Thursday Bantering: Halladay, plus Owners/Players Argue

Tomorrow night at 7:00 Eastern, on TSN, the E:60 Special: Imperfect the Roy Halladay Story will debut.

ESPN tells us that it “goes beyond Halladay’s on-field accomplishments to reveal there was another side to him: a deeply imperfect side that the public never saw, including a years-long battle with mental health issues and addiction.”

From their press release:

After more than two years of silence, Halladay’s family speaks for the first time on camera in “Imperfect” about the man, his struggles and his death. In exclusive E60 interviews with Halladay’s widow, Brandy; his son, Braden; his father, Roy Halladay, Jr.; his sister, Heather, and other close friends and teammates, correspondent John Barr reveals new details about Halladay’s multiple trips to rehab, his psychological diagnoses and the fateful day when his plane went down.

Among others interviewed are Alex Rodriguez, who competed against Halladay; Kyle Kendrick, a teammate on the Phillies; and law enforcement officers from Pasco County.

I think it is going to be a very hard thing to watch. One thing we are told is that, during retirement, his weight fluctuated from just over 200 pound to just over 300 pounds. And that he was dealing with depression and anxiety, and taking medications to deal with those issues and pain from the injuries that ended his career.

I so much wanted to believe he was enjoying retirement.

We’ll have an open thread for the showing.

ESPN has shared a couple of excerpts:

Opiod use:

Retirement:

Sometimes baseball seems to be trying to make me hate it:

I don’t know if we are going to get baseball this year. The owners seem to be wanting to use the pandemic to walk back player salaries. The players, surprisingly enough, don’t want that.

One side of me thinks that it is too important for the owners and the players so they will find a way to get it done. The other side thinks that that the owners want to make this about rolling back salaries and will gladly give up on the season to make it happen. They have done it before.

Of course, nowhere in this is there a discussion on whether it is the right thing to have baseball come back.

Max Scherzer seems to be the voice the players need. Not emotional, just stating the facts as he sees them.

In this tweet Jeff Passan shows us what the owners plan is and, in the second tweet compares it to the original agreement they had with the players. I can not see the players going along with the new proposal.

Let’s have a poll.