Last month, I made the mistake of getting sucked into an argument about Trevor Bauer with some of my students. I'm generally really good about avoiding controversial subjects in the classroom: with very few exceptions, I bit my tongue for almost the entire Trump administration. But for some reason, the whole Trevor Bauer saga is catnip to me. When someone brings him up, I can't help but throw in my two cents. On this particular occasion, it was me versus a sizable group of juniors - whom I love by the way. None of them were on my side of the argument and the whole experience left me feeling bummed out.
Who is Trevor Bauer? He has been living in my head for so long, I sometimes forget that lots of people don't know his whole story. Here's the short version: Trevor Bauer is a talented pitcher who most recently played for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He probably did his best work during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, in which he won the Cy Young Award for the Cincinnati Reds. He has always been a controversial player, for reasons I'll touch on in second, but over the past two years or so he has been more controversial than ever. In the summer of 2021, Bauer was accused of seriously injuring a woman after a night of consensual rough sex. He was placed on administrative leave by the Dodgers, and ultimately suspended by Major League Baseball for two years (later reduced). The Dodgers cut him from the team roughly two years after signing him to a three-year, $102-million contract. He wound up playing for them for only about half a season.
The controversy didn't reach a fever pitch until Bauer's accuser, Lindsey Hill, was revealed to have lied about the incident, in an apparent effort to defraud Bauer. By the time the facts of the story came to light it was October 2023, and Bauer hadn't pitched in the majors for almost a year and a half. He had now served the length of his suspension, yet no major league team offered him a new contract. They still haven't. Bauer is currently pitching in Mexico (quite well, too). He sometimes tweets about the unfairness of his situation, and most recently, he threatened to sue Major League Baseball for colluding against him.
Lately, to merely mention the name Trevor Bauer is to invite controversy. I'm in a baseball group on Facebook, "Effectively Wild," that forbids all users from posting or commenting about Bauer. To the people in this group, he is basically baseball's own Voldemort. In my lifetime, there may have well been players as divisive as Bauer. (Bonds, Clemens, and the rest of the steroid guys, Pete Rose, and John Rocker come to mind.) But I don't think there have been any who have personally bothered me quite so much.
There are lots of good reasons to dislike Bauer. (This video outlines many of the reasons why.)Here are a few of mine:
1 - He engages in immature, attention-seeking antics on the field. During spring training, he pitched with one eye closed, just to prove he could, which did little to endear him to his opponents. After being removed from a start in Cleveland, he chucked a ball from the pitcher's mound over the center field fence. It turned out to be his list start in Cleveland: they traded him almost immediately afterward.
2 - He perpetuates stupid and harmful conspiracy theories - everything from racist Obama birther bullshit, to Bush did 9/11. (During one start at Wrigley, he used his cleat to write "BD 911" into the pitcher's mound dirt.)
3 - He is a dick on social media. He routinely engages in petty squabbles with media, fans, and other players, which should be beneath him as an adult, let alone as a public figure and a pitcher of his caliber. He has legions of supporters on social media, most of them bros, whom he likes to sic on his enemines, many of whom have been women. His online footprint shows him to be childish, petty, and downright mean.
4 - He has been accused of sexual assault by at least three women. Of course, innocent until proven guilty. But also... where there's smoke there's fire? Bauer Bros will claim that these women are all liars, and that any man in a position of power is subject to inevitable claims of sexual misconduct. I'm skeptical. Where are Mike Trout's accusers? And Bryce Harper's? And Ronald Acuna's? And Shohei Ohtani's? Etc. For some reason, those lying women must just love picking on Trevor Bauer, the unluckiest man in the world.
So yeah, this guy seems like a terrible person. Even his charitable venture, the childishly titled "69 Days of Giving," manages to sound gross. But to hear the legions of (mostly) dudes defending him - including some of my students - he's a poor innocent soul who was unfairly screwed over by a corrupt system. Look at any social media thread even tangentially related to baseball, and you're bound to find a comment along the lines of "Free Trevor!"
Why are so many people defending this jerk? My answer is that it's not really about Bauer himself as much as it's about fear of the Cancel Culture Bogeyman. So many guys have a paralyzing fear that they'll be just standing there, minding their own business when suddenly a random woman will cry rape and ruin their life. The research tells us that this isn't something that happens with great frequency. About 2-10% of rape allegiations are proven to be fake, according to this article. But like unfounded fear of voter fraud, fear of spurious rape allegations have taken on a life of their own. Certainly, every accusation should be investigated, as should allegations of any crime. False accusations do happen once in a while, and they can do great damage - as in the high-profile case of the Duke lacrosse players. But actual rape happens much more often than false allegations, and I don't see it producing quite as much outrage from the "Free Trevor" crowd.
For all of the random bros willing to die on the "Trevor is Innocent" hill, his former teammates have been largely silent on the matter. True, Mookie Betts did call him an "awesome guy," in one interview. But other teammates' silence speaks volumes. An expose by an LA sportswriter called him a "pariah in the clubhouse." Is it possible that Bauer's obnoxious personality is the real culprit behind his lack of a contract? Is it possible that on one has signed him because no one likes him? Bauer and his supporters say that he is talented enough to pitch effectively in the major leagues. I don't doubt it. He's only three years off his Cy Young season, and he was pitching pretty well in 2021 when it all went down. But no one is automatically entitled to a Major League Baseball contract, not even recent Cy Young winners. In order to receive one, it helps not to be a jerk - or at least, not so big a jerk that it overshadows your performance on the field.
The Trevor Bros won't hear of it, though. To them, the fact that he hasn't been signed is just more evidence of Cancel Culture run amok, proof that conniving women routinely ruin men's lives. To me, if he never pitches in the majors again it will be too soon. In the world at large, and in sports in general, there are so many worthwhile people to root for. How about Anthony Rizzo, a cancer survivor who has raised millions for cancer research, and who routinely goes out of his way to meet kids suffering from cancer? (He's a Yankee, for God's sake, and I still think he's cool.) How about Justin Turner, who has raised massive amounts of money for homeless veterans and sick kids, and who seems like a good dude and a good teammate? How about Andrew McCutchen, who has been the epitome of cool for more than a decade now? None of these has ever been accused of sexual misconduct, by the way. Not even once.
You have the option not to root for one of the biggest assholes in baseball, you know. Because whether or not Trevor Bauer is a rapist, he certainly does seem like an asshole. And there are greater injustices in the world than one asshole being out of a job.
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| "America[n] media still wants you to believe my teammates hate me and think my sword celebration is racist." - Noted douchebag Trevor Bauer |
