With Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner, Mookie Betts and others standing behind him, President Biden offered the widely held opinion of how the Dodgers are more than a baseball team.
“They’re a pillar of American culture and American progress, and that’s for real,” Biden said. “The team that brought us the voice of Vin Scully and the [arms] of Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela.
“Above all else, the heart of Jackie Robinson.”
And now, the president kindly neglected to mention, the destructive ego of Trevor Bauer.
As a player who wasn’t on the team that won the World Series last year, Bauer wasn’t part of the Dodgers traveling party that visited the White House on Friday. His presence nonetheless hovered over the proceedings.
About an hour after the ceremony, Bauer was placed on paid administrative leave by Major League Baseball, which is investigating accusations of sexual assault that were levied against him by a woman in a temporary restraining order request filed earlier in the week. Representatives for Bauer maintain the sexual encounters were consensual.
The Dodgers waited 32 years to be invited back to the president’s residence and workplace, only for the celebration to be completely overshadowed by one of the darkest episodes in franchise history.
As it deserved to be.
The damage was entirely self-inflicted, the crisis the making of three men who noticeably went out of their ways to politely laugh at Biden’s attempts at humor: Dodgers owner Mark Walter, president Stan Kasten and baseball chief Andrew Friedman.
These were the people who unnecessarily signed a pitcher with a history of making troublesome decisions when they already had the best team in baseball.
Speaking to reporters in the afternoon at Nationals Park, Kasten was asked if he was disappointed by what has transpired.
“We don’t know what happened,” Kasten said.
Which doesn’t make the Dodgers’ decision to sign Bauer any less irresponsible.
In the petition for the temporary restraining order, Bauer’s accuser said she was choked and lost consciousness during two separate sexual encounters in April and May, with Bauer sodomizing her while she was unconscious the first time and punching her in the face when she woke up the second.
“I agreed to have consensual sex, however, I did not agree or consent to what he did next,” the woman wrote in the court declaration.
Bauer’s agent said his client engaged in “rough” sex that was consensual.
The question isn’t whether Bauer’s judgment was poor, but how poor. At very least, he engaged in violent sex acts with a woman he met recently on social media. Making bad choices isn’t a crime, but the franchise that drapes itself in the imagery of Jackie Robinson shouldn’t be in business with a player who regularly makes such bad choices.
A rudimentary Google search should have shown the Dodgers what they were in for, that Bauer had a track record of embarrassing himself and his employers.
Like when he harassed women online.
Or mocked transgender people.
Or spread antisemitic conspiracy theories.
None of this means Bauer’s guilty of the allegations made by his accuser. While he remains under investigation by Pasadena police for felony assault, he hasn’t been arrested or charged with a crime. At the same time, there’s a reason he’s a constant source of headaches and controversy.
He’s 30 and already on his fourth team. The Cleveland Indians traded him to the Cincinnati Reds after he fired a ball over the center-field wall when manager Terry Francona approached the mound to remove him from a game.
He spoke out against the use of foreign substances by other pitchers, explained by how much he could increase the spin rates of his pitches if he used sticky materials, increased by his spin rate by that amount, then wondered how he became the poster child for the controversy.
Considering how intelligent he sounds when he talks about baseball, he makes a shocking number of head-scratching moves.
Everyone knew this, which was why there were widespread concerns when the Dodgers signed him, including here.
“More than wins and losses are at stake,” I wrote after Bauer’s introductory news conference in February. “This is about what the franchise stands or, the values it represents.”
The Dodgers had previously kept their distance from players who could invite trouble. They traded Yasiel Puig. They didn’t pursue players such as Aroldis Chapman and Roberto Osuna, who were suspended under baseball’s domestic violence policy.
They were a team built around an exemplary role model in Kershaw. They made it a point to extend the tradition to the next generation by trading for a player with a similar temperament in Betts.
Under Walter’s ownership group and Kasten’s front office, the Dodgers have prided themselves on their brains. They weren’t content with simply outspending their opponents; they had to construct their rosters in ways that reminded others of how smart they were.
Ultimately, the chance to sign Bauer to an unconventional contract outweighed concerns about his citizenship. Friedman defended the deal at the time by citing how he and Kasten spoke to the Cy Young Award winner about his past behavior.
“In our conversations, he’s alluded to past mistakes he’s made, and you know what?” Friedman said. “We’re all going to make mistakes, and what’s important for me is how we internalize it, what our thoughts are going forward. It was important to have that conversation, and we came away from it feeling good about it.”
The words sounded empty then and sound even emptier now. Bauer’s deal marked a shift in culture, the three-year, $102-million contract making a statement that winning was lone concern, that citizenship wasn’t valued anymore.
While Kasten offered lip service about being “mindful” and “sensitive” to the opinions others have on Bauer’s situation, he sounded as if he failed to grasp the seriousness of the problem.
He greeted reporters on Friday by joking about the advice he offered manager Dave Roberts the previous day before his daily pregame videoconference.
“I told him, ‘They’re going to talk about Trevor Bauer,’” Kasten said. “Just say, “Can we please talk about foreign substances?””
He laughed.
Earlier in the day, Biden said he suspected the Dodgers could visit the White House again relatively soon. He could be right.
However, if they do, and if he speaks again about the organization’s contributions to society, he should consider using the past tense. They were a pillar of American culture and American progress. Today, they are a symbol of misplaced priorities.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.