While Freel was a baseball player, this is not good news for the world of football.
From Hardball Times:
Ryan Freel had chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Ryan Freel died last December from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after an eight-year major league playing career during which he claimed to have suffered 10 concussions. Believing there to be a link between the suicide and Freel’s multiple incidents of head trauma, Freel’s family donated his brain to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, where many football players and boxers have been tested and studied for CTE.
CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is an incurable brain disease clinically associated with symptoms of irritability, impulsivity, aggression, depression, short-term memory loss and heightened suicidality.
Freel, the center has discovered, was suffering from Stage II CTE at the time of his death.
“It’s a release in that there was a physical reason for what he did,” Clark Vargas, Freel’s stepfather, told Justin Barney of the Florida Times-Union. “On the other side for me, Ryan fell through the cracks. … We’re keeping track of pitch counts, can we keep track of how many guys are hit on the head?”
From Hardball Times:
Ryan Freel had chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Ryan Freel died last December from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after an eight-year major league playing career during which he claimed to have suffered 10 concussions. Believing there to be a link between the suicide and Freel’s multiple incidents of head trauma, Freel’s family donated his brain to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, where many football players and boxers have been tested and studied for CTE.
CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is an incurable brain disease clinically associated with symptoms of irritability, impulsivity, aggression, depression, short-term memory loss and heightened suicidality.
Freel, the center has discovered, was suffering from Stage II CTE at the time of his death.
“It’s a release in that there was a physical reason for what he did,” Clark Vargas, Freel’s stepfather, told Justin Barney of the Florida Times-Union. “On the other side for me, Ryan fell through the cracks. … We’re keeping track of pitch counts, can we keep track of how many guys are hit on the head?”
