Fail Mary Ref still dealing with aftermath

Phil Plantier

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Mar 7, 2002
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I don't usually have sympathy for scabs, but many people (including friends and family) resist getting help/treatment with mental health issues because the trigger is no big deal. Well, here is a guy who made a noisy but unimportant (in the large scheme of things) mistake, and he is still a mess two years later.
 
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/since--fail-mary---referee-lance-easley-says-he-is-battling-ptsd-120929270.html
 
 
Today, Easley says, the man he was is gone. Perhaps only his faith remains the same. Today, everything else is up for grabs. Today, it's all a struggle.
 
 

Leather

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Jul 18, 2005
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Reminds me a bit of Donnie Moore.  
 
I hope he can pull it together; his issues seem to go way beyond making one bad call.  Getting blacklisted by the union seems like it's a bigger problem, honestly, because it took away part of his identity.
 

Awesome Fossum

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Jul 20, 2005
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I feel for him, although I don't really get the "blackballed" part.
 
He hasn't refereed anything of late, blackballed, he said, from all but high school work for crossing the union line. 
Easley never called anything higher than California junior college football when the NFL hired him to fill in for, and put bargaining pressure on, the locked out regulars.
 
The drop from juco from high school is pretty negligible.
 

Ferm Sheller

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Mar 5, 2007
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Awesome Fossum said:
I feel for him, although I don't really get the "blackballed" part.
 

 
The drop from juco from high school is pretty negligible.
It's the stigma of being excluded that's the problem, not the difference in the quality of the competition.
 

soxfan121

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Ferm Sheller said:
It's the stigma of being excluded that's the problem, not the difference in the quality of the competition.
 
You're not wrong, but so what? The stigma of being excluded is something Kevin Millar had to deal with his entire career - right up till he retired and the MLBPA couldn't exclude him anymore. 
 
The problem is the reaction to adversity, not the stigma or the exclusion.
 

Leather

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soxfan121 said:
 
You're not wrong, but so what? The stigma of being excluded is something Kevin Millar had to deal with his entire career - right up till he retired and the MLBPA couldn't exclude him anymore. 
 
The problem is the reaction to adversity, not the stigma or the exclusion.
 
I think the issue is that this guy clearly suffers from mental illness, and some things (the Fail Mary and subsequent exclusion from reffing) either triggered it, caused it, or are severely exacerbating it.
 
I'm hesitant to chalk it up to simply him not being tough enough to deal with his problems, or how he reacts to adversity.  This sounds like a lot more.  Like I said, it reminds me of Donnie Moore; no, giving up a poorly timed home run didn't cause him to kill his wife and himself, but in hindsight it's pretty hard not to see that as the a factor toward causing/bringing to the surface crippling mental illness down the road. 
 

soxfan121

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drleather2001 said:
 
I think the issue is that this guy clearly suffers from mental illness, and some things (the Fail Mary and subsequent exclusion from reffing) either triggered it, caused it, or are severely exacerbating it.
 
I'm hesitant to chalk it up to simply him not being tough enough to deal with his problems, or how he reacts to adversity.  This sounds like a lot more.  Like I said, it reminds me of Donnie Moore; no, giving up a poorly timed home run didn't cause him to kill his wife and himself, but in hindsight it's pretty hard not to see that as the a factor toward causing/bringing to the surface crippling mental illness down the road. 
 
I was dismissing the stigma of exclusion as irrelevant. The bold is your conclusion and something I would vehemently argue with if I believed you were attributing to me. 
 

Leather

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soxfan121 said:
 
I was dismissing the stigma of exclusion as irrelevant. The bold is your conclusion and something I would vehemently argue with if I believed you were attributing to me. 
 
Are we fighting?
 

Ferm Sheller

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soxfan121 said:
 
You're not wrong, but so what? The stigma of being excluded is something Kevin Millar had to deal with his entire career - right up till he retired and the MLBPA couldn't exclude him anymore. 
 
The problem is the reaction to adversity, not the stigma or the exclusion.
 
But I was responding only to Awesome Fossum's point, which I interpreted to be: "Why should he care that he can't ref juco games given that he can still ref high school games?  It's not like there's much of a difference in game quality (or prestige, I guess) between the two."