Hargrove might have hit the wall

Three days into the season, a tiny fraction of the way through a 162-game marathon, Mike Hargrove had just finished his pregame interview with the local media and was getting ready to sit down with FSN television.

"I'm tired of this (blank) already," Hargrove muttered, half-jokingly. "Is that a bad thing?"

In hindsight, yeah, it probably was unfortunate for a man who stunned sports fans Sunday by quitting as manager halfway through his best season in Seattle.

Those looking for smoking guns and conspiracy theories in Hargrove's sudden exit might have come to grips with a simpler fact, according to team insiders and sports psychologists.

The man said he was tired. Exhausted after years of the same grind. Ready to step out of an exclusive job even for a team that appeared to have finally turned the corner.

Team president Chuck Armstrong said Monday that Hargrove's resignation had nothing to do with any contract situation, neither his own or Ichiro Suzuki's, nor any unhappiness with the team or players.

"What he said publicly is the same thing he said privately," Armstrong said. "There's no hidden agenda."

Another source indicated with 100 percent certainty that Hargrove's decision was his own and not the result of pressure from M's management. He will finish out this season as a "special assistant" to general manager Bill Bavasi, an advisory role designed solely to fulfill the obligations of his contract.

While it's difficult understanding a manager walking away while his team is at the height of an eight-game winning streak, it's important to note that Hargrove first approached Bavasi about the situation 10 days earlier when his Mariners had lost six in a row. When his emotions didn't bounce back even during the win streak, Hargrove knew his time was done.

Something seemingly snapped in mid-June, after Hargrove left the team for three days to attend the high school graduation of his youngest daughter in Cleveland on June 2.

Co-workers soon began noticing a less buoyant Hargrove and the skipper himself acknowledged he wasn't feeling the same during a 10-day road trip in San Diego, Cleveland, Chicago and Houston from June 8-17.

"I thought it was strange," said Armstrong, who accompanied the team to the last three cities of that journey. "In Houston he said he felt like we'd been on the road for three months. And that wasn't one of the harder trips we've had.

"He kept telling me he was so tired. I told him maybe he should take antidepressants and he got mad. He said, 'I'm not depressed, I'm just tired.' "

Even when the Mariners began reeling off victories on their last homestand, Hargrove realized his heart wasn't in it. He talked with his wife, Sharon, who said she "threw him a lifeline," offering the previously unthinkable notion of stepping aside in midseason.

It says a lot, according to several sports psychologists, that Hargrove grabbed hold of that idea and carried it through in the macho world of baseball, where quitting isn't acceptable.

"Sports are built on legacy and what is your legacy if you quit?" said Dan Tripps, director of Seattle University's Center for the Study of Sport & Exercise. "But sometimes a legacy has to be set aside for sensibility."

Tripps said fans and media must be reminded that coaches and managers are real people subjected to extremely strenuous pressures. He felt Hargrove was looking more rundown this season, one which the manager entered on the "hot seat" with his performance being questioned from all sides.

"We all seek control," said Tripps, a former USC baseball player. "In the coaching world, you're saddled with behaviors of people you can only modify slightly, but your whole income and reputation are connected with their performance.

"It's an adversarial role, you end up drained and the biggest question is the effect on health and day-to-day living. I suspect he's emotionally exhausted."

Is Hargrove depressed? Tripps said clearly he's under "duress" and needed to react.

New York sports psychologist Richard Lustberg said Hargrove's statements on Sunday seemed genuine and should be taken at face value.

"He may just have had enough," said Lustberg. "When you look at a guy who is 57, he can come to the realization that life doesn't go on forever. People start to reassess themselves: 'Maybe there's something else I'd like to do with my life,' whether it's spending time with family or having more quality life time."

Western Washington University sports psychology professor Ralph Vernacchia doesn't think Hargrove suffers from depression so much as he just realized the need for change.

"We're always asking the question, do we live to work or work to live?" said Vernacchia. "It's hard for the general public to understand in this instance when all they see is glamour, glitz and money. Why would you quit a job like that?

"But we all come to points in life where we reevaluate the demands and stresses we're experiencing. It's not a clinical situation, it's life choices. And I respect people who have the courage to make those decisions."

Family has always been important to Hargrove. After games, in the 10-minute window before media members were allowed in the clubhouse, Hargrove always called his wife if she wasn't at the ballpark. And Sunday, as the two prepared to end their 35-year career in baseball, clearly Sharon Hargrove had helped counsel her husband and let him know it was OK for a tough baseball man to move on.

As Hargrove said, "There's a difference between being willing and able" when it came to giving everything he had to the job.

"He found himself in a place where he thought he was going to compromise something professional or personal," said Tripps, the Seattle University sports psychologist. "So he stepped out before it broke."