Reckoning of MLB’s toxic masculinity
Francona, Indians busted in alleged cover-up of Callaway’s inappropriate behavior
Nick Francona, the son of former Red Sox manager Terry Francona, said it best on Tuesday, when he wrote that “there needs to be a reckoning across Major League Baseball.” Baseball has a culture problem. This isn’t news, and you won’t find many who will argue the other side of it. But until people like Terry Francona, Cleveland Indians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti and other leaders across the game are willing to admit it and start re-examining their core beliefs, this problem isn’t going to go away.
It hasn’t been a good year for baseball, and it took another downward turn on Tuesday, when new details emerged about what appears to be a massive cover-up by Francona and the Indians of years of inappropriate behavior toward women by former pitching coach Mickey Callaway.
One month after The Athletic’s extensive reporting that five women felt sexually harassed by Callaway, Francona’s pitching coach from 2013 through ’17, The Athletic released a second report indicating that Francona and the Indians higher-ups were aware of Callaway’s inappropriate behavior in Cleveland.
According to the report on Tuesday, which cites audio recordings of a Cleveland-based lawyer who was hired by the Indians at the time of Callaway’s wrongdoings, the lawyer said Francona would be willing to speak to a disgruntled husband who accused Callaway of sending “unsolicited pornographic material” to his wife.
Francona was asked about the report on Tuesday but declined to comment, saying it wasn’t the right time to respond, but he did say, “nobody’s ever deliberately covered up for anybody, I can tell you that.”
Asked if he was aware of the Callaway incidents earlier this month, Antonetti had said “Not to my knowledge, no. And there had never been any complaints against Mickey in his time with us, either to me or to our human resources department or other leaders.”
Unfortunately for Francona and Antonetti, The Athletic interviewed 22 people who had worked with Callaway while with the Indians who confirmed that his behavior would’ve been nearly impossible for those in leadership positions to be unaware of.
“I laughed out loud when I saw the quote (in The Athletic’s original report) that said it was the worst-kept secret in baseball, because it was,” one Indians employee said. “It was the worstkept secret in the organization.”
Meanwhile, Nick Francona said on Twitter that his father “lied to me” when confronted about it and “it is clear that he simply doesn’t get it.”
While Nick admitted he and his father don’t have a close relationship, “largely as a result of disagreements about his conduct, some of which has been reported over the years, and some of which has not,” Nick’s comments continue to paint a picture of an Indians organization that embraced inappropriate behavior such as Callaway’s.
Former Mets general manager Jared Porter, who was also accused of sexual harassment and subsequently fired; former Mariners CEO and president Kevin Mather, who made inappropriate comments about immigrants, among other things, and resigned; and, likely soon, Callaway, who is currently suspended as the Angels pitching coach while the team investigates, are losing jobs in baseball not because of questionable comments, but because they’re no longer capable leaders.
When Mather resigned last week, it wasn’t simply because his comments were offensive, which they obviously were. It was because there was no longer a way for him to effectively lead an organization that now certainly includes groups of people who were marginalized or insulted by him. Surely, they lost respect for him. His words would no longer matter to them, and thus made him an ineffective person to build a positive culture throughout the organization.
The Indians are now facing the same situation.
Though Callaway is no longer with the organization — he left the Indians to be the Mets manager in 2018, was fired two years later due to poor performance and then hired as Joe Maddon’s pitching coach in Anaheim — the Indians are still being led by men who have quite clearly not been building a culture that protects women, respects the truth and embraces accountability.
When Mather resigned last week, Mariners chairman John Stanton told reporters, “The process of building a strong organization doesn’t occur in one move or one night. Nor, in my opinion, can it be destroyed by one set of comments.” He’s right, of course.
The Indians culture won’t be decimated tomorrow after the revelations of today. Rather, it’s clear the culture that’s been built over the long-term is one that had allowed Callaway’s inappropriate behavior for years.
The Mets said they didn’t know about this when they hired him, that the Indians never said anything.
In New York, it got worse. Women told The Athletic he shoved his crotch near the face of a reporter while she interviewed him, told another woman if she got drunk with him he’d give her exclusive information, massaged another woman’s shoulders in the dugout when nobody was watching and continued to be relentless in his pursuit of turning professional relationships into romantic ones.
In the Mets organization, he earned the nickname “D*** Pic Mick,” according to the report.
Imagine, years and years of this behavior, countless women affected, with evidence building in the form of first-hand accounts, text messages, photographs and audio recordings, but the Indians and Mets said they were not aware.
This is the culture in baseball today. It won’t change overnight.