BOSTON — The Netflix documentary on the 2024 Red Sox drops Tuesday — and it includes a chilling revelation from one of the team’s star players.
In the fourth episode of “The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox,” outfielder Jarren Duran — who has been outspoken about his struggles with mental health in the past — reveals that he attempted suicide during a low point early in his career.
“I got to the point where I was sitting in my room, I had my rifle and I had a bullet, and I pulled the trigger and the gun clicked, but nothing happened,” Duran said in Episode 4, which is entitled “Still Alive” and centers on Duran’s story. “To this day, I think God just didn’t let me take my own life because I seriously don’t know why it didn’t go off. But I took it as a sign of like, ‘Alright, I might have to be here for a reason.’ So that’s when I started looking myself in the mirror, after the gun didn’t go off. I was like, ‘Alright, do I want to be here or do I not want to be here?’
“I looked myself in the mirror and I was like, ‘That happened for a reason. Obviously, you’re (expletive) here for a reason. So let’s (expletive) be the way you want to be, let’s play the way you want to play. Let’s live the way I want to live.”
The revelation follows an exchange with documentary executive producer/director Greg Whiteley in which Whiteley asks Duran to clarify a statement he makes about “not wanting to be here anymore” during a time of past struggles.
Duran: It was a pretty low time for me. I didn’t even want to be here anymore.
Whiteley: When you say ‘’here,‘’ you mean here with the Red Sox or here on planet Earth?
Duran: Probably both. Yeah. Probably both. That was like a really tough time for me.
Netflix provided an advance copy of the documentary to MassLive and multiple other media outlets who cover the Red Sox under the condition that all coverage of the film would be embargoed until early Monday morning, about 24 hours before the documentary becomes available to the public on the streaming service. While Duran has seen the episode in which he is featured and many team officials have seen the entire series, the large majority of Red Sox players have not seen anything outside of the short clips that have been released publicly or the first-look extended cut shown to the crowd at “Fenway Fest” in January. Because of this, the club is largely avoiding comment on anything related to the series until its release Tuesday.
However, ahead of Monday’s embargo lift, team president and CEO Sam Kennedy issued a statement to local reporters commending Duran for speaking up.
“Jarren’s decision to share his story is an act of courage that reaches far beyond baseball,” Kennedy said. “By opening up, he’s showing others who may be struggling that they’re not alone and that asking for help isn’t just okay, it’s essential. Every member of this organization continues to stand with him. He has our deepest admiration, he’s always had our full support and we’re incredibly fortunate to have him as part of our team.”
Duran, the 2024 All-Star Game MVP, struggled early in his career and first opened up about the mental toll of struggling in the majors in an August 2022 interview with MassLive. In the years since, both Duran and team officials have been outspoken about his story. Last season, Duran was warned by Major League Baseball after he repeatedly wore a shirt that said “F— ‘Em” in bold letters on the front. That message, Duran said, along with “Still Alive,” which he writes on his wristbands before each game, are an acknowledgement of what he has been through.
“It’s basically saying the phrase to the mental demons that were trying to get me to not be here anymore,” he said last July. “Telling them to basically back off, that I can do this and I want to be here.”
Duran is a central figure in “The Clubhouse,” the Whiteley-directed immersive docuseries which “offers an unprecedented look into the personal and professional lives of the Boston Red Sox during the 2024 season.” In an interview on MassLive’s Fenway Rundown podcast, Whiteley credited Duran for sharing his story and said he believes the outfielder did so in an effort to inspire others.
“I feel like all credit goes to Jarren,” Whiteley said. “I didn’t do anything different with Jarren than I did with anybody else. I will say that I spent enough time with Jarren that I began to suspect there may be something like that in his background. I also began to suspect that he was very comfortable in talking about it. He’s the one that led that. I get the impression that he almost looks at it as a sort of obligation to kids — or as he’s explained it to me, kids in particular but maybe anybody that may be struggling with mental illness and the loneliness that comes with it. Plus, the false perception that you’re the only one on planet Earth that is feeling this way, and maybe even acting out on some of those feelings. You feel completely alone.
“As a result, I think he has looked at it almost as a calling, like, ‘I want to make sure if there is even one kid out there that felt like I have felt, that they know they’re not alone. If they can draw some inspiration from the fact I made it through those difficult times.’ Enjoying the year he was enjoying last year, frankly, that should give hope to all of us.”
In the documentary, Duran shed more light on what he experienced as a rookie in 2022, when he hit just .221 with a .645 OPS while making a series of well-publicized errors in the outfield during a 58-game major league cameo.
“I would think every day, like, ‘I can’t (expletive) do this.’ I couldn’t deal with telling myself how much I sucked every (expletive) day,” Duran said. “I was already hearing it from fans. What they say to me, it’s like, I haven’t told myself 10 times worse than that in the mirror. That was a really tough time for me.”
Whiteley later asked Duran about the burden he still carries.
“God gave me a good back so I’m carrying it pretty well,” Duran said.
