Ryan Freel commits suicide

[RedOctober3829]

First Coast News sports director Dan Hicken has learned that Ryan Freel, a Jacksonville native and former Major League Baseball has died at the age of 36. The cause of death is suicide.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/topstories/article/288484/483/Former-Big-Leaguer-from-Jax-Ryan-Freel-Dead-at-36

 

[OldSaintJohn]

Two stints on the DL with head injuries, including one back in 2007 that derailed a promising career

Obviously not saying that head injuries are the direct cause of his suicidal feelings, but it's worth noting

 

[BoSox Rule]

Holy shit that sucks. I used to think he was one of the most underrated players in baseball.

 

[Laser Show]

This is terrible. I was actually just wondering a couple weeks or so ago about whatever happened to him; he had played so well in Cincy and then just seemed to disappear.

I know we shouldn't draw conclusions, but two head injuries is, on the surface, pretty alarming.

 

[Ferm Sheller]

He may have had issues that pre-dated the head injuries. From his wiki page:

Freel gained some notoriety in August of 2006 when The Dayton Daily News reported that Freel talks to an imaginary voice in his head named Farney.[sup][4][/sup] Said Freel: "He's a little guy who lives in my head who talks to me and I talk to him. That little midget in my head said, 'That was a great catch, Ryan,' I said, 'Hey, Farney, I don't know if that was you who really caught that ball, but that was pretty good if it was.' Everybody thinks I talk to myself, so I tell 'em I'm talking to Farney."[sup][5][/sup] Freel later said that Farney's name arose from a conversation with Reds trainer Mark Mann: "He actually made a comment like, 'How are the voices in your head?' We'd play around and finally this year he said, 'What's the guy's name?' I said, 'Let's call him Farney.' So now everybody's like, 'Run, Farney, run' or 'Let Farney hit today. You're not hitting very well.'"[sup][6][/sup]

 

[SemperFidelisSox]

I always remembered his name because I was at that Patriots Day game when he got one of those head injuries. Masterson got him right in the side of the head with a pickoff throw. Awful sound and scary scene.

 

[pdaj]

Man, it's been a dark couple of weeks.

I'd always trade for Freel during my MLB the Show playing days; for I, too, thought of him as being underrated.

My heart goes out to his family.

 

[TheWalthamKid]

Very sad news. Scrappy player that always got the most out of his ability.

 

[scammyJ]

Tragic, RIP Ryan Freel

 

[RG33]

Really sad story. This 2007 interview quotes Freel as saying at that point he has already had "9 or 10" concussions.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2898862

 

[mascho]

According to his parents, Freel was suffering from Grade II CTE.

 

[SouthernBoSox]

According to his parents, Freel was suffering from Grade II CTE.

Wow. Years from now we're gonna look back at this disease and realize just how ignorant we were.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

I grew up playing hockey, I've had several concussions and a few where I've been knocked out cold. I'm terrified of this.

 

[Wingack]

I grew up playing hockey, I've had several concussions and a few where I've been knocked out cold. I'm terrified of this.

Would you let your kids play?

 

[mascho]

I grew up playing hockey, I've had several concussions and a few where I've been knocked out cold. I'm terrified of this.

 
Same with me and football.  I posted about this in the "Future of Football" thread in BBtL, but between head injuries and other injuries it is a little scary.  Every time I forget why I walked into a room, jumble words when reading to my kid, misplace words in a sentence, or the like (all of which are happening more and more) I can't help but wonder.  

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

 
Same with me and football.  I posted about this in the "Future of Football" thread in BBtL, but between head injuries and other injuries it is a little scary.  Every time I forget why I walked into a room, jumble words when reading to my kid, misplace words in a sentence, or the like (all of which are happening more and more) I can't help but wonder.  

 
I guess it could be happening more frequently to you, but I do the same things and never played football or hockey.  I've had one concussion in my life and it wasn't a bad one.   Just out for a moment and was back on my feet within minutes.  Took it easy for a few days but no ill effects lingered.  I tend to have a problem with words getting from my brain to my lips every once in a while and will certainly have a moment throughout the day where I completely forget what I was about to do or say.  It just vanishes from my mind.  Or I lose a word from my vocabulary entirely for a few minutes.  I know what the meaning of the word is, and it's on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I concentrate, I can't find it.
 
I think it's just part of getting a little older.

 

[moondog80]

I don't mean to dismiss the seriousness of concussions, but for comparative purposes, does anyone know the prevalence of CTEs in the general population (i.e., people without a history of concussions)?  I Googled it and came up empty.

 

[Homar]

If fear is what we have when we know what we're afraid of, and anxiety is what we have when we don't know what we're afraid of, surely we all must be a little anxious about this.  There is just so much that is unknown, and the consequences of CTE can be so desperately awful, that there is more than ample space for worry and wonder.  We don't even know how worried we ought to be.  
 
Concussions can happen outside of the contact sports, of course.  My only known concussion came when I was skating recreationally with my little kids; caught an edge, went down and banged my head.  Accidents happen.  It seems increasingly clear, however that concussions go inevitably hand in hand with the contact sports.  I won't be surprised if one day we learn that every football and hockey player has been concussed many times at levels that can produce lasting consequences.  But we are a long way from knowing that with enough certainty to establish bans on playing.  
 
So we are left for the time being in the murky area of not knowing how worried to be.  We hesitate, and perhaps rightly so, to stop playing these games that we love because so much good comes from doing so that we hate to abandon the good on the basis of our anxieties about what might or could be the case.  It makes for strange times for those of us growing older, and difficult choices for those who are parenting kids who want to play the games we played, and leaves us all with questions about how much risk we're willing to tolerate, both as players and as fans.  

 

[Spacemans Bong]

The two scariest things about CTE to me are the degenerative impact subconcussive impacts can have - that's what turned Mike Webster into a brain-damaged lunatic before he turned 50, not monster hits - and the random luck where it just doesn't effect people. Jim McMahon has some pretty bad pre-CTE symptoms from playing football, yet Steve Young seems to be perfectly fine. 

 

[Al Zarilla]

The two scariest things about CTE to me are the degenerative impact subconcussive impacts can have - that's what turned Mike Webster into a brain-damaged lunatic before he turned 50, not monster hits - and the random luck where it just doesn't effect people. Jim McMahon has some pretty bad pre-CTE symptoms from playing football, yet Steve Young seems to be perfectly fine. 

A friend of mine a few years ago swore that Steve Young was talking near gibberish one time while doing some analysis. I've never heard anything like that with him, although sometimes he seems to take a second or so to get started talking. How about Troy Aikman?

 

[mascho]

The Atlantic
 
Two studies are mentioned in the article which I'll be reading more about.
 

Freel’s life and death may also focus greater attention on the significance of all sports-related head traumas, even those that don’t cause concussions. A study of 159 concussion-free college athletes published last week in Neurology found that 20 percent of the contact-sport players and 11 percent of the noncontact athletes performed worse on a memory test at the end of the season than at the beginning, a decline that would otherwise be expected in less than 7 percent of a normal population. The study authors also found that those who did worse on the test had more extensive changes in their brains than those who had scored the same after the season was over.

 

And an animal study published last week inBiological Psychiatry found that when concussions do occur, they can cause brain cells to become excessively inflammatory, leading to depression later in life. This season, 18 MLB players were removed from the roster after suffering concussions.

 

[Reverend]

I don't mean to dismiss the seriousness of concussions, but for comparative purposes, does anyone know the prevalence of CTEs in the general population (i.e., people without a history of concussions)?  I Googled it and came up empty.

 
I'm not sure how anyone could estimate what percentage of concussions in the general population actually get treated, which would be necessary information; I'm pretty sure I've had a couple where I didn't see a doctor (e.g. falling from bike, slipping on ice, &tc.).

 

[radsoxfan]

I don't mean to dismiss the seriousness of concussions, but for comparative purposes, does anyone know the prevalence of CTEs in the general population (i.e., people without a history of concussions)?  I Googled it and came up empty.

 
I made a longer post in the football forum a little while ago, so I won't repost it all here.  But your post hints at an important issue with all of this CTE research and all of the recent diagnoses.
 
These tests for "CTE" are not quite as ironclad as the media, and doctors who coined the term, would like you to think (this is coming from a BU School of Medicine alum who is plenty happy with all the recent BU publicity).  
 
These post mortum brain biopsies and pathologic stains are testing for the most common abnormal protein that exists in the brain.  It's the final common pathway for just about anything that goes wrong. Ryan Freel had "Grade 2 Abnormal Brain".  The location of the abnormalies within the brain can be suggestive, but I havent seen anything definitive.  
 
Now for a young guy who had a bunch of concussions, it's quite possible (probable?) that his brain wasn't normal because he took a bunch of hits. But the test didn't prove that.  There needs to be a lot more study about how common this protein is in the general population, and at what ages it typically increases (we know the elderly, especially those with Alzheimers have a ton), and all of the the other causes. 
 
I don't mean to dismiss CTE at all.   It's very real, and we've known this for decades that boxing causes long term brain damage in a certain percentage of people.  The most severe forms in people who have been beating each others heads in are pretty obvious.  
 
But it's a little dicier when you start assuming every nonspecific neuro problem that happens all the time (forgetfulness, depression, anxiety, etc), is automatically, or even likely, linked to a traumatic brain injury.  The science isn't close to there yet.  And these pathologic stains "proving" CTE are still pretty crude.

 

[hbk72777]

Exactly. But Nowinski likes to keep his name in the news, so every brain of every athlete they've tested, has been found to have CTE.
 
I'd like to see a blind study of these brains. Half with desk jockeys and half with ex athletes. Unlabeled, and we'll see how certain they are of the results.

 

[radsoxfan]

Exactly. But Nowinski likes to keep his name in the news, so every brain of every athlete they've tested, has been found to have CTE.
 
I'd like to see a blind study of these brains. Half with desk jockeys and half with ex athletes. Unlabeled, and we'll see how certain they are of the results.

 
CTE is very real, and the findings they are looking for will be in more boxers, football players, etc. than a random group of the population.  The problem is that there is likely significant overlap between the two groups, and the proteins they are testing for are very nonspecific. So if you are looking at one individual brain and trying to come to a firm conclusion, I don't think the results are quite as definitive as they are claiming.
 
For example, in the most recent BU study, there were 18 brains in the control group (no known mild head trauma), and only 7 were completely devoid of tau protein.  This was a higher percentage of normal brains than the "mild head trauma" group, but its not like every control brain (or even the majority) was pristine.  Beyond the protein itself, the location of the abnormalities can be suggestive of a traumatic etiology, but that is also not definitive.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

Would you let your kids play?

Yes. I think the awareness factor plays a role. When I was a kid, nobody even thought twice about it - I know I'll be more cautious, so hopefully you can prevent it.