Will the real Milton Bradley please stand up?  Bradley who has been known as a hothead and a locker room cancer recently admitted that he needed help.

On May 4 after striking out in the seventh inning, the slumping former all-star told his manager he desperately needed to do something positive — anything at all — to feel better about his worth to the team.

Manager Don Wakamatsu, realizing Bradley was losing control, pulled him from the game. Bradley bolted from the ballpark, unable to watch the final innings on a clubhouse TV.

While driving home, Bradley was probably thinking “what else could happen.”  And that is exactly what happened next.  He was stopped by police for speeding. Bradley began arguing saying he’d been going the same speed as the car next to him.

The officer eventually let Bradley off with a warning.  After years of stress, anger, frustration, thoughts if suicide and the inability of being able to cope with these feelings Bradley finally admitted he needed help.

“I got home and my heart was pounding,” Bradley said. “It was just one thing after another that night. I couldn’t get it to stop. I felt like I’d been down this road before, where everything keeps happening and leads to something else and you can’t control it. I just wanted it to stop.  When you start feeling that the only way you can end it is to kill yourself, that’s not a healthy feeling,” Bradley said. “So, I needed to get away, to step back for a bit. There are too many people I care about in this world to let things go down that road.”

Once the Mariners put him on the restricted list, Bradley spent the first few days speaking with a counselor, who also had come from a sports background.  “I understood what I was feeling,” Bradley said. “But I didn’t know why I was feeling it.”  Afterward, he began working out daily at Safeco Field when the team wasn’t around, hitting in an indoor batting cage with Mariners mental-performance coach Steve Hecht, who stayed behind with Bradley while the team embarked on the road.

And though Bradley returned Wednesday, 15 days after asking the Mariners for help, his counseling sessions will continue. Bradley is aware that this is only the start of a process to help him feel better about himself.

Bradley will continue to seek counseling as he learns to deal with his emotions.  The Mariners are relying heavily on Bradley to help turn their season around and start living up to the early season hype that the media gave them.  Bradley might not be able to salvage the Mariners season as they are currently 8 1/2 games out in the American League West and are 3-7 in their last 10 but more importantly he may have gotten the help that he needed to save his life.  Maybe we haven’t seen the real Milton Bradley just yet.

Information from The Seattle Times was used in this article.