Thank God We Got Osuna
Thank God We Got Osuna
Kiyoshi Hirawa
TW: domestic violence, sexual assault, suicidal ideation
The misdeeds of pitcher Roberto Osuna are well documented, as is the atrocious mishandling of his trade by the Houston Astros. Briefly, Osuna was arrested for allegedly assaulting the mother of his child, only for the charges to be withdrawn in exchange for a peace bond (meaning Osuna could not have contact with the victim for one year). Osuna was traded to the Astros shortly thereafter. That might have been the end of the controversy had the Astros’ public relations department not self-destructed.
First, the Astros never really addressed Osuna’s alleged criminal behavior, opting instead to describe Osuna as “remorseful.” Then Osuna went on the offensive, deriding his critics for “judging him” and claiming they didn’t know him personally. A teammate would demand that hecklers not bring up Osuna’s history. The Astros would eject a fan who dared to hold up a sign advertising a domestic violence hotline.
Things came to a head in the post-game celebration following the Astros’ defeat of the Yankees in the 2019 American League Championship Series. Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman repeatedly shouted, “Thank God we got Osuna!” toward a group of three female reporters, one of whom was wearing a purple domestic violence awareness bracelet.
When the story broke, the Astros ran the standard corporate playbook. First, they accused the female reporters of “fabricating” the story. When this claim was found to be patently false, the Astros explained that Taubman was simply supporting a player after a poor performance in a big game. When this asinine explanation fell apart and MLB announced an investigation, the Astros feebly apologized for disputing the report and fired Taubman, who apologized while simultaneously protesting that his intent had been misinterpreted.
Naturally, the scandal of trading for an alleged woman-beating pitcher, an assistant GM taunting a group of female reporters with this fact, and an organization lying about the incident and vilifying the reporters was immediately forgotten as baseball (and its fans) soon latched on to a much more “serious” issue: the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.
As someone whose family is historically well-acquainted with domestic violence and the silent suffering of its victims, the contrast in reactions seemed clear to me: we don’t care who you beat, but you better not cheat.
Yet despite having relatives and friends who’ve been beaten and raped, Houston’s trade for Osuna did not faze me. Baseball teams–indeed, teams in all sports–routinely welcome and willingly trade for athletes with a wide variety of sordid histories: substance abuse, animal abuse, domestic assault, sexual assault, even obstructing murder investigations. Character only matters when the public outcry is too loud and too recent. Osuna’s trade was a minor ripple in the sea of moral outrage, even if the Astros somehow seemed intent on throwing boulders into the water.
Rather, it was the lack of reaction in the Astros’ locker room that bothered me. It’s true that an Astros staffer apologized to the reporters, but why didn’t anyone shut Taubman down? Admittedly, it’s difficult to imagine peons standing up to an assistant GM, especially if he’s being an enormous prick, but with all the brass celebrating in the locker room, no one, no one told Taubman to shut the fuck up?
And then later, nobody said, “What happened was awful and we should do the right thing and acknowledge the awfulness?” Because by all accounts, what everybody said was, “Let’s deny this happened, then if they can prove it did happen, we’ll explain that it was a misunderstanding, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll fire Taubman and apologize, and then go win another title.”
I thought the reasons for why no one intervened could generally be grouped into one of three explanations: one, people supported Taubman’s behavior and saw no reason to
intervene; two, people knew Taubman was wrong but weren’t going to publicly criticize him–they were good soldiers, company men; or three, people knew Taubman was wrong and wanted to rebuke him, but they were scared of what they might lose if they spoke up or took action.
At the time, I was ten years into my law enforcement career and still somewhat incredulous about the treachery that an institution’s leadership would conjure to preserve itself. I assumed doing the right thing was simple, straightforward, and immune from retaliation. As such, I considered the first group of people to be organizational malignancies, the second group self-serving enablers, and the third group blatant cowards.
For an experienced police officer still lacking wisdom, naivete easily explains and carelessly compartmentalizes.
* * *
Soon after Taubman directed his offensive outburst at that group of female reporters, I had my own encounter with a female reporter about an athlete. I was our police department’s back-up public information officer (PIO), which meant I held daily press briefings for reporters and helped disseminate details about high-profile incidents.
When you’re a police department’s PIO in a Midwestern college town, there are fewer higher-profile incidents than those involving university athletes. And when it’s an incident of an alleged sexual assault involving multiple athletes from the university’s most popular sports team, it instantly becomes a media feeding frenzy.
An ESPN reporter had come into town to write a story about two athletes accused of raping a student in their apartment, and we knew she’d reported extensively on the pervasive culture of sexual misconduct at another university. Prior to our meeting, she’d been tracking down the victim and witnesses, attempting to reach university officials, including the Title IX investigators, and filing public records requests for information about our investigation. Her main question: why had our investigation taken so long, and why was an arrest made only after the university’s Title IX investigation became public?
I don’t know if she ever played sports, but whenever I talked to her in person, she stood in a mild crouch, with her head tilted slightly forward. She looked like a catcher about to pick a runner off third, deadly confident in her ability despite the risk.
She was intelligent, courteous, and respectful, the consummate professional during every interaction. But the vibe was clear: this was not someone to fuck with.
Initially, I was defensive. Who was a reporter to question the integrity, timeline, and process of my department’s investigation? Did people really think we’d delayed investigating a rape until a Title IX complaint became public? What other angle could she take besides implying that the police were bowing to the influence of political and university officials?
In that moment, I briefly stumbled into that first group of bystanders in the Astros’ locker room, the ones I’d disdained as organizational malignancies.
I groused about being under the media microscope until a fellow cop pulled me aside and shattered my ignorance about our department and its stance toward sexual misconduct. This cop told me that some of our investigators had expressed their belief that women report rapes in order to sue wealthy (or soon-to-be wealthy) athletes. This cop also explained that a group of female officers had approached one of our captains and offered to help train investigators about how to interview and support sexual assault victims, only to be turned down. And then the third strike, a 10-4 curveball that froze me. This police officer related how someone–a cop–was known to have sexually assaulted other officers in our department. And how that incident was far from the only sexual misconduct occurring in our agency.
When players strike out looking for the third out, it’s not uncommon for them to stand at the plate, replaying the pitch, even as the catcher has rolled the ball back to the mound and is jogging for the dugout. I stood in my office for a long time, replaying that conversation deep into the afternoon.
Suddenly, the reporter’s questions didn’t seem stupid or sensationalistic. They seemed…reasonable. Thoughtful. Diligent. And most ominously, justified.
At that time, I didn’t ask any command staff members about what that officer disclosed to me. And I didn’t tell the reporter, either, even as I started to wonder if our agency’s sexual misconduct problems were undermining the integrity of the investigation.
The next morning, I held the scheduled press conference and delivered our department’s soundbite: the university’s Title IX investigation hadn’t affected our investigation, and sexual assault crimes sometimes take months to investigate before an arrest is made.
Behind the podium, I felt uncomfortably similar to the second group of bystanders in that Astros’ locker room, the ones I’d derided as self-serving enablers. Had I really become a good soldier, a company man?
* * *
Bud Selig was a company man, a former owner turned commissioner who somehow managed to concurrently claim he’d only heard about steroids in 1999 while boasting that he’d proposed steroid testing as early as 1994. These contradictions allowed Selig to absolve himself of allegations that he’d responded too slowly to widespread steroid use (allowing him to capitalize on the sport’s booming home runs and popularity) while simultaneously crediting himself with cleaning up the sport.
In other words, Selig needed a policy that threatened but never actually caught anyone because doing so might threaten an institution already weakened by a labor strike and a cancelled World Series.
Not even Barry Bonds ever found a sweeter spot of the bat.
It’s not uncommon for companies and government agencies to aim for a similar sweet spot when crafting and implementing discrimination and harassment policies. The strategy is straightforward. You craft an equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy and reporting process that meets all the best practices, but you implement them in a way that deters people from filing reports.
That way, you can performatively claim you’re doing all you can to investigate EEO violations while at the same time preventing people from doing all they can to report EEO violations.
Here’s how my city and police department staged their performance.
During a nationwide search for a new police chief, the mayor sought input from city employees, including police officers. I emailed the mayor about the sexual misconduct problems at our police department, and the mayor sent my email to the acting police chief. Within less than year, I was dragged into Internal Affairs multiple times, saw false information inserted into my performance review, and had my job assignment changed multiple times.
When the new chief arrived, I asked if the department would initiate a research project to study the experiences of women police officers, including victimizations involving sexual misconduct.
It was the equivalent of arguing a third strike.
The new chief said such a research project was a “fishing expedition” and “an insult to every male officer.” The police department’s legal advisor referred to the allegations of sexual misconduct as “urban legends.”
The blustering tone was creepily reminiscent of Taubman’s locker room rant, and suddenly, there it was: my opportunity to tell high-ranking organizational leadership to shut the fuck up, to do the right thing and just acknowledge the awfulness.
Instead, I caved, and when the meeting ended, I walked out of the chief’s office and found myself wondering if I’d just joined that third group in the Astros’ locker room, the ones I’d mocked as blatant cowards.
My lack of valor and diluted resolve provided no escape from the department’s crosshairs. The suspension came abruptly and viciously. A captain and sergeant waited until evening, then interrupted dinner with the suspension paperwork from the chief, leaving family members and neighbors bearing witness to the humiliation.
The chief let me twist in the wind for another six weeks before terminating me, ending my career with the eviscerating words, “I can’t trust you anymore.”
That same chief would then enact a policy prohibiting employees from recording each other (including incidents of misconduct), and any recordings became the property of the department. The chief also mandated that the police department investigate its own EEO complaints, not City Human Resources–the only city department granted this privilege. It was a masterstroke in damage control and a masterclass in suppressive leadership.
Create an enforcement tool, then deploy it in a way that undermines its purpose. Selig would’ve stood and applauded the performance.
* * *
Baseball players do not leave the game. Not really. Players can claim retirement or cite injuries, but ultimately, the game always leaves them behind. The game gets smarter, faster, stronger. Players do not. And many players struggle in life after the game moves on without them.
Law enforcement is painfully similar, especially concerning its machismo, insular culture. Cops don’t leave policing. Instead, policing leaves them behind as new technology and tactics emerge, and cops get too old or too tired to adapt.
And frequently, the profession exiles whistleblowers, stripping cops of their badges and branding them liars and traitors. The institution must be preserved, the shield must be protected.
I was not the first officer terminated from my agency for raising questions about sexual misconduct, but I felt like the only one.
In the months following my termination, I languished like an undrafted prospect. I feared losing our family’s home, feared moving and forcing our kids to change schools. I saw job offers materialize and then abruptly disappear, employers refusing to call back or return an email. I couldn’t sleep during the night and couldn’t stay awake during the day. I lost my appetite and then started losing weight.
Like a lot of baseball players, my career had unwittingly become a predominant part of my identity. With that taproot torn away, the other parts of my identity began wilting and browning. I wasn’t suicidal, but I thought about it. A lot. I longed for the coiled tension, the knotting pain, to release, to permanently unwind.
I avoided walking past the gun safe at night.
* * *
Osuna’s arm failed him relatively soon after the Taubman incident, and he fled the majors for the Mexican and Japanese leagues; by the time he retires, he’ll probably have made around fifty million dollars. Brandon Taubman now works for a lucrative real estate investment firm performing analyses I won’t pretend to understand.
The Houston Astros jettisoned both the Osuna/Taubman incident and the sign-stealing scandal and went on to win the 2022 World Series.
The two university athletes who allegedly raped a student? One pled guilty to a couple of petty misdemeanors in exchange for testifying against the other athlete. A jury then promptly acquitted that other athlete of all charges. I have no idea what happened to their alleged victim, but I think about her from time to time, as if that means anything to her or any other rape victim. Please let me know when doctors prescribe “thoughts” as an accepted remedy for the PTSD, depression, and heighted suicide risk plaguing rape victims.
The police chief who fired me later admitted to a city council member that my termination was retaliatory, then abruptly resigned several months later. The mayor’s office refused to provide any further explanation or details about the resignation. I heard this police chief was recently a finalist for another police chief position in a jurisdiction near Houston, of all places.
With one exception, the police officers who spoke out against sexual misconduct were chased from our department. Some have fled the profession, others have fled the state. All have been branded liars, traitors, or both.
The city and police department have yet to acknowledge any wrongdoing or any existence of a sexual misconduct problem, shrugging that they can only investigate what’s reported. As Bud Selig might remind you, it’s possible to have it both ways.
The sweet spot of suppression.
* * *
Would you swing if striking out meant being banned forever from the league? Or would you try to draw a walk instead, maybe bunt, even if it meant you got thrown out? Better to be thrown out at first than permanently banned, right?
If the stakes are high enough, is it really worth going down swinging?
Courage can only be expressed as a function of risk, expanding or shrinking in proportion to the possible loss. And true risk requires full knowledge and consent of the danger, something I lacked when I spoke out about the sexual misconduct at my police
department. To be sure, I knew my email to the mayor created risk, but I thought I would be believed. I thought my department’s leadership would support me. I thought that the mayor would take action. I did not believe I would be exiled, hence, my actions required less courage than some praised me for.
Even worse, now terminated and a pariah in my hometown, I ponder whether I would do it again, would I speak up about sexual misconduct and swing at that same pitch now fully aware of the consequences?
I hate that question. I hate myself more for not knowing the answer. I want to believe that I would still swing, that I deserve the laurel wreath of courage, the crown of career martyrdom. But I honestly don’t know.
Is it worth the risk of losing your job? Is it worth your family members’ anxiety? Or your own suicidal ideations? Is it worth turning your hometown into a museum of cold memories? Is it worth avoiding the ballfields and stadiums you loved for fear of running into people you worked with? Is it worth starting over later in life, the gleaming shackles of a termination dragging down your résumé? Is it really worth it?
I still feel like I’m in the wilderness, a spiritual desert, and I wonder about the road back and the length of the journey. And what the destination will look like. The thought of dying brings me comfort, not because I want to die, but because death relieves what does not relent, extracts what endures, and purges what decays. And courage or no courage, I hope my sacrifice will be extracted on my deathbed, humiliation and shame finally and forever purged.
Was it really worth it? I grappled with that question for a long time.
And then one night, a few days before Opening Day, I felt like a fever broke. It was a particularly heavy night, the kind that found me avoiding the gun safe, and I wrote what seemed to pass through me, a kind of divine breath, what I now cling to, and what I hope this piece passes on to my children in their darkest hours.
The light does not answer the darkness, for it is content to be the answer, so if you are exiled, then depart, not to regret, but to one day understand the lengths your light must labor.
Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet, writer, and former police officer who was wrongfully terminated after reporting sexual misconduct and rape committed by fellow police officers. Hirawa’s writing focuses on mental health, trauma, resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked. Hirawa grew up on Braves baseball and still has dreams about being the fourth starter in the rotation behind Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz.
Chet Parmar is a self-taught artist in his spare time, specializing in pencil, ink, and digital drawing styles. A Bay Area native and San Francisco Giants fan, he hopes to watch a game at every MLB stadium during his lifetime (6 down so far). You can find his work on Instagram: @chubbycheetah80
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