Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
For those who don't have a subscription:

quote:

Addressing the alleged conduct laid out in The Athletic article, Antonetti said he wanted to make one thing clear: “When I read the article, that was the first time I became aware of the alleged behaviors.”

One reporter pushed Antonetti on that, pointing out that after the Mets hired Callaway as their manager before the 2018 season, they learned about an incident that happened during his time in Cleveland. The reporter asked Antonetti if there was ever any communications between the Mets and the Indians about that incident.

“Not to my knowledge, no,” Antonetti said. “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.”

Remember this, it will come up later. And by later, I mean literally the next paragraph:

quote:

in 2017, an angry husband repeatedly called the team’s fan services department to complain that Callaway had sent “pornographic material” to his wife. Those calls were brought to the attention of Antonetti, manager Terry Francona and general manager Mike Chernoff; the Indians spoke with Callaway about the matter. A Cleveland attorney spoke with the wife and said – in a phone call that was recorded – that Callaway had expressed remorse to him. The attorney added that “the Indians are frickin’ pissed as hell” at Callaway and offered to have Francona call the husband. Additionally, an MLB security official contacted the husband and told him: “Mickey wants this all to go away,” and the husband later emailed MLB directly about Callaway.

"There had never been any complaints against Mickey in his time with us, oh except for that one time that he started sexting some random fan's wife and said fan complained all the way up the chain to me and MLB."

quote:

“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,” said one Indians employee. “It was the worst-kept secret in the organization.”

So everybody on the FO side absolutely had to know about this behavior. Anybody else?

quote:

One former pitcher under Callaway said that Callaway’s conduct was widely known as early as 2010, when he was working in the minor leagues; There, he made inappropriate, sexualized comments about women and pursued them relentlessly. He’d often ask fellow players “where’s the beef?” and indicate he was on the prowl for attractive women, the player said. (“Beef” is a term used within some MLB clubhouses to refer to women, particularly those who are not spouses or partners of players.)

The player said there were even times when he was warming up before a game and Callaway would be sidling up to women in the stands near the dugout and flirting with them instead of helping him.

“It gets kind of awkward when he’s checking out players’ girlfriends,” the player added.

Oh okay, so players absolutely knew too, because while they were warming up in the pen Mickey is trying to get their girlfriends' numbers.

quote:

“You definitely knew he had a lot of other women on the side,” said the wife of an Indians player that year. “He was just someone you wanted to stay away from.”

...And the players wives knew for that very reason. So basically everybody three degrees from this guy was aware, cool!

quote:

In 2011... he tried to rekindle a relationship with a woman who dated him during his playing days. She broke it off when she discovered he was days away from getting married. The woman, who previously worked in baseball, has known Callaway for decades and says Callaway never liked that she worked in the sport.

“He very much is of the mindset that women have one purpose,” she said.

Sounds like a lovely guy!

quote:

...Antonetti’s declaration that “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,” prompted multiple people who interacted with Callaway during his time in the Indians organization to contact The Athletic and accuse Antonetti of being evasive.

“(Those) comments hit me the wrong way,” said one former Indians employee. “I know that’s the way Chris has to do it and run things, but the amount of people in that organization who know about all that stuff, I don’t know how he can then face his staff.”

"Obviously the boss has to do some PR damage control, but it'd been cool if he could have thought of any other way then just flat out lying and kinda throwing staff who absolutely did know about this under the bus in the process." :thunk:

quote:

That summer, [a married woman Mickey had an affair with] spoke on the phone with Tom Mannion, a partner at a Cleveland law firm.

“(Callaway) shouldn’t have done it. He’s wrong; he knows that,” Mannion said during one call, which the wife recorded in August 2017.

Mannion continued: “I’ve actually talked to Francona and he told me he was willing to talk to your husband and you, and he said this has cost Mickey huge financially. It has cost him huge within the organization … he told me, he said, ‘Tom, I’m not losing my pitching coach.’”

Oh cool, so not only was Francona fully aware that Callaway was a sexpest, but he didn't give a poo poo and just wanted it all swept under the rug so he could keep his pitching coach.

quote:

Less than a month later, he was hired as Joe Maddon’s pitching coach in Anaheim. In spring training last year, Maddon praised Callaway as “very bright” and as someone who could analyze the game “extremely well.”

“There’s so many things he brings to the table,” Maddon said. “But I think it’s primarily him. He’s got a nice way about him.”

Speaking of piece of poo poo managers who like to ignore horrible treatment of women by their colleagues...

There's plenty more but you get the gist. Basically everybody even remotely close to this guy knew what he was about, and not only was nothing done to stop him, but both the Indians and Mets bent over backwards to try and cover it up. The seemingly universally beloved Francona valued Callaway's skills as a pitching coach over the fact that he was a known creep and worked with the Indians legal department to try and "make it all go away" so he could keep his guy. And even after getting bounced from two organizations and everybody in MLB knowing about this conduct, he still got ANOTHER gig with the Angels.

Can't wait for the Angels to fire him and MLB to wipe their hands of the whole thing like this was just a case of one bad egg, and not living breathing proof of the systemic cultural problems baseball has around the treatment of women.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Salvor_Hardin
Sep 13, 2005

I want to go protest.
Nap Ghost

The monacle popping emote yankee fans used for him a decade ago was more apt than we knew.

mcmagic
Jul 1, 2004

If you see this avatar while scrolling the succ zone, you have been visited by the mcmagic of shitty lib takes! Good luck and prosperity will come to you, but only if you reply "shut the fuck up mcmagic" to this post!
https://twitter.com/JonMeoli/status/1366821258449612806

The Orioles are cheating.

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010
Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

El Gallinero Gros fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Mar 2, 2021

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

Everyone involved in this should be fired and banned from baseball. In fact, just preemptively fire every front office, give the teams to their respective cities.

elentar
Aug 26, 2002

Every single year the Ivy League takes a break from fucking up the world through its various alumni to fuck up everyone's bracket instead.

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

The Braves are young and cool and still on the wrong side of addressing their racist iconography and fanbase so it should feel very familiar still.

Kirios
Jan 26, 2010




El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

Do you really want me to try to sell you on the Astros

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010

elentar posted:

The Braves are young and cool and still on the wrong side of addressing their racist iconography and fanbase so it should feel very familiar still.

Cleveland dragging their asses on changing the name is one of the reasons I'm gone. This was the last straw, as I said, but it's ownership constantly blowing it up, it's getting my heart broken when the teal is actually good, it's the fact that I don't feel comfortable wearing team gear in public.

I'm just tired of this. I'm just glad Kenny Lofton hasn't been implicated in any fashion.

El Gallinero Gros fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 2, 2021

Penisaurus Sex
Feb 3, 2009

asdfghjklpoiuyt

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

You can root for an also-cursed franchise but the weather is much nicer and the management is still incompetent but in different ways (Mariners), and also familiar ways (executive says racist poo poo at a rotary club)

Intruder
Mar 5, 2003

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

hello

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010

Penisaurus Sex posted:

You can root for an also-cursed franchise but the weather is much nicer and the management is still incompetent but in different ways (Mariners), and also familiar ways (executive says racist poo poo at a rotary club)

Honestly, the Mariners amount of great likable players would have me considering it, and I enjoyed the poo poo out of the Mariners documentary

Plus I've always wanted to visit Seattle.

Penisaurus Sex
Feb 3, 2009

asdfghjklpoiuyt

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Honestly, the Mariners amount of great likable players would have me considering it, and I enjoyed the poo poo out of the Mariners documentary

Plus I've always wanted to visit Seattle.

Plus no one will ever accuse you of front running.

It's like committing yourself to leftist ideology: no one ever did it because they wanted to win.

Intruder
Mar 5, 2003

It's absolutely frontrunning, they have the number six org

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

Ronald. Acuna. Jr.

Hitting 490ft bombs, popping huge bubble yum bubbles and pissing off southern whites.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair
As soon as the latest Athletic article came out about Callaway I immediately remembered this:

https://twitter.com/DeeshaThosar/status/1154861951618637824

which was chalked up to general dumbassery at the time but seems incredibly illustrative taking into account everything else.

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.

LeeMajors posted:

Ronald. Acuna. Jr.

Hitting 490ft bombs, popping huge bubble yum bubbles and pissing off southern whites.

Counterpoint, literally moved their stadium to get away from non-white people, the Tomahawk chop.

I'm not going to pitch the Mets, because the only kind thing to be said about them is that their former bad owners were completely loving hapless. The new one is evil, too.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

The Tigers are close by and not terrible I think? I'd say the Pirates, but I think their ownership and management are possibly worse than Cleveland's.

Julio Cruz
May 19, 2006

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

remember the best player on your team for the last 5 years? come join him where he is now

e: actually bear in mind that all this poo poo around Callaway happened before the Mets hired him so unless you're really convinced by the change of ownership/FO you might want to steer clear

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Bird in a Blender posted:

The Tigers are close by and not terrible I think? I'd say the Pirates, but I think their ownership and management are possibly worse than Cleveland's.
The Tigers have been basement dwellers for years now

Intruder
Mar 5, 2003

LeeMajors posted:

Ronald. Acuna. Jr.

Hitting 490ft bombs, popping huge bubble yum bubbles and pissing off southern whites.

He already mentioned he didn't like the racism so I doubt he wants to do the chop

R.D. Mangles
Jan 10, 2004


Root for the white sox or the padres.

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


habeasdorkus posted:

Counterpoint, literally moved their stadium to get away from non-white people, the Tomahawk chop.

Intruder posted:

He already mentioned he didn't like the racism so I doubt he wants to do the chop

Ugh, gently caress. That's very fair and gently caress the Braves for moving. And gently caress the chop for a lot of reasons up to and including gently caress Florida State.

The team is fun tho!

I should just pitch my AL team, the A's!

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010
If proximity were the decider it'd be Toronto, Milwaukee or Minnesota (I live In NW Ontario). None of these seems a good choice. The Twins are eternally mired in cheap owner-ville, I've never been able to care about the Jays even when they dominated, the Brewers might be the least interesting team in MLB history.

The Mets feel like someone tried to recreate the sadness of the Cubs on the east coast and succeeded wildly.

The Tigers have a lot of cool history.

The guy who bought me my SA account is a Pirates fan, they have only ever brought him pain.

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
Padres are honestly probably among the least bad choices. Tough to stay up for their games, tho.

For a club that you don't have to work about time zones, Blue Jays would probably be good?

Johnny Bravo
Jan 19, 2011

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Goddammit Tito.

Actually, you know what? I'm done. No more rooting for Cleveland. This is the last loving straw.

I'm a free agent, sell me on your squad, unless you're Boston, NYY, or Toronto.

I'd recommend the Angels for a number of reasons but uh, Dick Pic Mick still being employed might be a non starter

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.

LeeMajors posted:

Ugh, gently caress. That's very fair and gently caress the Braves for moving. And gently caress the chop for a lot of reasons up to and including gently caress Florida State.

The team is fun tho!

I should just pitch my AL team, the A's!

The Braves team is very fun and good, agreed. So it could definitely be worse.

elentar
Aug 26, 2002

Every single year the Ivy League takes a break from fucking up the world through its various alumni to fuck up everyone's bracket instead.

Intruder posted:

He already mentioned he didn't like the racism so I doubt he wants to do the chop

yeah i wasn't actually serious, unless you were locked into a Southern TBS upbringing i don't think anyone should be joining Braves fandom till they at least clear up the nickname and commit themselves to doing more than PR work, especially now they don't have Hank Aaron there to shame them into doing the right thing once in a great while

cool teams at the moment seem to be the White Sox and Padres and Blue Jays and maybe the Twins?

generally respected because nonthreatening teams are like the Pirates and Royals and ...the Reds? A's?

i'm sure i'm forgetting a whole bunch of horrible poo poo.

Tony Phillips
Feb 9, 2006

El Gallinero Gros posted:

Honestly, the Mariners amount of great likable players would have me considering it, and I enjoyed the poo poo out of the Mariners documentary

Plus I've always wanted to visit Seattle.




Edit - In typical M's fashion they'll all bust anyway but at least they'll keep their can't miss prospects a year longer! (So they can work on their defense in Tacoma)

Julio Cruz
May 19, 2006
there are many words I'd associate with the Pirates but "respected" isn't one of them

if you want a young, fun, good team Padres or Jays are both good choices, White Sox too if you can ignore the managership of one Anthony La Russa

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

FlamingLiberal posted:

The Tigers have been basement dwellers for years now

Sorry, I meant that their owners and staff aren't terrible people, or at least not more terrible than the average MBL owner.

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


elentar posted:

unless you were locked into a Southern TBS upbringing

It’s weird how much this was a thing.

When I was a kid in the late 80s and 90s we had the Braves on TBS, and the Cubs were on WGN like every afternoon when I got home from school. And then whatever random assorted AL games I could pick off on ESPN, because there was only one ESPN then.

Goddamn :corsair:

So I’m a TBS poisoned lifelong Braves fan and I developed an early love of the A’s because my best friend then was from Texas and loved the Rangers and was big in the AL West. So we followed along the AL as much as we could pre-broadband. Also I was crazy for the Bash Bros and Dennis Eckersley and Dave Stewart, etc. Fun teams.

I’m still waiting on Todd Van Poppel to pan out :colbert:

Tony Phillips
Feb 9, 2006

LeeMajors posted:

When I was a kid in the late 80s and 90s we had the Braves on TBS, and the Cubs were on WGN like every afternoon when I got home from school. And then whatever random assorted AL games I could pick off on ESPN, because there was only one ESPN then.

I absolutely saw more Cubs and Braves games as a kid than Mariners.

Cubs games in the Summer of 1984 were pretty cool, and Dale Murphy was about the best guy ever.

LeeMajors
Jan 20, 2005

I've gotta stop fantasizing about Lee Majors...
Ah, one more!


Tony Phillips posted:

I absolutely saw more Cubs and Braves games as a kid than Mariners.

Cubs games in the Summer of 1984 were pretty cool, and Dale Murphy was about the best guy ever.

Andre Dawson, Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace. I watched Kerry Wood’s 20k game live.

It’s insane how marketable the Braves and Cubs were nationally back then.

IcePhoenix
Sep 18, 2005

Take me to your Shida

El Gallinero Gros posted:

The Twins are eternally mired in cheap owner-ville

The Twins are usually around league average payroll-wise

bawfuls
Oct 28, 2009

the current champs are also the home of Crimes.xls

can't beat that :smuggo:

alpha_destroy
Mar 23, 2010

Billy Butler: Fat Guy by Day, Doubles Machine by Night
Rooting for the Royals allows you to actively root against Cleveland, and still root for Carlos Santana.

Darude - Adam Sandstorm
Aug 16, 2012

If you're looking to get away from a front office that had something to do with the Callaway stuff, turning to the Jays probably not the best choice considering Atkins hired him in Cleveland when Shapiro was running the team soooooooooo

Dog Faced JoJo
Oct 15, 2004

Woof Woof

R.D. Mangles posted:

Root for the white sox or the padres.

The WS were a much easier sell before LaRussa and Eaton rejoined them, but everyone else is pretty fly.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


LeeMajors posted:

I’m still waiting on Todd Van Poppel to pan out :colbert:
You need to Van Stoppel

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Explosionface
May 30, 2011

We can dance if we want to,
we can leave Marle behind.
'Cause your fiends don't dance,
and if they don't dance,
they'll get a Robo Fist of mine.


The Cubs are my team, but I'm rooting more for the Padres this year as I think they're going to be fun as heck.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply