Dodgers Hire a Team Psychiatrist : Baseball: Team gets noted Ohio doctor to work with both major and minor league players.

In an unprecedented move, the Dodgers hired their first team psychiatrist--for both the major and minor leagues--to deal with player performance as well as on-going behavior problems existing in the organization.

Herndon Harding Jr., 35, a psychiatrist whose expertise is in psychotherapy and dealing with young adults, resigned his position effective this Friday as director of the State of Ohio Department of Mental Health. He will begin working with the Dodgers in three weeks at the winter leagues in Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

Harding, whose sports background is limited to working with amateur athletes in private practice, said he will have no other clients his first season with the Dodgers.

“I will be full time with the Dodgers and at some point may do some other sports psychiatric practice, but the Dodgers are the reason I am coming out there,” Harding said Monday from his Columbus, Ohio, home.

The Dodgers have been negotiating with Harding for several months. In September, Harding spent some time at the Dodgers’ instructional league in Arizona.

“It’s not like the Dodgers are in big trouble and so they are hiring a psychiatrist, but they feel that this is the way to go to best serve the players’ needs,” Harding said. “Not just so they perform the best they can but so their lives are better off the field.

“They (the Dodgers) wanted a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, so that person can encompass not only performance issues--decreasing anxiety and enhancing concentration--but also treat any major psychological and psychiatric issues that may come up.”

Sources close to the Dodgers say that Harding was hired to work especially in the minor leagues, where marital and other behavior problems have surfaced. Two seasons ago, the Dodgers lost one top prospect because of marital problems and helped another top prospect, Braulio Castillo, undergo alcohol rehabilitation.

“I have taken some of our guys to psychologists and I’ve known other individuals who have gotten help, so I guess it makes sense the Dodgers would do this for the entire organization,” said Joe Alvarez, who managed the Vero Beach (Fla.) Dodgers last season. He spent 10 years in the Dodgers minor league system, seven as a manager.

The Dodgers minor league teams compiled the best winning percentage in baseball this season, but at the end of the major league season, there was only one position player in the starting lineup from the Dodgers’ farm system, catcher Mike Scioscia.

The first half of this season some pointed to the blending of personalities that led to bad morale in the clubhouse as one reason the Dodgers struggled on the field. But in the second half, the Dodgers had the best record in the National League, 47-33.

Dodger reliever Tim Crews said he was “baffled” by the news that the Dodgers hired a team psychiatrist.

“I didn’t know that guys had had problems on this team, and if they did . . . well, I take care of my own problems,” Crews said. “Everybody was united the second half, going after one goal.”

Several major league teams use team psychologists on a part-time basis, but only the New York Mets and the Oakland Athletics contract for full-time team psychologists. A major league player cannot be forced to see a team counselor under the collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players.

Harding is great-great nephew of former President Warren G. Harding. He comes from a family well known in psychiatry fields for almost a century. His great-grandfather founded Harding (Psychiatric) Hospital in Worthington, Ohio, in 1916. Harding was the director of residency training there before moving to the state mental health department.