First MLB Player Diagnosed With Brain Disease

So hockey and football players aren't the only ones endangering their brains. Professional baseball player Ryan Freel also had CTE and may have killed himself over it last year, CNN reports. "The real important issue is that he hit his head multiple times—small hits, big hits, in baseball and outside of baseball," said a researcher behind the finding. Little surprise there: Freel was a free-wheeling player who flung his body around the field, suffered 10 or more baseball concussions and at least one as a child. Freel lived at "one speed, and that was fast speed," his mother said.

Researchers tested Freel's brain tissue and found Stage 2 CTE, which has been linked to memory loss and erratic behavior. Still, scientists warn about over-interpreting: "Whether or not the disease was the cause of or accentuated the depression and substance abuse and impulse problems [Freel had], we don't know," said a neurology professor. But it provides some closure for Freel's mother, who says she wants his daughters to know he didn't kill himself "because he didn't love them." The finding comes as MLB plans to institute a ban against home-plate collissions as early as next year. (More chronic traumatic encephalopathy stories.)