Quick. List your favorite MLB Cy Young Award-winning All-Star pitcher accused of violent sodomy.
The lovable scamp Trevor Bauer remains on “7-day administrative leave” for 44 days and counting. If you’re a follower of penal system investigations or MLB disciplinary proceedings, you can expect this isn’t good news for Trevor Bauer. Apparently “she asked me to” isn’t the appropriate response to the question of, why did you strangle a woman with her own hair then punch and sodomize her until she bled. To be fair, there isn’t any good answer to that question.
When the Trevor Bauer pummeling sex story first broke, I declared Trevor Bauer career toast. I received a million nasty comments from Dodgers fans. They are hardly alone in the world of sports fandom in insisting their star is the one innocent guy.
The common defensive refrain was Bauer did nothing illegal since the crazy woman asked him to sexually abuse her. He’s never being convicted. As if pre-cogging the outcome of future criminal proceedings is paramount when it comes to job security. How often have you heard, well, yes, Bob in Marketing is accused of raping a busload of elementary students, but his lawyer feels he may get off in court on a legal technicality, so he’ll definitely be at the company Christmas party. Just kidding, Christmas parties are no longer allowed.
As a practical matter, Bauer is hardly clear of criminal guilt. Nobody knows. In general, there’s a rule people can’t consent to be beaten up or abused. You may remember the bum fight videos of yore. Dudes were paying the homeless to fight each other and do crazy-dangerous stunts on video. Like a human circus sideshow. The courts ruled that you can’t pay messed up people to hurt themselves. Which seems to be the sensible rule in a society you don’t want to resemble ancient Rome. Or current Vegas.
Adult consensual prostitution itself is illegal. Even a sober Mensa student can’t sell sex for money. Nor can a crazy dumb one consent to having a vlogger/MLB pitcher punch her unconscious because it makes her tingle. BDSM ‘experts’ rushed in to defend the rough acts as standard deviant behavior, which it may be in sexual fetish laymen’s terms, but district attorneys aren’t sexual fetishists laymen. Not the laymen part at least. We’ll see how that goes in the #MeToo era.
Criminal guilt and “do I want this huge creep coming to the office every day” are two different matters. Rumors are that many other Dodger players expressed huge dismay at the possiblity of Bauer returning to the office. When former Dodgers World Series-winning pitcher Dave Stewart publicly declared he wouldn’t return for a planned reunion as long as the team had Trevor Bauer on the roster, that was pretty much the kicker. And that’s even before considering the MLB’s position as modern-day outspoken woke status.
Like all pro-sports leagues, MLB is working at warp speed to prove its progressive and social justice bona fides. They denounced a guy yelling “Dinger” at the Rockies mascot, who named happens to be Dinger, as the world’s worst racist. They did think it through for almost half a second. They moved the All-Star game out of Atlanta because the dominant partisan winds disfavored Georgia’s new voting laws. And they surely have made a big public show of cracking down on any athletes accused of beating women. This ain’t your granddaddy’s MLB.
I was shocked when Bauer, through his lawyer, publicly copped to the sexual details of the woman’s allegation. I’ve been following celebrities for a long time now and never have I seen an attorney or spokesman not “categorically deny” all accusations. Even the ones blatantly true. It’s pretty much why you pay these people. Admitting grossly violent bedroom behavior, even while displaying text messages showing she asked for it, was one massive confession that your client is a messed-up dude. Any man who beats a woman or sodomizes her while asleep, under any circumstances, does not belong in polite society. Let alone working in the family entertainment business.
Now, a second woman has appeared on the Trevor Bauer-likes-to-punch-women-during-sex scene. That was inevitable. When a celebrity gets involved in a sexual imbroglio, either it reveals an pre-existing pattern of behavior or it merely brings out the opportunists looking to jump onto a payday or publicity bandwagon. See the Deshaun Watson case as the best recent example of that phenomenon. His single accuser grew to 22 irate masseuses claiming he whipped out the little Watson and demanded satisfaction in about a day. How many of those outcall massage ladies have viable cases? Who knows. More than one likely, less than 22 certainly.
According to the Washington Post, by way of ESPN who doesn’t charge for you to read most of their stories, Bauer had a previous girlfriend receive an ex-parte restraining order in 2020 against him after claiming he punched and choked her without consent during sex. These ex-parte restraining orders don’t mean much legally as they represent one side of the allegations and a court simply stepping in to say, yeah, that sounds horrible. Here’s a restraining order just in case what you’re saying is true. However, this accusation of punching and choking was made before the current woman alleging the same. In the very least, Columbo would call that super curious. A pattern? I think that still takes a third.
Bauer himself came out publicly to “categorically” deny this second, but previous, woman’s allegations. He claims they were in a long-term consensual relationship, that none of the violent episodes cited by her in the restraining order happened, and that she was seeking to extort millions out of the then young star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. Bauer is now a Dodger and the Indians are called the Guardians of Traffic, so a lot has changed in but a couple of years.
The Washington Post has photos of the woman with bruises and copies of a text she has from who a phone they’ve sussed out belonged to Bauer threatening to kill her if she didn’t go away. Sure, we’ve all had that thought before with exes gone horrible wrong, but how many of us have texted that message? If nothing else, it shows quite a bit of stupidity in moments of anger.
Bauer chalks this second woman’s story up to the extortion plot. There’d be no way to know who’s telling the truth at this point. Given Bauer’s current circumstances, and the admissions he already made on the current case, this previous case can’t simply be written off as yet another gold digger trying to get money out of a star athlete. It may end up that way, but it certainly can’t be dismissed out of hand. Not if you’re applying the ole common sense test. This quack like a duck.
Which leaves the MLB in an even bigger pickle. As to this new allegation, they immediately said they were investigating. That’s the MLB’s version of a dad telling the kids in the back of the car, “We’ll get there when we get there.” MLB can’t leave Bauer on rotating administrative leave forever. It seems pretty certain the Dodgers are screwed on his guaranteed $105 million contract. His attorneys have already said they won’t even take any calls concerning a settlement offer to go away. That had to be Plan A for the Dodgers. These MLB contracts are fairly ironclad. Unless Bauer is convicted of a crime, they’re likely up a financial creek without a paddle. You can’t refuse to pay a dude because he’s a sick puppy in the bedroom and gets his rocks off on legal, violent sexual encounters. His brand sponsors have more leeway.
In the Trevor Bauer case, we now have MLB’s first woke regime conundrum. Being a business that largely didn’t give a crap about morality for the first 150 years then turning on a dime presents a whole series of new challenges having nothing to do with the penal code.
Perception, optics, concern for public image and blowback, Twitter activism, etc., etc. Past commissioners and team leaders simply got to look the other way. This one isn’t going away. Trevor Bauer has a million social media followers and access to national media attention any time he wants. He has money, power, and to an extent, still has fans. He’s not going down quietly, even if vast sums of money are put on the table to make that happen. He’s owed $100 million. What could you possibly offer to make him go quietly? Especially understanding the kind of man he is. An attention seeker, vlogger, guy who seeks out controversy, and allegedly likes to sodomize women after choking them unconscious. That’s a different beast. Things are going to get very ugly.
