Show Me You Take This Seriously
I had lunch with my parents on Monday and when the subject of the MLB playoffs came up, my mother asked for whom I was rooting. When I told her I was backing the Dodgers, she asked why I wasn’t throwing my support to the Cubs, given their long drought and exciting cast of players.
I explained that I didn’t feel comfortable rooting for the Cubs because of their midseason acquisition from the New York Yankees of Aroldis Chapman, who was suspended earlier this year for domestic violence — specifically firing a gun at a party after arguing and allegedly grabbing his girlfriend. As was the case with many domestic violence reports, Chapman wasn’t charged. MLB suspended him for 30 games, but he pitched well after his return and the Cubs traded for him to bolster their postseason roster.
If I were a Cubs fan, I would have been particularly hurt by this trade, given that cheering for my team would mean cheering for this horrible person and that he would likely play a significant role in their first title in over 100 years. As an outsider, I wasn’t totally sure how I was going to feel once the postseason started. Would I be able to cheer heartily for the players around Chapman and simply accept his presence as a failure of the system rather than a failure of this specific team?
After all, my beef is with the way sports leagues in general handle domestic violence. I can hate the Cubs for trading for Chapman, but the league itself is plenty complicit and I haven’t been pushed to the point where I’ve stopped watching baseball altogether.
In the moment, it became clear to me that cheering for the Cubs wasn’t going to be possible. When Chapman came into his first (and subsequent) game, I wanted him to fail so badly. Not necessarily because losing at baseball would be an appropriate punishment for Chapman, but because I didn’t want the Cubs organization to benefit from bringing this person into their ranks and then using him to win a title. I wanted the team to fail for this, which is why I told my mother the Dodgers were my pick.
As my father and I explained the history of the Chapman story, my mother asked me what I thought the league and its teams should have done differently. Setting aside the administrative changes I would make to how the league, and other leagues, handle domestic violence cases, I have really only one request. Take domestic violence seriously.
I’m not wise enough to know what the exact right punishment is or the exact right kind of counseling Chapman needs to make sure he doesn’t endanger the people he claims to love. That’s a question for domestic violence experts who really understand the research and psychology involved.
I can’t fix Aroldis Chapman, but the point isn’t to fix Chapman. The point is to use the game’s place in society to change the way our culture thinks about domestic violence. That’s where MLB and the Cubs (and other leagues) have failed to the point at which I can’t be happy for the other 24 guys on the roster or the management team that assembled them.
Every time one of these cases happens, the team, players, and many fans snap into a mindset of “this guy is our teammate, he made a mistake, it’s none of my business, etc” nonsense. Teams don’t investigate the cases, they have superficial conversations with the offenders, and they don’t sit down to craft an appropriate response.
I understand that sports are businesses and people are paid to win. Chapman is a superb pitcher who makes the Cubs better between the lines. Acquiring him makes good baseball sense and if you have him, getting rid of him for issues not related to his performance doesn’t make baseball sense. I don’t know if a “one strike and you’re out” policy is the best option, or if there’s a reasonable path to rehabilitation for most offenders. That’s a question for people smarter than me. From a fan perspective, though, the only way I feel comfortable cheering for an organization, much less a player, is if they demonstrate they understand the seriousness of the offense. You don’t have to sacrifice winning for the sake of your morals (although I’d respect the hell out of that), but there’s no reason you can’t be forceful in your language and clear in your message that what Chapman did was wrong and doing what he did makes him a bad person.
What I want to hear is “Player X did a horrible thing. An unforgivable thing. But he insists he wants to change and he is doing A, B, and C to work toward that goal. We want to support his efforts to become a better person.” I don’t want to hear about “mistakes” or that he’s a “good guy” or that “well we don’t really know what happened.” No victim blaming. No discussion of baseball as a road to salvation. No “obviously I don’t condone it, but…” No efforts to minimize what he did.
I want institutions like MLB and the Cubs to use these cases as an opportunity to model behavior. If Theo Epstein, Jake Arrieta, and Kris Bryant all made statements supporting the victim and making it clear that Chapman had to work to repair the damage he had done, it’s easy to imagine a lot of young people watching at home would take that to heart.
People get so caught up in the idea of defending athletes on their favorite teams. I assume it’s because they want to see their team win and if you denigrate or remove a good player, that hurts the odds of winning. For some reason we’ve decided to turn questions of character into sports debates. The fact that Chapman fired a gun in anger is unrelated to which baseball teams are good. There’s no reason for Cubs fans to defend him as a person. He hasn’t earned that respect, unless you believe throwing a ball really hard is something that absolves you of all moral obligation.
And I understand there are people who say it’s not the job of teams and leagues to police society. That’s a fine position. There’s a difference between a quasi-judicial approach and simply taking the time to learn about domestic violence and how to speak about it intelligently. I don’t need players to be blacklisted automatically, but if I’m going to cheer for their team, I need to know the team is on the right side of the issue — that they care about the victim and the millions of victims who aren’t in relationships with pro athletes.
I don’t know that I’ll ever get to a point where I don’t hate Chapman. He may have crossed the Rubicon. However, I need to see that the people around him who didn’t fire the gun understand the issue and care about it, or I will be left with no choice but to hate them too.
When you defend Chapman or minimize his actions, you are essentially saying what he did isn’t a big deal and that attacking women is acceptable. You don’t have to send him to Siberia where he can never pitch again, but please, please, please take this seriously. Devote some time to learning about this problem and how to talk about it in a way that makes the world a better place to live. I am asking so very little.
