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Former Tigers Austin Meadows Provided Us With An Update On Life After Baseball
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- Former Tigers Austin Meadows Provided Us With An Update On Life After Baseball
(Reinhold Matay-Imagn Images)
Of all the frustrating baseball stories that came out of the Al Avila era for the Detroit Tigers , the one that seems to be shrouded in the most mystery is Austin Meadows . There was an excitement here when he was brought to Detroit. This is the guy who had been a run-producing machine in Tampa Bay . He was coming over to the same organization that employed his younger brother, and all Detroit had to do was trade Isaac Parades to acquire him. What happened next, few people expected.
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Parades broke out, and Austin Meadows barely saw the field with Detroit in the two years he was there. It was later confirmed that his inability to see the field was largely due to a recently diagnosed anxiety disorder. Meadows gave it a go for a bit in 2023 before ultimately walking away from the game of baseball. For the first time since he last wore a Tiger uniform, he finally gave the world some insight into what happened. 
I'm pretty much beyond expecting people to universally understand any person, especially a professional athlete, when they're open about some of the mental health issues that they're going through. You look at the comments on the video I posted, and you get a pretty good indicator of who is and isn't ignorant. Meadows doesn't reveal anything scandalous in this short video, nor was that his intention. There are still questions that I have about how this was handled. To take it one step further, I have some questions about how much knowledge, if any, the Tampa Bay Rays had about some of the issues that he was going through before they shipped him off to Detroit right before the 2022 season started. Maybe those questions are answered later, and maybe they aren't. Quite frankly, it isn't really any of our business, but I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling curious.
It is very common for mental disorders to develop later in life. I think generally speaking, people aren't born with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can develop as late as your 20s, and it seemed that was the case with Austin Meadows. Both anxiety and OCD can be crippling disorders to deal with in life, and the "just walk it off" or "rub some dirt on it" Principle doesn't necessarily apply when dealing with something this serious. I think, because of their physical gifts, we tend to run with the idea that professional athletes are supposed to be superheroes. But even with the joy of getting to play the game you love as well as the financial stability, no one is too powerful to struggle.
It's also worth pointing out that no mental illness is cured overnight. Most mental illnesses never get carried at all. It is a process and often requires the right guidance, medication, and self-reflection. I think anybody who is expecting Austin Meadows to make a statement saying that he had been cured of his anxiety is probably lacking any understanding of how mental health disorders work. The goal is to find some stability and peace. It appears as though Meadows has done that, and even though it didn't work out in Detroit, many more chapters of his life are still to be written, and I wish him nothing but the best.
