at his head and pulling the trigger on April 16. He somehow survived and eventually dialed 911 — in doing so, choosing to live. He lost an eye yet gained a vision for how he and we need support and honesty to get by.
“The stigma is around speaking up and sharing the mental-health concerns, the mental-health issues, and that stigma causes silence,” Gabe Kapler said on a Tuesday phone call. “So when nobody is talking about it, fewer people know about it and know how to support and deal with these issues and help people be as healthy as they can be. Drew is an example of how you can use a platform to increase awareness, have more conversations and destigmatize those conversations around mental health.”
Among the aspects that stuck out to the Giants manager was the reaction of outfielder Alex Dickerson upon Robinson talking to the team. The Giants had arranged for Robinson, a minor league free-agent signing during the 2019-20 offseason, to talk with the club before a Sept. 9 game at Oracle Park and a day before World Suicide Prevention day.
He shared his story, which contained the importance of sharing stories — the need to talk and to open up because the private battles are rarely won. According to ESPN, some cried.
Dickerson called him “the toughest guy I’ve ever met.”
“Most of the time when people expose or share mental-health issues, the sports industry doesn’t do that — they don’t identify that vulnerability. They don’t identify that speaking up as something that’s extremely strong, extremely tough and extremely brave,” Kapler said. “What Drew is doing is he has made a commitment to helping people speak up, and then ultimately shining a light for all of us on how important it is to identify that speaking up as a strength.”
On the front lines for the Giants in helping to shine that light is Dr. Shana Alexander, both a clinical psychologist and the Giants’ employee assistance program director with a “really unique skill set that involves being able to focus on sports performance,” Kapler said. Alexander, head trainer Dave Groeschner and Kapler, along with the front-office staff, have tried to establish a culture that talks through problems and deals with mental-health problems that need addressing.
Sure, baseball, a game built upon failure, in which a hitter can do everything right and still go wrong, lends itself to mental hurdles that pop up.
“But a more important factor,” Kapler said, “is that society is struggling mightily with mental-health issues like anxiety, depression and some degree of other mental-health conditions. And we as an industry are an extension of society. Just like in any other workplace, you’re going to have any number of individuals who are suffering with and learning how to cope with mental-health issues.”
The problems are not going away, with an estimated one in five U.S. adults experiencing mental illness each year.
But perhaps the stigma can go away. Shortstop Andrelton Simmons opened up to the OC Register about his own bout with depression in the aftermath of Robinson’s story being shared.
And Robinson is not going away, either. He’s back on a minor-league deal that Kapler, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and GM Scott Harris signed off on. They do not want to shy away from the problem, the person or the player.
Drew Robinson is still around to tell his story, which will have more chapters.
“I think developing the habit of sharing our experiences rather than keeping them to ourselves is a valuable one, regardless of what challenges or struggles we may be facing,” Kapler said. “Drew is sharing fearlessly and leading by example here, and I think it’s going to impact a lot of people’s lives.”