Atlanta Braves: Powerful Story of “El Oso Blanco” Evan Gattis
By Seth Carter
The former Atlanta Braves slugger has announced that he is done with baseball. We take a look back at his run with the Braves.
Former Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros slugger Evan Gattis has officially announced his career as a Major League Baseball player is finished.
Some using this as an opportunity to joke about being unable to hit anymore without the sound of a banging trash can, but that’s not happening here.
Today we will remember the legendary road he took to get to the majors. We will reflect and respect the battles he has fought and won.
The only mention of banging will come along with the thunderous echo that reverberated throughout the stadium when El Oso Blanco struck.
The road to Evan Gattis’ 2013 debut with the Atlanta Braves is just the beginning of the legend of El Oso Blanco.
In 2004, Gattis found himself consistently playing on high school traveling teams with other future major leaguers. Some of the players he shared dugouts with in high school included Clayton Kershaw, Austin Jackson, Homer Bailey, Billy Butler, and his future teammate on the 2013 Braves, Justin Upton.
Gattis was projected to go in the first eight rounds of the 2004 MLB draft, but he made it clear that he planned on going to college. He received a scholarship to Texas A&M and then ended up in rehab.
Gattis began abusing alcohol and marijuana during his senior year of high school and was still struggling with the divorce of his parents from when he was eight.
His mental health and substance abuse issues drove him into rehab across the country and away from the game of baseball altogether.
Baseball began as an outlet, an escape from the hardships of reality. Only, the better he got, the more the pressure mounted. His escape from anxiety became one of the primary sources of it.
Gattis told USA Today in a 2013 interview,
"“I was terrified,” Gattis softly says, “of being a failure.”"
His father, Jo Gattis, told ABC13 in Houston that his son had completely forsaken the game.
"“He looked me in the eye and he said ‘I don’t want to talk baseball anymore, I’m done,'”"