Consensual rough sex is no excuse for Bauer assaulting a woman
There’s much to like about Trevor Bauer. He won a Cy Young Award last year for being the best pitcher in the National League. He’s a serious student of his craft, constantly experimenting with the science of it. Batters are not close to catching up to him, because he has a repertoire of at least 19 pitches. And that was before Spider Tack.
He’s high strung, not necessarily a bad trait in athletes. Aaron Rodgers, Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds are a few of the greats who’ve had their peccadillos, overreacting to perceived slights. Who can forget Bauer hurling a ball over the centerfield fence when Terry Francona yanked him from a game? I gotta admit, I liked it, watched the video several times. Showed us how he really felt.
But there’s a not so fine line between crazy/cute and sociopathic.
There is a senseless side to Bauer, and he’s shown it for at least two years. In his infatuation with the science of drones, he tried to repair one, and in the process lacerated a finger on his right hand. The accident limited a subsequent postseason appearance in 2019.
Now the 30-year-old LA Dodgers pitcher is on paid administrative leave, mandated by Major League Baseball because of allegations of sexual assault. A 27-year-old woman told police he choked her unconscious with her own hair and then anally raped her.
She presented photographs of her face with scratches on it, two blackened eye sockets and lips that are bruised and cut.
Of course, there is The Other Side. Unfortunately it’s no more uplifting than his accuser’s side. Bauer did not deny committing violent acts against the San Diego woman who first contacted him through social media and twice in the spring drove to Pasadena to visit him at his home. He insisted this was consensual rough sex.
His attorney, Jon Fetterolf, said the woman dictated “what she wanted from him sexually and he did what was asked.” Fetterolf produced transcripts of texting in which she asks him to “give me all the pain” and “choke me out.”
That sort of sadomachism is not so unconventional in 21st century SoCal. The actor David Carradine in 2009 died naked in a closet with a drapery cord around his neck. Apparently a Richter scale orgasm can be attained by someone willing to be choked within seconds of death. It’s such a popular diversion that psychologists gave it a name: erotic asphyxiation.
Occasionally, as with other sexual machinations, the timing is off. According to Healthline.com, “EA is truly very risky and may lead to serious injury, including cardiac arrest, brain damage from lack of oxygen, and death.”
That’s enough to discourage me, with my puritanical belief that even the greatest orgasm is not worth dying for or losing more brain cells. I’m not one to live on the edge. However, I did live in California for two years, felt some tremors and saw and heard enough to believe what Trevor Bauer is saying.
I just can’t believe he actually said it. That’s his defense? That he almost choked the life out of this woman and roughed her up because she likes it like that?
I can’t imagine any place where you could do what Trevor Bauer did and still keep your job, unless it’s the U.S. Congress.
Really, we should have seen this coming. When Bauer was pitching and flying drones for Cleveland in 2019, he engaged in a bizarre twitter war with Nikki Gates, a female student in her senior year at Texas State University in San Marcos. She provoked Bauer by tweeting that he was her “least favorite person in all sports” because he’d trolled her favorite player, Houston’s Alex Bregman, in a video.
Bauer proceeded to tweet about her 80 times in one week and accused her of being “obsessed” with him. This was after he’d scrolled through months of her postings and re-tweeted one that would embarrass her the most.
This is madness. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson in the classic horror movie The Shining, where day after day he’s typing the same line thousands of times. Hey, people who are sane move on.
“He went almost a year back to find a tweet about me drinking two months before my 21st birthday and exposed it to his followers,” Giles told USA Today. She said she broke down in tears over the barrage of invective by Bauer, who later apologized on social media for being overly “negative.”
His harassment might have been legal, but even so it should have raised red flags with a ballclub thinking of committing $30 million to him, as the Dodgers did. A cannon as loose as this should not be anywhere near a fan base.
The police investigation “is bigger than we thought it would be,” Pasadena police told USA Today. Dodgers president Stan Kasten said, “There are a lot of things that have not yet been in the public domain that are relevant.”
I do wonder about a woman having a horrific bedroom experience on April 21 and then coming back for more just three weeks later. I guess that’s why the investigation continues. It’s sure to make all of MLB uncomfortable. Most of all, of course, the world-champion Dodgers. They already have a pitcher tainted by violence against women: World Series star Julio Urias, suspended 20 games in 2019 after deferred adjudication on a charge of misdemeanor domestic battery.
Sports teams should be concerned that they could be held liable for misogyny by their employees. The Washington Football Club last week was fined $10 million by the NFL for lack of vigilance when front office personnel were misbehaving. The league was protecting itself. Rob Manfred surely noticed.
Bauer has not yet been charged with a crime. But a lengthy suspension – without pay — can occur without an indictment. He will have a day in court on July 23. That’s when his legal team will attempt to remove a restraining order that his accuser obtained.
Perhaps the She-had-it-coming defense will keep him out of jail. Whatever happens shouldn’t keep him out of therapy. Many other ballplayers need counseling to deter them from harassing or assaulting women, whether it relates to anger management or kinky sex or anything else. There must be more than suspensions and punishment. As we say about all violence in America, this is a mental problem. But in this country, recognizing a mental problem doesn’t necessarily mean something gets done about it.
