Starting the Conversation: SF Giants Drew Robinson on Suicide

Drew Robinson grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he fell in love with baseball at a young age, following around his older brother, who played baseball. 

“I followed my brother’s footsteps. I was playing my own leagues and my own teams, but I was also the batboy for his team. So I was always at the field in some capacity.” 

Drew went on to play baseball in high school, but it wasn’t until his junior year that he started getting noticed from colleges and began the recruiting process.  Robinson signed a Letter of Intent to play for Nebraska. The recruiting process for such young athletes can be an overwhelming process and Drew knows that very well. 

“I was not prepared for it (recruiting). I couldn’t take it all in. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was like a dog, just happy to be there. I was loving all the attention and trying to understand as much as I could.”

But for Drew, the dream of getting to play professional baseball started right out of high school. He did not attend Nebraska because the Texas Rangers drafted him in the fourth-round of the 2010 MLB Draft. 

The Vegas native spent 10 seasons in pro ball, nine with the Rangers and one with the St. Louis Cardinals,  before having season-ending surgery in 2019 with the Cardinals. Late in 2019, he signed a minor-league deal with the San Francisco Giants and started with his new team in 2020.

2020 Spring started as it always would, and then the pandemic hit, and the whole world stopped. The new Giant was forced back home to Las Vegas, and that is where things went from bad to worse. 

“I didn’t understand what was happening.. before I knew it, a day and a half later, I was driving back home to my house in Las Vegas. That eventually lead to the craziest moment of my life.” 

Although Drew was successful on the field, he never allowed himself to celebrate his wins. He admitted he would play the victim and was so blocked mentally he couldn’t see the good. 

“I always had the sense that I don’t deserve everything because then that means that the work was done. I always felt like I was doing something subpar,” he said. “When things went well, that’s what was meant to happen. I never took the time to see how lucky I was.” 

 The thoughts of taking his own life became more than just a thought. 

“Those thoughts started well before the quarantine. It was more passive before early February (2020). That’s when things got more serious and turned into more than passive thoughts. It got really ugly when I would leave the field and go back to the house or have any alone time. 

I really started to question a lot of things in my life … really playing victim and thinking everything I do is wrong, everything I touched gets ruined and really going down that rabbit hole of serious negativity…and then the ideation started to intensify and I started writing notes down, and whenever a really serious thought popped into my head I would write it down as to be part of my suicide note…I did a lot of fighting it and that got exhausting and then the pandemic hit. It was just an unfortunate recipe to a really bad decision of ultimately trying to end my life.” 

On April 16th, 2020, around 8 pm, Drew Robinson tried to take his own life. He held a gun up to his head and pulled the trigger, but something happened. Although the gun went off he was alive. He stayed alive, alone in his house, for 20 hours before calling 911 to get help. He chose life. 

“And then the start of the miracle happened,” Robinson told Sports360AZ with a smile.

He survived and got a second chance at life. A second chance at baseball. He wants to share his story to help others struggling with depression, suicidal thoughts, and tendencies. 

Robinson is currently playing with the San Francisco Giants minor league teams right here in Arizona. He is on a mission to end the stigma and be a voice for all of those struggling. His miracle is changing lives.