The Yankees fans are shocked to know that Jason Grimsley, who was a part of the dynasty that became champions in 1999 and 2000, once tried to commit suicide. In his recently published book, “Cross Stitched: One Man’s Journey from Ruin to Restoration,” the pitcher has revealed how there was a time in his life that forced him to take the extreme step.
Jason Grimsley pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Cleveland Guardians, the Los Angeles Angels, the New York Yankees, the Kansas City Royals, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Arizona Diamondbacks over the course of his career spanning 15 years. When the Yankees won the World Series in 1999 and 2000, he was a member of the team for both of those years.
In the book, Jason Grimsley describes a specific low point in his life, which occurred on August 21, 2015, when he made an attempt to take his own life. According to the New York Post, the former MLB pitcher “said he was high on an ounce of cocaine, six bottles of vodka and a few cans of beer — put a pistol next to his left eye, and pulled the trigger.”
Grimsley also told USA Today Sports: “I was waiting, but nothing happened. I guess I didn’t take off the safety feature; I didn’t have the (guts) to do it again. I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t even do that right.’”
Jason Grimsley has only recently started sharing his story after receiving encouragement from his wife. He wrote:
“But now that I look back, I want to point to the Lord and his grace and his salvation. There’s no reason I should be alive today. I should have died. Now I know why I’m here. I told Dana, ‘I don’t want to be in the papers. I don’t want to be in the limelight. I’m just a redneck from East Texas. I had such a bad taste of life from a personal standpoint, I did not want to relive any of it. I just wanted to push it back and bury it. I didn’t want it to be about me. I didn’t see any purpose.”
According to USA Today Sports: “Jason Grimsley was questioned for two hours and admitted in a sworn affidavit that he had been using performance-enhancing drugs for about half of his career on April 19, 2006. Three FBI agents drove up to the 5,100-square-foot rental home in this quiet suburban neighborhood of Scottsdale and asked him to come to the front door on April 19, 2006. It was the day Grimsley’s 15-year Major League Baseball career effectively ended after he was found to have received two kits of human growth hormone that he ordered, paying $3,200.”
What do you think of Grimsley’s revealing confession? Leave your comment below.
