Alex Dickerson has never been a good sleeper. During his rookie year with the Padres in 2016, his insomnia was so bad he didn’t sleep a single night before a day game all season.
“Every time you saw me, I had pulled an all-nighter,” said Dickerson, a Carlsbad resident and 2008 graduate of Poway High School. “I’d just roll out there and gut it out and hope I’d sleep better the next night.”
He knows what doctors and studies say about the impact of blue light on sleep, but over the years, he has learned to stop fighting and lean into life among the nocturnal.
In the early hours of the morning, Dickerson often listens to podcasts, watches TV, or plays video games. Anything to get out of his mind and exhaust himself enough to rest.
“It’s been bad my whole career and a lot of my life,” Dickerson said with a slight chuckle. “My sleep schedule, once it’s off, it’s off for good.”
At the start of his career, he’d fixate. Thoughts about his swing mechanics, or one pitcher or another he might face would rattle around, keeping him staring up at the ceiling. Oftentimes, he’d worry himself awake with the fear of tiredness.
“When I first got called up, it was more the fact I was nervous about not sleeping that caused me not to sleep,” Dickerson said. “There’s trash all over my room and it doesn’t bother me, but every swing I take every day I want those to be perfect. It’s just the way my mind works – it’s not the healthiest way to think but it’s how I’ve always been wired.”
Over the years, the anxiety or “baseball OCD,” as Dickerson, 33, described it, has subsided, but the sleeplessness has built itself into his daily routine.
“Around every third day or so my body catches up and I sleep for like 12 hours straight,” Dickerson said. “I’ve found that I just have to wear out my mind until I pass out. Nowadays I don’t really have anxiety about it. I am decently well-off money wise, a lot of those anxieties you have when you are younger aren’t really popping through my head, I just don’t sleep.”
Despite the restless nights, Dickerson, a 6’3” left fielder, hit well enough for the Padres as a rookie, batting .257 with 10 home runs in 84 games.
“A lot of my career I felt like I was playing with my hands tied behind my back,” Dickerson said. “I am playing the worst sport for [insomnia]. We got long nights, early mornings. You get cranked up way late at night and might have to take caffeine to get up for a game. Then you are traveling – there are no off days.”
Dickerson spent six injury-plagued seasons between the Padres, Giants and Braves. Tommy John’s surgery after a UCL ligament tear caused him to miss an entire season, as did a back surgery. A bone cyst in his heel, strained hip flexor and ankle injury after stepping on a sprinkler have also contributed to his time on the injured list.
Last season he appeared in 13 MLB games before entering free agency. Dickerson opened this season in Mexico with the Monclova Steelers before being released after 10 games.
Dickerson has found a new home in left field with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League, a partner league of Major League Baseball.
Dickerson described the Ducks as a good opportunity to fix “bad mechanics” that he picked up over the last few years. Albeit, a much less glamorous grind than the MLB.
“I’m sleeping in a horrible bed, I have a seven-hour bus ride before a game and I need to be up at six in the morning,” Dickerson said with a laugh. “It’s definitely not easy, I can tell you that.”
Dickerson a prolific hitter at Poway High, explained the problems with and solutions to his swing in the same matter-of-fact manner an orthopedist might break down a knee replacement.
“I’ve gotten the opportunity to fix a lot of the mechanics I thought were broken over the last couple years,” Dickerson said. “To extend my career I drastically changed my mobility where I was a hundred times looser. I was finally able to touch my toes. What I didn’t take into account though, I lost track of where my swing was. Everything was longer. I kind of had to rebuild from scratch. I had to focus on hitting the ball the other way.”
Through 60 games, Dickerson has hit 15 home runs and is among the league leaders in batting average: .353.
“Having to see pitching at a lower caliber forced me to relearn in similar ways to when I first came up,” Dickerson said. “When I first got here, I found myself getting out quite a bit on guys that were throwing way below [Major League] hitting speed. The cool thing about that was I had to adjust, moving around the box and think about selling out to hit the other way. In that process things have been slowly starting to click into place. When guys are throwing mid-90s, those are some of my easier at bats, because there is way less time to think.”
Dickerson is hopeful that another chance to face Major League pitching will come.
“I’ve gotten the kinks out of the system and I’m ready to go back [to Major League Baseball] if someone gives me that opportunity,” he said.
If that opportunity doesn’t come, Dickerson said he will still be happy with his major league career.
“I’ve had to overcome a lot and I’ve had some points where I was one of the best hitters in baseball for a few weeks on end – I’d get that hot,” Dickerson said. “It’s not the perfect road but it’s one I had to learn from.”
In the meantime, he continues to lean on guidance his father used to give him as a kid playing little league ball in Poway.
“My dad taught me to finish what you start, push through and give it what you got.”
