Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times writes that troubled Mariners’ outfielder Milton Bradley has pondered suicide following years of stress and frustration stemming from baseball.

The answer was simple. For the last two years, since he first came back from a torn ACL in his knee, suffered late in the 2007 season when he fell while arguing with an umpire, Bradley has been allowing “unpleasant thoughts” into his head. Thoughts about what? Well, sometimes suicide.

“When you start feeling that the only way you can end it is to kill yourself, that’s not a healthy feeling,” Bradley said of the constant negativity and anxiety that surrounded him. “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.”

Now, obviously that’s an attention-getter right there. It’s what folks will be talking about in the street tomorrow. But it’s only part of what Bradley wanted to convey. This doesn’t mean he was about to end his life. What it does mean is that Bradley, as a man who does an awful lot of thinking and put quite a bit of thought into the answers he gave me this morning, began pondering the merits of suicide. He told his wife that he could understand why people chose to end their lives. Not that he was about to rush out and do it himself. But that he could sympathize with their feelings. And that’s not a good thing. To be so unhappy that suicide begins to look like a reasonable alternative.

Sometimes we all get caught up in the actions of an athlete and forget that they’re all human. I’m guilty of this too; I see a headline and think to myself, “Well, that’s just Milton Bradley – he’s crazy.” But it takes an article like this to really put things into perspective.

Athletes are paid an enormous amount of money to play a game. But with that money comes stress and the pressure to succeed on a consistent basis. In today’s world, the media has access to everything so these athletes’ private lives are often on full display. That only leads to more pressure and stress, and as a human being I only hope that these athletes can deal with these circumstances.

Here’s hoping Bradley gets the serious help he needs.

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Somehow, someway, the Cubs found a team to take Milton Bradley off their hands. And somehow, someway, the Mariners found a team to take Carlos Silva off their hands.

In a trade only Chicago and Seattle fans could love (and hate?), the Cubs traded Bradley to the M’s for Silva. The Cubs will also receive $9 million in cash to help cover some of Silva’s salary over the next two years.

So basically, the Cubs traded their garbage to the Mariners for their trash. But the key is that both teams rid themselves of headaches.

Bradley is only a season removed from batting .321, but he’s also a headcase and could potentially ruin a clubhouse. He was a horrible signing for the Cubs, but Seattle has a way of mellowing players out so maybe Bradley will succeed as the club’s left fielder and part-time DH.

There’s really no silver lining when it comes to Silva, unless you buy into the theory that he will succeed by jumping to the NL. He posted an 8.60 ERA and a 1.70 WHIP in 30 innings last year and a 6.46 ERA over 153 1/3 innings in 2008. And that was in a pitcher’s park. The guy isn’t good, but again, Bradley is no longer a Cub and at least Chicago was able to scoop up $9 million in the deal too.

Photo from fOTOGLIF