SAN FRANCISCO — Just down the hallway from the Giants clubhouse, about a 30-second walk away, is a tiny room about the size of a storage closet.
Walk inside and the anxiety of life drips off your shoulders. There’s a dimly lit lamp, a brown leather couch, a wooden coffee table with a sandalwood tobacco candle on it and a chair where Dr. Shana Alexander sits, ready to listen.
“I love talking to her,” Giants’ ace Logan Webb said of Alexander, the team’s sports psychologist and director of mental health and wellness. “It’s important to have this space.”
After signing his $90-million contract extension with the Giants in April, Webb pledged $450,000 to the Giants Community Fund in hopes to raise awareness about fentanyl after it took the life of his cousin, Kade, in 2021.
Since then, Webb has become an advocate for mental health. And he’s not afraid to say it: he loves therapy.
“I realized I had a lot of (stuff) I needed to get out and talk about,” he said. “Shana actually mentioned it. It was kind of forced like, ‘You need to come in here.’ I didn’t want to.”
Webb didn’t know much about therapy or mental health until he arrived in the big leagues in 2020. One morning that September, former big leaguer Drew Robinson spoke to the entire organization and shared details of his suicide attempt. Missing one eye due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Robinson is one of the team’s leading mental health advocates who is often seen wearing a T-shirt that says, “Strength isn’t always physical.”
After Robinson’s presentation to the team, “I broke down,” Webb said.
Mental Health Awareness Night @SFGiantsFans @Drewrobbb @Emily27266882 pic.twitter.com/lFAih3KB6a
— Shana Alexander (@shanaralexander) September 13, 2022
Since then, he’s spoken to Alexander once a week, even in the offseason.
“Life is hard, in general,” he said. “You add in the fact that we play this game. And as a kid you played the game to have fun. Now you’re playing it in front of millions of people.
“If you do (poorly), you’re the worst human being in the world, for some reason. And if you do great, you’re the biggest human being. You have these highs and these lows, these highs and these lows, and it’s mentally draining. As much as you want to drown that out, sometimes it just gets to you.”
Giants players often show up in Alexander’s office voluntarily. Sometimes, like in Webb’s case, she tells them it’s time for a chat.
“It’s OK to acknowledge that they struggle,” she said. “No longer do we need to be ashamed or hide that we may struggle with mental health at times because we’re all human. It doesn’t matter who you are.”
Alexander can be found at Oracle Park every homestand. She meets with players in her office or finds them in the lunch room, in the dugout or on the field. Maybe it’s just a few minutes, a casual chat to let them know she’s there to help. For others, the talks are longer, deeper and take place on a weekly basis.
“I can get a good sense if a guy is going through a tough time or I see a change in personality in the clubhouse,” she said.
When the team is on the road, she might be up until 2 a.m. supporting players after a rough game.
“A lot of guys come to me wanting to do better on the field,” she said. “I can help them with that. But I start out with mental health first. My strong belief is if you’re not balanced off the field, you’re not going to see the results on the field.”
She’ll ask about caffeine intake, alcohol and substance use, sleep patterns and diet.
“And they need to just be willing to open up,” she said. “These guys have had to stuff so much emotion, hold it and be tough for so long. The reality is, it’s going to come out in one way or another. If you don’t talk about it, it’s going to come through with anxiety, anger, irritability, substance abuse, something along those lines.
“You can’t hold that type of emotion forever and expect it not to affect you. Some of these guys have held it their whole lives. Because they want to be tough, unshakable and be a competitor. And I get that. But we don’t need that. We need a healthy, balanced person.”
In a rule that’s new to the collective bargaining agreement, each MLB team is now required to have at least one mental health professional on staff.
When Alexander joined the Giants in 2020 she was the only one and responsible for the entire organization. Now she’s one of three, along with Robinson and Emily Payette, a sports psychologist who is in charge of handling the minor league side. They were invited to speak to all 30 clubs last July.
“As an organization, they’re leaders in the promotion of mental health,” said Jon Coyles, MLB’s vice president of drug, health and safety programs. “That’s what we want to see.”
But for as much progress as MLB has made in this space, there remains a wide gap between resources committed to players’ physical health compared to those spent on mental health.
Alexander’s hope is that every team will soon have a mental health professional traveling with the club full-time. The Kansas City Royals have one, Melissa Lambert, whose role is unique in that she’s in the dugout during games.
Giants manager Gabe Kapler said the players’ attitude towards mental health has improved over the years, but he still notices a stigma attached in the macho world of professional baseball.
“It’s still really challenging for players to admit they’re compromised on the field for something that’s going for them off the field,” Kapler said. “We’ve talked about it a lot around here — you can’t just necessarily see it when you look at guys at the plate, so you need to be digging around a little bit to find out what might be going on behind the curtain.”
Said Webb, “It’s really cool seeing the teams who are supportive of it, I just hope the fans can be a little bit more supportive of it too. I think fans think they can say whatever they want to say. We’re all human beings too. Some of the (stuff) you say means something. You get guys who probably have some (stuff) going on. They just need a break. And people are clowning them and talking (trash) to them. That’s a problem, a problem with society in itself.
“I just wish more people were nice. I don’t think a lot of this stuff would happen if more people were nice.”
Down the hallway, Alexander sees Webb as a leader for speaking out.
“It helps so much with the destigmatization of mental health,” she said.
Webb wants to send a message.
“It’s all right to have feelings,” he said. “Everyone has feelings. We’ve all had feelings. So talk. That’s it.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline offers free, round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Reach the lifeline at 988 or 800-273-8255, or see the 988lifeline.org website.
