This Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher is taking a swing at raising mental health awareness

Photo by Abdoul Sow/Courtesy of the Pittsburgh Pirates

Debra Mattson was the kind of mom who showed up.

She chauffeured Isaac Mattson, the sixth of her eight children, from state to state and tournament to tournament in the years after he hurdled a catcher to score a run, alerting his family to his baseball talent.

She climbed high into the stands at Charles L. Cost Field, where Isaac pitched out of the bullpen for the Pitt Panthers, often wrapping herself in multiple blankets to soften the bite of an early spring chill.

Debra and Isaac

She accompanied Isaac to the airport when his accomplishments at Pitt - including 41 strikeouts in 31 innings his junior year - made him so coveted that he was drafted by the Los Angeles Angels one day in 2017 and had to fly off to Utah to join the organization's rookie league team the next.

So, when she stopped showing up, Isaac noticed. And he worried. The depression that had dogged her adult years seemed to grow as COVID-19 forced the country into isolation, halting her visits with family and friends. Some days, she couldn't move from the couch. Her phone calls to Isaac became sporadic.

The last call came on July 14, 2021, Isaac's 26th birthday. He was in Memphis for a game. They talked for just three or four minutes.

"We said, 'I love you,' as we always do as Mattsons," Isaac says.

Hours later, he learned she had died by suicide. "It was easily the worst day of my life."

The next months were a blur of pain and baseball. Isaac attempted to mask the former by fixating on the latter, because the competitive nature of professional sports requires that kind of singular focus and because it was a lot easier to think about baseball than the loss of his mom.

But it all came crashing down in July 2022 when he was cut from the roster of his then-team, the minor league Norfolk Tides. No other team came calling, and his dream of earning a permanent spot on a Major League Baseball roster, once within reach, suddenly seemed so far away.

Without baseball to distract him, Isaac spent his days confronting the very topics he'd been working so hard to avoid - his mother's death and his own mental health.

"I realized then that I hadn't dealt with it; I hadn't processed the trauma," he says. "I was still grieving. I knew I needed to take a step back and figure out the next phase with a fresh perspective."

Therapy helped him process the wave of emotions that came, battering one moment and receding the next. Taking action helped, too. Together, the Mattson family organized a memorial walk in their hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, to honor Debra, raise money for scholarships in her name and promote mental health awareness in the community.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adults experience mental illness each year and suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States. The walk gives people an opening to think and talk about their own mental health struggles.

"We had a desire as a family to let people know it's important to talk about things and that there are resources that can help," Isaac says.

The walk is now in its third year and has raised enough money to award scholarships to six high school graduates, including Madison Williams, a first-year student at Pitt. Isaac had to miss the latest one, on Sept. 28. He was busy pitching at Yankee Stadium.

Yes, he's back in baseball. It took a lot of work, including a humbling stint with the Washington Wild Things of the independent Frontier League, to rebuild his confidence and mental stamina. He signed a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates in December of 2023, pitched for their AA and AAA teams throughout the summer of 2024 and earned a callup to the majors on Sept. 22, pitching two scoreless innings and recording two strikeouts.

He has no doubt Debra was there with him, as always.

Last spring, in one of his first minor league appearances for the Pirates, the rarest of baseball phenomena occurred. Snow fell on the diamond. Back in Erie, where the lake can spawn sudden squalls, Debra had watched her son pitch in snow multiple times.

So, Isaac took that snowfall as a sign: His mom showed up.

Learn more about the Debra Mattson Memorial Walk.

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