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FOX Sports MLB analyst Alex Rodriguez is one of the most decorated players in baseball history. But that doesn’t mean his career was easy from a mental health standpoint. He detailed some of his struggles on his podcast with Bloomberg.
During The Deal, which Alex Rodriguez hosts with Jason Kelly, the pair welcomed former NBA star and ESPN host/analyst Jay Williams to the show. Williams famously saw his basketball career end due to a motorcycle accident, and talked about how that affected him on the show. Rodriguez was able to share similar sentiments after being forced to sit out an MLB season due to his off-field transgressions.
“In ’14, I served the year suspension for PD use, and my whole world kind of fell apart,” said Rodriguez. “I think it’s very public now that I’ve done over 12 years of therapy. I continue to be in it. It’s a huge part of my life. But I had built this incredible career, and I was almost 40, and I’m just like, it was so scary to have to think about, ‘Oh my god. Am I gonna have to scratch everything and start all over again?’ I was below ground zero, and I felt like I had something else, like I had another chapter in me, and I was too young to just give up. It’s not in our DNA to give up.
“I don’t know if I had suicidal (thoughts), but whatever the stop before that is, that was probably there,” admitted Rodriguez. “I also felt like there were millions of kids out there that don’t have parents that are great mentors, or single parents like my mother, who don’t have that. And I felt like I had a lot to offer for those kids to at least learn from my mistakes. That was really the thesis of wanting to come back is to make an impact.”
Rodriguez continued by noting that his mental health is in a significantly better place than it was 10 years ago, and credited the help therapy has had on his state of well-being.
