TinCaps shine a light on mental health issues

Back in 2022, the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps front office posted a sign on the clubhouse wall. It featured a simple, but unusual request: Would any players want to speak publicly about mental health? The front office was not obligating anyone to do anything, and couldn’t predict what kind of response they’d get.

Jackson Wolf, a left-hander who’d been a fourth-round pick by the Padres the year prior, volunteered. On the TinCaps’ social media platforms, Wolf opened up about his personal mental health journey coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to Wolf’s story was overwhelmingly positive.

On Saturday night, the TinCaps hosted their third-annual Mental Health Awareness Night during their 9-2 victory over South Bend at Parkview Field. 8,402 fans were in attendance, one of the team's largest-ever crowds during the month of May. Mental Health Awareness Night became an annual tradition in large part because of that initial dialogue between Wolf and the TinCaps' fanbase. It sparked the team to create a culture around those types of conversations, and to celebrate the impact they can have on the community at-large.

“In 2020, when our season shut down, and, to an extent, the world changed, with COVID. A lot of kids were at home when we came out of that in 2021 … we just noticed a lot of behaviors were different, things were different,” TinCaps president Mike Nutter told Minor League Baseball's The Show Before The Show Podcast this week.

“No blame -- none of that kind of stuff. We were talking to the school districts that we know and we were just reaching out to community leaders, and it's like, ‘Can you help be a part of the solution?’ These kids are hurting. My kid was hurting.”

On the podcast, Nutter explained his personal connection to this issue. His college-aged daughter struggled with an eating disorder and attempted suicide, he said. Nutter spoke about how his daughter sought treatment that led to her full recovery, and that his family’s experience is proof of how close mental health issues can hit to home.

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“We've literally had people look at their parents at this event and say, ‘I'm struggling,’” Nutter said. “‘I'm hiding this. I've got depression, I've got anxiety. I've had suicidal thoughts,’ and I mean, stuff that breaks your heart.”

Mental Health Awareness Night attempts to normalize these issues and offer accessible solutions and support. The first year, the team raised thousands of dollars for the National Alliance of Mental Health.

In three years, the event has grown in scope. On Saturday, booths with therapists and support teams from local and national mental health awareness groups were placed around the concourse, available to all. The Tincaps also played pre- and in-game videos of players discussing their mental health journeys on the scoreboard, inviting others not to overlook the importance of maintaining and having conversations about their mental health.

“They just let the guard down and let people in with what's going on in their minds, in their lives and in their struggle," Nutter said. “[When] you’re a kid, you’re under pressure. You don’t have to keep it all bottled up.”

The reaction has been impossible to ignore.

“We've come so far,” Nutter said. “I want to make it clear from the front end of this: This isn’t about inviting more people into the tent or into the stadium because then our attendance is higher and we can make a few bucks. We're all trying to sell tickets. But genuinely, that is not what this is.”