There is no denying the fact that sports take a huge physical toll on those participating, but what many fail to see is how much of a mental strain it is as well. Yogi Berra once said that baseball is 90% mental and 10% physical, and he could not be more spot on. Between playing in front of thousands of people every night and the wolves of the internet breathing down their neck, many professional athletes suffer from mental health issues.
For a long time, mental health was not seen as something that should be prioritized in a major league locker room, but that tide is changing. As of 2018, 27 of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball have a mental health physician as part of the team’s traveling staff. In 2017, the league gave a $250,000 grant to the Headstrong Project, a confidential, cost-free mental health treatment for veterans and their families. In 2019, MLB once again pledged $100,000 to Give an Hour. The Player’s Trust grant helped fund mental health treatments for veterans and those who otherwise could not afford the help.
Major League Baseball and the Major League Players Association announced a $3 million commitment to the “Healthy Relationships Community Grant”. The grant is helping to fund organizations that advocate for healthy relationships, mental health, and personal services to survivors of domestic violence, something MLB largely turns a blind eye on.
Players are being encouraged to apply for up to $25,000 as part of a gift matching program and US-based nonprofit and global organizations can apply for localized support up to $50,000.
Melanie Legrande, the Vice President of Social Responsibility for Major League Baseball stated that “This program will support deserving organizations working to build and improve the mental health resiliency and relationship skills of those they serve, with a particular focus on youth, and to provide critical services to help domestic violence survivors rebuild their lives.”
This is an important cause that every multi-billion dollar company should be invested in, and hopefully, the MLB won’t stop at $3 million when last year the league grossed $10.7 billion. In addition to giving, the league also has to revisit its standards on domestic violence before they can truly call themselves allies to the cause. You can not simply give money and say you won’t stand for domestic violence all while employing many abusers.
Despite the issues still plaguing the league, it is good to see Major League Baseball taking a stand on mental health, which affects 1 in 5 Americans.
