Opinion: MLB must do more than suspend pitching coach accused of sexual harassment
Noteworthy as the suspension that effectively ends Mickey Callaway’s career is, the accountability can’t end there.
While it was Callaway who sent the unsolicited photos and made the unwelcome comments and overtures to multiple women, it was the higher ups who allowed his alleged pattern of sexual harassment to continue for as long as it did. Who shuffled Callaway along from one team to the next, either ignoring or not caring to look further at the whispers and reports that he was making what was already a challenging workplace for women downright toxic.
Yet, to see Major League Baseball’s decision Wednesday, it was as if Callaway was some rogue operator, a one-off who isn’t, in fact, representative of a culture that for decades has marginalized and demeaned women.
“The clubs that employed Mr. Callaway each fully cooperated with (the investigation), including providing emails and assisting with identifying key witnesses,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in his statement announcing that the former New York Mets manager will be suspended at least through the end of the 2022 season.
“Harassment has no place within Major League Baseball, and we are committed to providing an appropriate work environment for all those involved in our game.”
If that’s true, then it should follow that Manfred and MLB will be digging into what manager Terry Francona and others in the Cleveland organization let slide, given reporting by The Athletic that showed, in painstaking detail, that Callaway’s alleged predatory behavior was an open secret when he was that team’s pitching coach.
I would expect, too, for Manfred and MLB to examine how New York Mets president Sandy Alderson could have hired not one, but two, men with a pattern of gross behavior: Callaway and Jared Porter, who was general manager for all of about a day until it came out he had stalked a female reporter while working for the Chicago Cubs.
And it would stand to reason, again given The Athletic’s reporting, that Manfred would want to know what people in his own office knew about Callaway – to say nothing of the blatant misogyny that any woman who has worked in and around baseball has experienced.
But I won’t hold my breath.
Yes, it’s progress that baseball took action against Callaway. With as damning as the stories by The Athletic were, though, it didn’t have much of a choice. But Callaway is merely representative of baseball’s underlying problem, a culture that either ignores women or objectifies them.
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“I apologize to the women who shared with investigators any interaction that made them feel uncomfortable,” Callaway said in a statement. “To be clear, I never intended to make anyone feel this way and didn’t understand that these interactions might do that or violate MLB policies.”
Really? I don’t know what man needs to hear this, but no woman is watching her phone in eager anticipation that you’ll send her unsolicited, inappropriate photos. When you make lewd comments to a woman in her workplace, it’s creepy, not a compliment. When you continue to pursue a woman after she’s made it abundantly clear she’s not interested, it’s not endearing doggedness, it’s stalking.
That Callaway may have thought any of this was OK is an indictment of the entire sport, which doesn’t see women as equals or deserving of respect. There is a direct line from his behavior to it taking Kim Ng 30 years to become a general manager when Theo Epstein was one before his 30th birthday.
Punishing Callaway was the easy part. But if Manfred and MLB are serious about making the sport more inclusive, and safer for the women who work in it, they need to dig deeper.
I assure you, there is more to find.
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.