Maddon shows much to learn on domestic abuse
Cubs manager: ‘I have nothing to do with this’
We are heading toward an unprecedented postseason in Major League Baseball, and we’re not talking about progressive bullpen use or the diminished impact of the starting pitcher.
Rather, we are days from a playoffs where half the teams in the field will employ a player who has been suspended or placed on administrative leave under MLB’s domestic violence policy.
That’s a rather unsettling metric given the small population of players involved, but it’s not the worst of it.
No, what’s worse is that little time passes before we’re reminded someone in or around the game doesn’t grasp the basics of domestic violence, nor how to talk about it or react to accusations.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon joined that group Tuesday with discomfiting comments on his starting shortstop, Addison Russell, who is on administrative leave and might miss the playoffs.
Russell’s ex-wife, Melisa Reidy, wrote in a blog post Friday that Russell physically abused her during their 2 1⁄2-year marriage. Her post came three weeks after their divorce was finalized and 15 months after an MLB investigation of Russell launched after a close friend of Reidy’s suggested Russell was physically abusive in a comment on Reidy’s Instagram post detailing their separation.
In an interview on WSCR, the Cubs’ flagship radio station, Maddon told the Bernstein & McKnight show Tuesday that he had not read Reidy’s post. That he was not going to read it, that he will wait for the investigation to play out, for both sides to have their voices aired.
Then he pivoted from administrative pablum to the problematic.
“I’m not going to be swayed one way or another by reading this,” he said. “I really have no interest in reading this. I’m more interested in waiting for the investigation to finalize itself, and then I’ll read what’s going and what had been said once it’s been vetted properly.
“Anybody can write anything they want these days with social media, blogging, etc. So I’m just going to wait for it to play its course, and then I’ll try to disseminate the information based on both sides, MLB itself, along with the players union and getting together with Addison and his former wife, and then I’ll read the information to try to form my own opinions.”
Reidy had not cooperated in the ongoing investigation, as was her right; after all, it was apparently not her choice to make public the full scope of her crumbling marriage at that time.
Russell has denied the accusations, both in June 2017 and on Friday.
Hours after the post circulated, MLB and the Cubs acted swiftly: Russell was placed on administrative leave and Maddon’s boss, president of baseball operations Theo Epstein, called the allegations “disturbing.”
Four days later, Maddon went a different route, adding: “I have nothing to do with this. … I really don’t understand why I have to become more involved than that and anybody else does. I’ve felt that way from the beginning — reading this or her account of it has nothing to do with anything according to the results. So let’s just wait until it properly runs its course and make our decisions.”
There’s a lot to unpack there, but the hole from which Maddon will never emerge in the eyes of many was dug with just eight of those words.
Anybody can write anything they want these days.
Intended or not, that’s an immediate doubting of the accuser, that she would toss these words around thoughtlessly, that she somehow has something to gain from it beyond having her truth known.
Perhaps Maddon knows this, but in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence, false accusations are very much the exception. If the allegations come in the public eye, accusers are castigated, threatened, trashed. Suggestions that these allegations are made in a cavalier fashion only further discourages victims from coming forward.
Moreover, as a well-respected Leader of Men, one would think Maddon might have an interest in the moral fiber of his shortstop. Had Russell periodically shown up to work late, or ignored instructions from the coaching staff, or incessantly trashed his teammates, certainly that would have been dealt with, and that would have factored into Maddon and the Cubs’ character assessment of Russell in the present and future.
Yet he’d rather not know about an alleged preponderance of physical, mental and emotional abuse?
Maddon’s public persona is that he’s more intellectually curious than your average baseball man, which only makes his disinterest in reading Reidy’s account sting all the more.
This October, more potentially awkward moments await.
Roberto Osuna might well be on the mound if the Astros defend their World Series title. The former Blue Jays closer accepted a 75-game suspension after he was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman; hours after Maddon’s comments Tuesday, prosecutors in Toronto withdrew the assault charge against him as part of an agreement.
Steven Wright, the knuckleballer who has emerged as a key reliever for the Red Sox, served a 15-game suspension in April following an offseason incident with his wife.
Jeurys Familia, a reliever for the Athletics, was suspended for 15 games in March 2017 “for inappropriate conduct” with his wife, who asked that simple assault charges against Familia, then with the Mets, be dropped.
The specter of violence against women will be unavoidable this postseason.
Ideally, all involved would be wellversed in the dynamics of the issue and could speak candidly about the player’s violation and contextualize his failings and achievements appropriately.
Failing that, as Maddon showed us Tuesday, sometimes it’s better to just say nothing at all.