Khalil Greene's fight for his Major League Baseball playing career

If we can judge professional athletes by what we see - there is a point where St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Khalil Greene has to suck it up and be a professional.

He has stunk up the joint through the beginning of the 2009 baseball season - and is now supposedly getting help for having some sort social anxiety disorder.

I feel strongly that average baseball fans identify more with Greene and show a lot of sympathy towards him, because he is the moppet who looks like a surfer dude - it isn't such a bad thing to show compassion, but someone is paying him millions to play a game and if he can't handle failure, he is in the wrong job.

If he didn't like the attention - he should be a librarian instead of a baseball player.

However, maybe Greene likes playing baseball because he is good at it - good enough to be a regular Major League shortstop for several years. Good enough to be sought after by one of the most historic franchises in baseball. He may not have lived up to the expectations, but he clearly had shown spurts of talent.

Playing baseball was the only thing keeping him sane - however the fact he can't go out and be left alone is really what is eating him up inside. The fact he has struggled so bad does the one thing he can't stand, which is being scrutinized by people whom he could probably care less about like the media and the fans.

He is under some scrutiny and maybe for the first time in a long time - is being held accountable for something he is not doing right in a game he loves.

It just seems kind of weird, you have guys like Ryan Braun, Dustin Pedroia and Evan Longoria, who are among the young stars in the game - they are baseball players first, but still have sort of the 'face' to present themselves to the media and to fans.

Then you have players like Greene, who have enjoyed some success, but somehow is really introverted and sort of aloof - I assume for him, the attention was 'bad enough' when he was having some sort of success or when he was even the star of his team in college.

But now he can't go out and just play the game.

Time will only tell if Greene can bounce back and hopefully he puts himself back together - so he regains the confidence to become a competent professional.