Osuna’s journey from hero to zero
Jays closer plays villain again on way out of town
Roberto Osuna is only 23 years old, but my oh my, in his short stay with the Toronto Blue Jays such a superb education in modern world values he received before he was traded away this week.
A superstar closer for his first two years in Toronto — as the writer Nathaniel Basen put it in a terrific story about Osuna in The Walrus magazine last year, the closer is the guy brought in, often at the end of a tight game, “precisely when there is the most to lose” — Osuna stumbled first when he went through a slump in the summer of 2017.
In a big game, with the Jays ahead and everyone expecting Osuna to come in to save the day, he stayed in the dugout.
Afterward, again quoting Basen, “Osuna did a strange thing: he told the truth. ‘I’m just feeling a little anxious, a little weird,’” he told reporters.
“I’m just not myself.” It seemed as though the young fellow from Sinaloa, Mexico, was hinting — though he never said so directly — that he was struggling with mental illness.
The reaction was predictable for the times: People rallied around Osuna. Fans, even sports writers were supportive. Astonishing in the meanest age, people were even kind.
Mental illness (except when it is that rarest of serious illnesses, accompanied by violence aimed at others) probably has never been so widely accepted as it is now. Celebrities and the ordinary man and woman declare it frequently and almost casually describe their battles with depression or anxiety, eating disorders and PTSD.
But Osuna didn’t get better immediately or quickly. His game continued to fall apart. He was a new father, away from home and family, and he was perplexed. At one point that summer, he said he was fine physically, but added, “I can’t understand. I don’t have words. It’s happening so fast.”
As Basen wrote, “As in life, losing reveals. You learn the most about an athlete when nothing is going right for them. Some of the Blue Jays folded this summer, electing to ride out a moribund year. But Osuna, at 22, kept coming back.”
By September last year, he was back. Basen, again: “The only proven remedy is time. What makes a slump just a slump, after all, is that it ends.” Osuna was named an all-star; the good form continued in the early part of this season.
Then came May 8 and Osuna’s arrest in Toronto in connection with a domestic assault that had allegedly occurred at a downtown apartment building.
The next day, Global News ran a picture of Osuna in a holding cell; he was stretched out on a bench, right beside one of those unbreakable metal one-piece urinal-cum-sinks. The picture’s release and publication were solely designed to humiliate a young man.
A spokesman for the network later justified the use of the picture by saying it showed Osuna had been subjected to the usual processes and wasn’t getting special treatment.
Justice, said the Global spokesman, needs to be transparent.
That was of course utter nonsense — the need for transparency and openness doesn’t extend to running photos of suspects in their cells or prisoners in theirs — but it was a clue nonetheless.
This wasn’t mental illness, even one just suspected. That is forgivable (until, you know, ala Faisal Hussain, it isn’t).
This was domestic assault, merely alleged, but as with any alleged assault upon women in 2018, the accusation alone is often fatal to the accused.
Real domestic assault is among the ugliest of crimes because of the betrayal of trust, because it is so unrelentingly intimate and personal.
I once covered the trial in Ottawa of a man named Mark Hutt, who married a lovely woman named Donna Jones and then embarked upon a campaign to destroy, isolate and torture her. She died after he badly scalded her, leaving her to suffer for 11 days in their basement, her burns becoming infected.
Hutt was found guilty of first-degree murder.
When Osuna was charged and then again when the Jays traded him to Houston Tuesday, it was as though the collective empathy and goodwill that had accompanied him through his slump evaporated.
The sports writers (with the notable exception of the Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno, who is almost always humane) and fans who had cheered him on last year were now tweeting about the “disgusting, abhorrent” stories everyone had heard about him and coolly describing him as a “reliever who beats women.”
It was as if he were Hutt. Osuna was first put on administrative leave, then in June suspended (without pay) for 75 games under Major League Baseball’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child-abuse policy, a slim document of two pages. Osuna didn’t challenge the suspension.
It was the result of a secret MLB “investigation” — all disciplinary power rests with the commissioner, with no minimum or maximum penalty and no connection to “whether the player is convicted or pleads guilty to a crime.”
There is no reference in this section or any other in the policy to the possibility of a player being found not guilty, to a player being presumed innocent.
Osuna, through lawyer Dom Basile, pleaded not guilty on June 18.