He took to Twitter to share the truth about his struggles.
Yasiel Puig was a fan favorite during his time with the Dodgers. Fans loved the child-like energy he brought to every game, and fell in love with his ‘give it your all’ attitude. However, it wasn’t all love.
During his time with the Dodgers, and in the Majors as a whole, Puig was seen as an irresponsible and selfish player. He had incidents on the field where it seemed like he wasn’t listening to coaches. He also found himself in the middle of fights both on and off the field. Remember when Zack Greinke reportedly threw Puig’s luggage off the team bus?
There was clearly a lot of good and a lot of bad in terms of Puig’s tenure in LA. But did anyone ever stop to wonder why Puig acted the way he did in certain situations?
Puig has been playing baseball in Korea this year, where he’s somewhat revitalized his playing career. But that’s far from the most important thing he’s done there.
Puig took to Twitter to share that, with the help of his agent, Lisette Carnet, he’s starting to get the mental health help he needed in his life.
His tweet included a thread of four others, so here’s the full transcript of his words.
“This years after I reached Korea withs the helps of my new agent I got the treatments I needed. There were things wrongs for so long with me but I nevers know about these things because in Cuba some of these things are not even known and they say you are weak or not a man if you go to doctor so that was my mentalities. I thoughts in US no teams said to get any helps so I thought it was just me I was broken and I can’t get fix. But my agent work hard withs me, she was only one not scare of me like maybe other people. She saw she could helps me & it was truth what she says. Athletes comes from very poor countries they go through things others maybe no go throughs so is important to asks for help. Is so simple and yet no one have the patience or maybe the wants to help me get help. Now I am able to be happys & not hurt myselfs anymore by getting in my owns ways. Is a lot more work to do but now I knows help is there for me to use & my whole life is different. Athletes need to get good people around you that cares and are not scare to tell you things even if they are hard. They need to tells you in a ways you understands . I am lucky that I am still young and can live better & try to do better and take control of my life. I nevers talk so much on twitters. Haha. I knows i don’t write too good so sorry. That’s it. Work on yourselfs”
It’s easy to judge athletes from afar. But it’s much harder to treat them as the human beings they are. No one asked about Puig’s upbringing. No one asked about the difficulties of moving to the United States from Cuba. Instead, he was just labeled and bashed for being the way he was.
His agent also took to Twitter to share her support for Puig.
It’s really nice seeing Puig getting the help he needed. Hopefully it’s only continued happiness for the 31-year-old.
