Ryan Freel was more troubled than we knew

• Freel played the game with the kind of reckless abandon
• Freel left behind a wife and three daughters
• Freel last played in the majors in 2009

One play summed up Ryan Freel's career. The Cincinnati Reds were playing one of the last games of spring -- it may have even been the very last game. It was in Clearwater, Fla., against the Phillies. Freel was playing center field.

A Philadelphia batter smacked a shot to the wall in left-center. Freel sprinted toward the wall and launched himself head-long to try to make the catch. I literally thought he had broken his neck. He turned out to be all right.

I remember asking him about it. Something to the effect of: Why on earth would you do that in a meaningless spring training game? He just shrugged and said: "That's how I play."

That was Freel.

It was a shock to hear that he took his own life Saturday. He was 36 and left behind a wife and three daughters. I remember how proud he was of his kids. It's impossible to understand the demons that would push him to leave that behind.

As a baseball beat writer, you spend a lot of time with the players you cover. But you never get to fully know them. Everyone who covered Freel knew he was a lot more complicated than his public persona. But he was obviously a lot more troubled than anyone knew.

Freel played the game with the kind of reckless abandon that is rare in baseball. I'm sure part of that was because he had to. He was a little guy with a limited set of skills.

Freel was one of the great stories of 2003 spring training. He came to camp as a non-roster invitee, i.e, the longest of long shots to make the club. He hit .353 and impressed everyone with his style of play.

He didn't make the club out of the spring, but he was called up on April 19. That began an impressive six-year run with the Reds for Freel. He hit .272 with a .357 on-base percentage with 140 stolen bases.

There were a lot of highlights along the way. The catch he made in 2006 on Albert Pujols' rocket was the single greatest I've seen. When the ball left the bat, it looked like a bases-clearing double. But Freel ran it down and caught it with a full-extension leap.

Freel was a fun guy to be around most days. He was outgoing, funny and goofy. Other days, he was a different person. He'd sit and stare silently at his locker. We used to joke that his mood depended on the medication. Those gags don't seem so funny now.

And that style of play caught up with him. His numbers dropped off significantly after the concussion that he suffered in a collision with Norris Hopper on May 28, 2007. He missed a month. He was not the same player after returning.

When we asked him about the concussion, he guessed that it was his ninth or 10th. I tried to track him down a couple of times. My theory was the concussions had a lot to do with his career going south. I wanted to write about it.

The Reds traded him in December of 2008. He went to the Baltimore Orioles, then the Chicago Cubs and finally the Kansas City Royals in 2009. He hit .193. He would not play in the majors again.

He worked the Reds Dream Week camp last year in Goodyear, Fla. But he was gone before spring training opened. I thought he'd end up back in the organization -- coaching in the low minors. His energy and enthusiasm would have been perfect for a job like that.

Rest in peace, Freelie.