Southpaw #3: What to do about the failures of MLB’s domestic violence policy
Five problems with the league’s current domestic violence policy and five proposals to make it more effective.
Dear readers,
Welcome to the third edition of Southpaw Report. We’ve appreciated the feedback that we’ve gotten in response to the first two issues, and we always welcome further engagement. If you’ve enjoyed the newsletter so far, please share it with friends who you think might be interested! We’re always trying to grow the community.
One quick note: Our featured piece this week discusses domestic violence, and some of the stories we link to include graphic descriptions of violence and assault. If these topics are potentially upsetting for you, please take care while reading.
Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy is failing. This week showed why it needs to be fixed.
Michael E. Keating/WVXU
This past week served as a stark reminder of Major League Baseball’s failure to address the sport’s ongoing domestic violence crisis.
On Monday, former Major League pitcher Charles Haeger shot and killed himself in Arizona. Three days earlier, Haeger allegedly murdered his ex-girlfriend, Danielle Breed, at their home in Scottsdale. Arizona police were searching for the knuckleballer as a suspect in Breed’s death when they discovered his body near the Grand Canyon.
On Tuesday, the day after news of Haeger’s murder-suicide broke, the MLB reinstated Yankees right-hander Domingo German following his 81-game ban for assaulting his girlfriend in September of 2019. German’s suspension was the fourth longest in the history of the league’s domestic violence policy, which might be cause for celebration, if not for the fact that the suspension was only as long as it was because German allegedly brutalized his girlfriend in front of an MLB official, making it difficult for the MLB Players’ Association to contest the league’s verdict. In their coverage of German’s reinstatement, the New York baseball media repeatedly pointed out that, despite reaching the end of his suspension, German would be unavailable to pitch in the playoffs. They conveniently omitted the fact that a known domestic abuser will earn half a million dollars next season and will never see the inside of a jail cell.
Also on Tuesday, The Athletic’s Katie Strang and Ken Rosenthal published a detailed investigation of the MLB’s handling of a domestic violence accusations against free-agent pitcher Sam Dyson. The report, which includes extensive interviews with Dyson’s ex-girlfriend, Alexis Blackburn, highlights the myriad ways that the league’s domestic violence policy protects assailants while neglecting victims. (According to The Athletic, it took Blackburn ten months to secure an interview with the MLB’s investigators after going public with her accusations in November of 2019.) The report concluded that many of the practices that the league has adopted to support victims of assault—mostly the spouses of players—are either insufficient or not readily accessible to those victims.
These three headlines constitute only the latest chapter in Major League Baseball’s long and sordid history of bungling domestic violence accusations against its players. Until 2015, the league had no policy on domestic violence incidents; since then, it has investigated a total of fifteen major leaguers under the policy and suspended a total of twelve. All twelve of those players have returned to the league. In the 2019 American League Championship Series, fans were treated to the spectacle of two known assailants— Astros’ closer Roberto Osuna and Yankees’ closer Aroldis Chapman—duking it out for the AL pennant.
These headlines provided even more evidence that the MLB’s domestic violence policies are failing to either deter assailants or adequately punish them for their actions. This reality is hardly a revelation, and several reporters and legal experts have written extensively about the problems with MLB’s policy and proposed detailed solutions to those problems. Below, we’ve compiled a condensed list of their diagnoses and recommendations. We’ve relied particularly heavily on the reporting of Sheryl Ring, a lawyer and journalist who has done exceptional work on this topic. Check out the links to her pieces that we’ve included below.
Five problems with the MLB’s domestic violence policy:
The league’s penalties for domestic violence are incongruous with its penalties for less severe violations. As a rule, players who violate the league’s domestic violence policy are eligible to play in the postseasons. (The league sometimes prohibits them from doing so for reasons explained here, but they remain eligible in theory.) On the other hand, players who violate the league’s ban on performance-enhancing drugs are automatically ineligible to play in the postseason. The league has not explained why brutalizing a human being is less worthy of punishment than a victimless crime like doping.
The current policy gives players too much influence over their punishment. The league does not publicize the criteria it employs when determining the length of a suspension for a DV (domestic violence) violation, turning its whole deliberative process into a black box. But as Ring and others have noted, the decisions that the league has handed down suggest that it offered shorter suspensions to players who have agreed ahead of time not to appeal the league’s decision. Although this practice follows the logic of a plea deal in criminal cases, it’s not obvious that assailants should benefit from such an arrangement in what is effectively a labor dispute. As Ring has argued, “It’s an open question . . . whether baseball’s accused domestic abusers ought to have a say in their own discipline, particularly when that discipline is being enforced by their employer.”
The current policy creates perverse incentives for management. Under the league’s current DV policy, a player found guilty of violating the league’s policy can be suspended without pay for a period determined by league investigators. But beyond that, there are no lasting consequences for players or the teams that employ them. As a result, the policy allows owners and GMs to treat a player convicted of a DV violation much like they would treat a player coming back from a bad injury: as cheap talent to flesh out their rosters. As Ring has written, “[T]here’s a legitimate argument to be made that, from a baseball perspective, talented domestic-violence offenders are an opportunity. Obtain the player at a discount, wait for the suspension to be served, trade them at a profit.” Moreover, because the league’s punishment ends with the suspension, the policy also gives management cover to sign assailants under the pretense that they have been reformed. See, for example, Hal Steinbrenner’s suggestion that Aroldis Chapman, who allegedly choked his wife and fired a handgun eight times into his garage wall during a domestic dispute, had “paid the penalty,” and that “sooner or later, we forget, right?” We should not forget, and neither should management.
A domestic violence charge can help a player’s career. While a DV violation carries significant short-term financial penalties for a player, it does little to hinder his long-term career prospects, and, if leveraged correctly, can actually boost his value. As the example of Roberto Osuna shows, the temporary decrease in a player’s value that follows from a DV violation makes him affordable for competitive, big-money teams. Nothing in the MLB’s current policy prevents a player fresh off a DV violation from getting traded from a losing team to a playoff contender, performing well in the postseason, and cashing in on that performance during their next free agency period.
The policy allows the league to shield players from legal scrutiny. Although domestic violence remains a criminal offense, the majority of MLB players charged with DV violations never face any criminal charges. A study in the Harvard Law School Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law found that, of the 64 athletes accused of domestic violence across the MLB, NFL, and NBA between 2010 and 2014, only one was convicted of criminal charges. In some cases, victims or law enforcement have explicitly declined to bring charges, but in many cases, the league has simply opted not to involve law enforcement whatsoever, favoring its own unilateral investigations. As Ring points out, that the league frequently fails to pass along domestic violence accusations to the police isn’t surprising to anyone who has paid attention to the league’s long history of circumventing or skirting the criminal justice system. But in the case of domestic violence accusations, the league’s decision to protect its players at the expense of justice for victims is particularly appalling.
Five potential solutions:
Avoid a zero-tolerance policy. While it may seem at first blush like a zero-tolerance policy (a lifetime ban for a violation of the DV policy) would serve as a more effective deterrent than the league’s current punitive scheme, extensive research has shown that such a policy, especially in the context of a professional sports league, both is ineffective and creates significant difficulties for victims, often leading to worse outcomes than non-putative intervention. Researchers have demonstrated that victims are less likely to report an assault if they believe doing so will imperil whatever financial or domestic stability their abusive partner provides.
Extend resources and training to partners, spouses, and families. As the recent report in The Athletic suggests, the league’s current preventative education scheme fails to reach the people who need it most. In addition to the training and seminars it offers to players, coaches, and executives, the league should make similar resources available to employees’ families and spouses.
Create long-term consequences for players and the teams who sign them. When it comes to punishing perpetrators of domestic violence, the league has to strike a balance between excessively punitive measures, which have been shown to increase recidivism rates, and excessively lenient punishments, which do not serve as an effective deterrent. Ring has suggested a reasonable middle ground, which would involve barring all players found in violation of the DV policy from postseason play for the ongoing season and the following seasons, thereby disincentivizing other teams from picking up that player on the cheap to bolster their championship hopes in the next season.
Implement a uniform punishment scheme. Ring suggests eliminating the pseudo-plea arrangement altogether in favor of a uniform suspension system like the one the league uses when punishing PED violations: 80 games for a first offense, a full season for a second, and a lifetime ban for the third. Under this scheme, players would have the option of applying for reinstatement after half their suspension if they demonstrate through a designated mechanism, like a variation of a restorative justice procedure, that they have taken satisfactory responsibility for their actions.
Address the racial disparity in domestic violence violations. This is perhaps the most difficult issue for the league to overcome, but it remains a vitally important one. Baseball is currently around 60% white. But of the 12 players suspended under the league’s new policy, 10 are players of color. All but one of those players received suspensions longer than 20 games, while the two white players found in violation of the policy—Steven Wright and Derek Norris—were each suspended for fewer than 15. (Bear in mind that multiple studies have shown that people of color are not more likely to be domestic abusers than white people.) A uniform disciplinary code would help correct the discrepancy between suspensions, but a more comprehensive solution will require the league to address all the facets of systemic racism that remain in the sport.
At the end of the day, none of these reforms would have prevented Charles Haeger from shooting his girlfriend and then himself. Perhaps he would have been less likely to commit violence if these and other preventative resources had been available to him when he was still in the league, but that’s pure speculation.
Beyond any material impact, though, the symbolism of these changes matter. Major League Baseball has made it incredibly easy to rationalize rooting for a team that employs a known assailant. The league and its owners reliably spin a DV violation as a hiccup in a star’s career, a temporary lapse in judgment that offers the player an opportunity for reflection and reform. More often than not, the mainstream sport media’s coverage of DV violations focuses exclusively on the effects that the violation will have on a player’s career or on his team’s playoff prospects. With the exception of the recent report in The Athletic, very few stories even attempt to humanize victims or give voice to their trauma. Back in the ballpark, the fans, unencumbered by any lingering sense of moral unease, celebrate the assailant’s triumphal return to the field. They buy his jersey, cheer his home runs, and pay for his contact extension with their ticket purchases. The league, having served its role as judge, jury, and reformer, continues to profit from this collective moral amnesia.
Against this background, these reforms could go some way toward fixing a corporate structure that has shown itself to be callously indifferent to the violence and brutality committed by its employees. It would suggest, perhaps falsely, that Major League Baseball actually prioritizes the safety of the baseball community over its own profit margin and the profit margin of its owners. It would hint—subtly, safely, in a whisper that the league’s PR department could amplify into a shout—that the people in charge of baseball value something beyond winning, making money, and staying in charge. In other words, it would suggest that baseball and its operations are subject to a logic beyond the unfeeling rationality of wins and losses. And that, in and of itself, would be a small victory.
Go Deeper:
A short history of domestic violence accusations in the MLB, from the 1990s to the present: “Major League Baseball’s Dark History with Domestic Abuse,” by Ryan Davis in Sportscasting (April 5, 2018)
A comprehensive proposal for reforms to the MLB’s domestic violence policy, and an overview of the social science research that supports them: “Towards a new approach to MLB’s domestic violence policy,” by Sheryl Ring in Beyond the Box Score (October 23, 2019).
A psychologist’s perspective on addressing domestic violence in sports: “Domestic Violence in Sport: Complexities and Ethical Issues for Psychologists,” by Ryan Silwak et. al in Journal of Sports and Social Issues 44, vol. 3 (March 2020).
A discussion of the sports media’s responsibilities when covering domestic violence accusations: “Sports Media Coverage of Domestic Violence Fails Us All,” by Dave Deckard in SB Nation (April 11, 2016).
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . Octavius Cato, one of America’s earliest athlete-activists and a forgotten martyr of the civil rights movement? A 19th-century baseball player fought for Black suffrage — and was killed for it,” by Chris Lamb in The Washington Post (October 8, 2020).
. . . why anti-racist activism is not precipitating the NBA’s latest ratings crisis? “Concern Trolling About NBA Ratings Has Always Been The Loudest Dog Whistle,” by Dan McQuade in Defector (October 9, 2020).
. . . setting the bar low for on-field demonstrations of racial solidarity? “When expectations aren’t low enough,” by Ursula Parsons in SB Nation (September 8, 2020).
. . . WNBA players’ sneaky effort to unseat Kelly Loeffler without uttering her name? “The One Name the W.N.B.A. Won’t Say,” by Kurt Streeter in The New York Times (October 5, 2020).
. . . the total chaos of college football during the pandemic? “Interview: Nicole Auerbach on college football in 2020,” on the Burn It All Down podcast (October 8, 2020).
Restorative justice (RJ) as a model for or feature of a uniform punishment scheme is a captivating suggestion, especially considering its (growing) role within social justice and (higher) education practices over the past decades. Education, in particular, and baseball are rhetorically complementary - education as a pillar of the "American Dream," and baseball as "America's pastime" - and I would be enrapt to see a mutualistic relationship from these institutions with RJ as the centerpiece. Three tiers of RJ - community building, responding to harm, and community (re)integration - makes intentional and constructed space for both survivors and perpetrators of harm, and there could be plenty of exploration within this tiered framework to address the shortcomings of the MLB's current punitive measures. Send this shit to Manfred