ALWAYS ANOTHER MOUNTAINTOP
S pencer Horwitz is standing in left field and he knows something is deeply wrong. His heart is racing, his hands are sweaty, and his vision is blurred. He’s on the baseball field but Horwitz is definitely not thinking about the game.
It’s June of 2018 and the 20-year-old is playing with the Bourne Braves of the Cape Cod Baseball League. The club is visiting Veterans Field in Chatham, Mass., the scene of what is about to become one of the worst moments of his life.
Horwitz feels like he’s going to pass out, which brings a fresh wave of fear. Am I having a heart attack? he wonders. Am I going to die? The uncertainty magnifies his panic. Though he can’t figure out what’s going on, he knows he can’t just continue to stand in the outfield.
Holy shit, he thinks. I need to get out of this game. I can’t be doing this.
“I think the hardest part was not knowing what was happening,” Horowitz says now. He’s relaying the story during a late-August conversation in the Toronto Blue Jays’ dugout at Rogers Centre, sitting on the bench during batting practice in a sleeveless shirt and his uniform pants. The 26-year-old doesn’t seem upset while reliving that night in Chatham and the terror he felt. For one thing, he’s spent years working to understand it. For another, he now knows the larger impact sharing his experiences with anxiety can have.
Horwitz has carved out a name for himself with the Blue Jays since being recalled from triple-A Buffalo in June, displaying an impressive bat and a sound plate approach. Entering the final series of the campaign, his .359 on-base percentage led all MLB rookies with at least 300 plate appearances, while his .800 OPS ranked third. The numbers are the latest proof Horwitz can handle himself in the majors, and it’s safe to assume the Blue Jays will be counting on him for even more in 2025. He’s also becoming a fan favourite and the role suits him, too, as cameras rarely catch him without a smile on his face.
While open discussions about mental health have become more common in pro sports in recent years, the fact remains that there’s still a level of hesitation for athletes before they open up about such personal struggles. In that sense, Horwitz is a rarity — and a gift. He’s open, honest, and genuinely embraces the opportunity to be vulnerable.
“I don’t want anyone to think I’m doing this for attention,” Horwitz says. “I’m doing it because I have felt it personally and I’ve seen it. People deal with it, and I just feel like I want to bring a little good to the world.”
H orwitz felt off when he woke up in Chatham on that morning in 2018. He’d visited Fenway Park to take in a Red Sox game the night before and had a fun time, so he wasn’t sure what was causing this fog.
He decided to carry on as normal and hit the gym, a task that would usually set him straight. But that didn’t work and, while lifting weights, the vague feeling that something was off sharpened. Horwitz felt increasingly anxious, so he called his mother, Laura, who’s a nurse back home in Maryland. She helped him work through his feelings and settled him ahead of his game that night.
At 20, Horwitz was coming off his sophomore year at Radford University and suiting up for Bourne was the first real high-stress environment he’d encountered. Playing in the Cape was a big deal for someone with aspirations to be drafted and, halfway into the season, Horwitz was doing well despite all the pressure he put on himself. He was hitting .279 with a .765 OPS over 22 games while learning to play the outfield after spending most of his time as a first baseman.
Horwitz had trouble seeing the ball in left field in the early innings of the contest against the Chatham Anglers. As the panic from earlier in the day returned and intensified, he knew he had to do something — anything really. He asked to be removed and because there was no clubhouse, the only place to go for privacy was the parking lot. Horwitz found himself inside a coach’s SUV, where he was soon joined by teammate and friend Chase Murray.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘This is very real,’” Murray recalls. “We sat in silence for a little bit and there was a moment where he said, ‘I don’t know,’ and just broke down. It seemed like his brain was going a million miles an hour. And he couldn’t seem to find the words to explain what was going on exactly.”
Murray estimates they were in the vehicle for more than half an hour and, at one point, the two were joined by a team trainer. They contacted Horwitz’s mother, who immediately got on a flight to Massachusetts. Horwitz met her at the airport.
“When I got in the car, I could see he was bouncing very high,” Laura says. “Just full of a lot of energy, and he didn’t feel good.”
Horwitz was staying with a host family in Bourne, and he and his mom went back to that house, where they talked for a while before turning in. In the morning, Laura contacted one of her friends who worked at the psychiatric unit at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for advice. They decided that keeping Horwitz “safe” was of critical importance. Laura made the call to pull her son out of the Cape Cod league and drive him home.
I t became clear to Horwitz and his family in the days that followed that he had suffered a panic attack and, when he arrived back home in Baltimore, the episodes didn’t stop. He estimates that at one point he faced as many as five or six attacks per day, before the frequency slowly decreased to three to four per day and then two to three. “It was a rough couple weeks,” he says.
Horwitz met with doctors and was prescribed medication to help manage the attacks. He also began attending group therapy sessions, which helped him understand he wasn’t alone and that others were dealing with similar issues.
Different theories exist within the family about what initially sparked Horwitz’s struggles, but everyone agrees he was dealing with a severe issue that could have halted his baseball career altogether.
The gym was always Horwitz’s safe space, but after the attack in Chatham he initially resisted going back for fear of experiencing another episode. He felt the same way about the baseball diamond. August came around and, though Horwitz was feeling better, he still found it hard to be alone because he was constantly scared of spiralling and still unsure what had caused the attacks in the first place — and what might bring them on again.
The fall semester of his junior year was approaching. It was a crucial time for Horwitz because he would soon be draft eligible. He told his mother he didn’t have the strength to go back to school, but she assured him he was improving. Horwitz decided to take the plunge and headed back to Radford.
He told his university teammates what had been going on — a major step considering the stigma that can still be attached to mental health issues. Horwitz didn’t think twice about the disclosure. “It made me feel better talking about it,” he says. “So, why not keep talking about it?”
He jumped right into baseball and looks back at that period as a form of exposure therapy — one that offered him a clear turning point on the morning of the Radford Highlanders’ season-opening game against East Carolina.
Horwitz had picked up journalling after his first attack because it helped him immensely in sorting through the jumble of emotions he was feeling, and so, when he woke up, he pulled out his notebook and jotted this down:
February 15th, 2019.
I’m going out there. I don’t care how I feel. I don’t care what my mind tells me. I’m so happy with how far I’ve come.
“It was me really reflecting on the past six months,” Horwitz says now. “How much I’ve grown. I remember before the game I was so nervous. And one of the first balls in the first inning was hit to me. I’m like, ‘Okay, that was good.’ That really put me at ease.”
H orwitz doesn’t hide his battle with mental health issues. Instead, he’s as open as can be, and the MLB Players’ Weekend initiative this past August offered him a chance to use his platform to shed light on the subject.
During a game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Horwitz wore green cleats and used a bat of the same colour to highlight mental health awareness. Those items were later put up for auction with proceeds going to The Hidden Opponent, a non-profit advocacy group that raises awareness for student-athlete mental health.
Dr. Arman Taghizadeh, a board-certified psychiatrist, is the medical director of Hidden Opponent and has worked with Horwitz in the past. They’ve maintained a relationship and Horwitz has twice appeared on Taghizadeh’s podcast, The Mindset Experience.
According to the doctor, professional athletes face more risk factors for mental health challenges than the average person due to the sheer pressure of their jobs. Add in travel demands, disrupted sleep schedules, and a sense of self that’s closely tied to success in their sport, and it’s no surprise when a player starts to feel worn thin.
“Less of them are talking about it than are actually going through it,” Taghizadeh says. “What’s really neat about Spencer is when he first started to open up about it — initially it was very difficult — but he started to understand and realize that other athletes were going through the same, if not similar things. And I think that was very validating and also, sort of, gave him a sense of, ‘Wow, why aren’t we talking about this more? Why aren’t I talking about this more?’ Because if others are going through it, being more open empowers them to be able to have those conversations.”
Horwitz takes proactive measures to ensure he’s prioritizing his mental health. He journals three to four times a week, writing about baseball or gratitude or something as simple as his plans for the day. He makes sure to get outside, even just for walks, and still finds that working out is among the best things he can do to keep his mind clear. He also continues to take medication and checks in with a therapist every now and then.
“He’s jumped in with both feet,” says his mom. “He really wanted to learn about the mind and how to overcome things. He learned the tools he needs to navigate.”
Horwitz, who was selected by the Blue Jays in the 24th round of the 2019 draft, doesn’t believe his issues are fully behind him.
“There’s always another mountaintop,” he says. “It’s like, okay, I got that first game back [at Radford] and that was great and then it’s, okay, what about my first game as a professional baseball player? Then high-A, double-A, triple-A, fall league? My first game as a Blue Jay? Everything.
“You wonder, maybe this will make me tick. All these new experiences and you don’t know what’s going to make you tick and what’s not. I wouldn’t say I’ve turned the corner, but I have more confidence that I can do it.”
As he’s matured, Horwitz has also become a sounding board for Murray, the same friend who sat in the SUV with him when he was in the midst of that first panic attack.
Murray developed his own anxiety issues and now turns to Horwitz for advice on how to manage certain feelings. One day he was sitting in a car and his heart began to race. Murray texted Horwitz, who immediately replied to suggest Murray try the Wim Hof Method, a breathing technique he utilizes. Another time, Horwitz messaged Murray about a book he was reading and, a few days later, When Panic Attacks, a 2006 self-help book by American psychiatrist David D. Burns, arrived on Murray’s doorstep.
“He’s a grinder,” says Murray. “He’s a guy that puts his nose down and works and he doesn’t have a lot of excuses about him.”
Taghizadeh likes to use the word “resilient” to describe Horwitz and notes that what may be more impressive than how he went about tackling his issues is the demeanour that Horwitz continues to exhibit every day.
“If you ever look at him, you see he’s got a smile on his face,” says Taghizadeh. “He still has the anxiety and he still has some of the struggles with it. Yet, he continues to show up and he embraces it and he embraces who he is and he speaks about it.
“It’s a part of his story, but it doesn’t define him and it doesn’t limit him.”