Braves rookie: 'All I could think about was killing myself'

Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

DENVER -- Atlanta Braves catcher Evan Gattis sits back in front of his locker and shuts his eyes as he considers divulging one of the darkest, most intimate secrets of his life.

When he opens them again, words trickle out of his mouth, bringing back the anguish and torment of three days in the summer of 2007 that he says nearly ended his life.

"I was in a mental hospital," he tells USA TODAY Sports. "I couldn't sleep for an entire week, and I knew something was wrong with me. So I got admitted. I was so depressed, all I could think about was killing myself.

"I wanted to kill myself for a long time."

The rookie sensation is a 26-year-old former janitor, who, over four years, meandered through life before signing for a $1,000 bonus. Gattis was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety six years ago and, through medication, therapy and time, eventually discovered what he wanted out of life.

"I remember him telling his life story to three of us in the weight room in spring training," Braves bullpen catcher Alan Butts says, "and by the time he was done, 20 guys stopped what they were doing to listen. We didn't know what to say. Finally, I said, 'Dude, that's unbelievable.'

"Now, everywhere we go, you see other teams stop what they're doing to watch him take BP and say, 'Who is this kid?'"

Gattis, 6-4, 235 pounds, who had played 49 games higher than Class A and none above Class AA, openly wept when Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez told him at the end of spring training that he made the team.

Gattis was supposed to be a fill-in while six-time All-Star catcher Brian McCann recovers from shoulder surgery. But Gattis homered four times in his first eight major league games, leads all National League rookies in homers (six), RBI (14) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS) (.847) and, Gonzalez says, should stick with the club even when McCann returns in the next 10 days.

Gattis' jersey has become the hottest seller in the Braves' gift shops, team officials say, and they have built their marketing campaign around Gattis for a home series that began Monday against the Washington Nationals: "The Nats are coming to town. Time to show some #Gattitude."

"And to think, this guy wasn't even in our plans in spring training," general manager Frank Wren says.

Then again, how could anyone plan on him in baseball when he had no plans in life until four years ago?

"Crazy, huh?" Gattis says.

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TUMULTUOUS ROAD

In 2004, Gattis was among the most prized high school players in the country, playing on a Dallas-area traveling team called the Dallas Tigers with the likes of future Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers; traveling All-Star teams with center fielder Austin Jackson of the Detroit Tigers; and a Junior Olympics team with Billy Butler of the Kansas City Royals, Homer Bailey of the Cincinnati Reds and Justin Upton of the Braves.

"He had tools you just don't see," says Gerald Turner, 70, the Dallas-based scout who followed Gattis and says his power and throwing arm ranked near the top of the scouting scale. "He might be the strongest human being I've ever shook hands with."

Gattis projected to be selected no later than the eighth round of the 2004 draft but indicated he would rather attend college. He had a scholarship offer with defending NCAA champion Rice to play first base. But he wanted to catch and instead accepted a scholarship to Texas A&M.

"And then dropped off the face of the earth," Turner says.

Gattis says he started abusing alcohol and marijuana during his senior year of high school. He sank into a deep hole, torn by his parents' divorce, his father says, and, his mother says, self-imposed pressure to excel at the game he loved.

Gattis never showed up at Texas A&M. Instead, he was admitted to Sundown Ranch Recovery Center, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic in Canton, Texas, then spent three months at a halfway house.

He tried college again at Seminole State Junior College in Oklahoma but, after redshirting as a freshman, played half a season and gave up on baseball and dropped out of school.

Gattis says he spent the next four years working as a car valet in Dallas; a ski lift operator at the Eldora Mountain Resort in Colorado and Taos, N.M; a pizza cook at Nick-N-Willy's in Boulder, Colo.; a housekeeper at the Abominable Snowmansion hostel in Taos, and another in Flagstaff, Ariz.; a machinery operator at Kimbrell's Kustom Machine Shop in Garland, Texas; a golf cart attendant at the Firewheel Golf Course in Garland and a janitor for Jan-Pro Cleaning Systems in Plano, Texas.

There might have been other jobs, but he can't keep track.

"I don't know," Gattis says, "I guess I was just trying to find myself."

He would occasionally call his parents, whose 10-year marriage ended when Gattis was 8, to let them know he was OK. He would check in with his half-sisters, half-brothers and stepbrothers. He would crash at friends' houses, then disappear.

"Months would go by when I wouldn't hear from him," says his mother, Melynda Gattis, 50, an assistant escrow officer at a Dallas law firm. "But I wasn't really worried about him. I knew he'd be OK. I just wanted him to be happy.

"I just never thought he'd find that happiness playing baseball."

It was baseball, she says, that played an instrumental role in her son's depression. Gattis was always bigger and stronger than the other kids, whose mothers refused to let them play catch with him because he threw too hard. But baseball was his escape. He didn't have to reflect on his parents' divorce. He didn't have to answer questions why he moved from his mom's house to his dad's house at 12 with another new family.

Yet the better he became in baseball, the more he played, the greater the expectations and the more anxiety and fear he felt.

"I was terrified," Gattis softly says, "of being a failure."

Jo Gattis, his father, blames the divorce as much as anything. He grew up in a broken home, too, and suffered some of the same symptoms of depression, which came to mind when his son was hospitalized the three summer days in 2007 in Boulder and received medication for depression and anxiety.

"I drove up there, and he was in the psychiatric ward. He looked bad," says Jo Gattis, 51, a purchasing agent for a Dallas packaging company. "I talked to the doctors, and I was relieved when they said he didn't have drug problems. It was anger and depression issues. He had a lot of anger and anxiety toward me and his mom.

"They didn't think he would be a threat to himself, or anyone else, so they let him come home with me.

"I just wanted him to be happy, but never did I think he'd play baseball again. Never. ... It was like he missed out on life growing up, so he went on that spiritual quest — and when he got to the end of the road, and there was nothing more to look for, he turned back to baseball."

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BACK ON THE DIAMOND

In 2010, Gattis, whose favorite player growing up was Braves third baseman Chipper Jones, joined his stepbrother, Drew Kendrick, at the University of Texas-Permian Basin. He had not swung a bat in four years but hit .403 with 11 homers. His coach, Brian Reinke, called his scouting friend, Turner, to come take a look.

"He put on a power display that day that I'll never forget," Turner says. "The wind was blowing in, and he still hit 15 to 20 homers out.

"When we got to the draft room (in 2010) in Atlanta, I told them his story, told them not to worry about his age and said, 'This is one of the guys we have to take.'"

Gattis, who was drafted in the 23rd round, softly smiles at the memories, wondering if perhaps it was ordained that the potholes and barriers were necessary to find his path to success.

"When I look back," Gattis says, "I'd probably do everything different. But I don't regret any of it. There's supposed to be a reason for everything, right?"

Gattis says he has been drug-free but will drink the occasional beer. He says he's also no longer on medication or undergoing therapy, his chilling thoughts of suicide in the past.

"It was a long road," Gattis says, "and a lot of twists and turns. But I can say I have never been happier in my whole life."

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SUPPORT SYSTEM

Gattis, who had not returned to the Denver area since his hospitalization, looked up in the stands at Coors Field last week as the Braves played the Rockies and couldn't believe what he saw: three guys in polar bear suits, another in a sombrero and leather vest.

Spencer Phillips, Chase Harrell and Ray Richardson were the bears, Chris Landin clad in the sombrero. Four of Gattis' best friends from childhood were there to pay tribute to Gattis and a nickname he picked up during winter ball in Venezuela: El Oso Blanco.

A Venezuelan cabbie bestowed that moniker — "The White Bear" — as Gattis was hitting 16 homers in 53 games with Aguilas del Zulia.

The friends sat in Section 131, screaming and hollering with Gattis' mom and two half-sisters, Vanessa Mize and Valerie Lynch, while getting bewildered stares from the Coors Field crowd.

Says Richardson, a law school student: "This was the greatest day of my life. I'm serious. I've never had a greater day since I was born."

The quartet never gave up on Gattis. They knew he would come back. Maybe not as a ballplayer, but at least as the guy who wore a kilt to school for laughs or climbed 100-foot power standards, laughing when the police and firetrucks came racing out.

"He always did what he wanted to do," Phillips says.

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'CULT HERO'

Gattis is earning more money than he ever dreamed — the major league minimum of $490,000 — but his only ride is a 1995 Dodge pickup with more than 200,000 miles that sits in his dad's driveway. He lives rent free at his dad's friend's house in Alpharetta, Ga., and gets rides to the stadium from teammates or his girlfriend, Kim Waters.

No one takes more advantage of the clubhouse food than Gattis. When he ordered dinner last week with his buddies at the Denver Diner, the waitress stared at him in disbelief: Two flank steaks, two chicken-fried steaks, four eggs, four orders of hash browns, five pieces of toast, three pieces of French toast. There wasn't a crumb left on his plate.

"He was mad that we paid for it," Phillips says, "but we told him, 'Hey, you only make the minimum.'"

Three weeks ago, the Braves invited Turner to watch Gattis' first game in Atlanta, where the legend began.

Gattis hit his first home run — while his father conducted a live interview on Braves TV — and hasn't stopped, homering in every NL ballpark he has played this month.

"He's a cult hero now," Turner says, "I'll be 71 next week, and I feel like I had a newborn child."

Gattis, too, feels a sense of rebirth.

"It's crazy, but I just feel so relaxed now," Gattis says. "I'm having a blast. It was so tough to persevere, and that depression really beat me down, but I've overcome all of that.

"Hopefully I can be an inspiration to kids going through the same thing. There are a lot of kids out there depressed. You read about teenage suicides and the things kids go through, and it's so sad.

"Maybe, when they know my story, they'll see there's a way out.

"I'm proof of that."