On the final day of October, Jose Reyes allegedly grabbed his wife, Katherine Ramirez, by the throat in their Hawaii hotel room and shoved her into a sliding door. The incident left Ramirez, according to a police report, with injuries to her neck, the side of her body and her wrist. Reyes was arrested on misdemeanor charges of abusing a family member.
Eight months later, those remain the sole details we know of that day. Charges against Reyes were dropped because Ramirez refused to return to the state to cooperate with prosecutors. While Major League Baseball dispensed investigators to the locale, they did not reveal the contents of their investigation. But commissioner Rob Manfred did punish Reyes with a 51-game suspension -- the second-longest of three punishments MLB has meted out under its 10-month-old domestic violence policy.
Tuesday, Reyes came back to Queens. His locker sat in the middle of the Mets’ clubhouse. The No. 7 jersey he wore - he claimed the number again after catcher Travis d’Arnaud gave it up - was the same he had over his first nine years with the team. He started at third base and batted lead off. Major League Baseball heralded him on its official Twitter account.
When he walked to the plate for his first at-bat, a strikeout, he was greeted with thunderous applause - which he recognized by doffing his helmet in appreciation - and chants of “Jose, Jose.” If it was a tone deaf reception, it was because the incredulity over his homecoming could not be heard over the wild cheers.
Here, at Citi Field, Reyes was given an old hero’s return, not a welcome for an alleged domestic violence abuser.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” Reyes said in his first press conference upon returning to the Mets. “Every human being makes a mistake. People deserve a second chance in life. Like I said, I’m sorry, I apologized to a lot of people. Everybody who follows me, my wife, my mom, my dad back in the Dominican, to all my family. All the fans who follow me, even the people who don’t follow me. I know there are going to be some people who are going to hate me, so I understand that.”
Aside from the passions involved in Reyes’ return, it again put the spotlight on whether there is a right way for teams and sports leagues to deal with those accused of domestic violence.
Reyes might be the latest example, but he will not be the last athlete caught abusing a partner. MLB saw the missteps made by the NFL in its handling of the Ray Rice case in 2014 and crafted a policy aimed at avoiding those pitfalls, seeking a medium between fairness to the player and respect and safety for the victim.
As Reyes returns to the major leagues, how do experts feel Major League Baseball - and its fans - react to cases of domestic violence?
“The general public struggles with nuance,” Cindy Southworth, the executive vice president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, tells USA TODAY Sports. “Either you’re a great guy or you’re a villain. And it’s hard for them to understand that a really talented athlete can be choosing to terrorize his partner at home. You can like an athlete and you can be a fan of their skills on the playing field and still be incredibly upset about the choices that they’re making with their partner and you can voice those.”
Knowing the horrors
When Erin Matson puts her 3-year-old daughter to sleep each night, Matson asks her what she’ll dream of that night. Baseball, her daughter replies. She is, like her mother, a fan. Both root for the Nationals. Her daughter can recite the names of Washington’s players and relishes taking in games at Nationals Park.
And when she hears that Reyes will get a chance to play professional baseball again, the anger in her voice is apparent. More than most, she has an intimate understanding of the horrors of domestic violence.
Matson is a survivor. For years, she was involved in a marriage in which her husband abused her emotionally and verbally. She has written eloquently about her life, how she had to cover up bruises on her arms and how she remained in that relationship.
“It’s really concerning,” says Matson, co-director of a reproductive rights organization. “There’s a part of me that just feels incredibly sad that at the end of the day baseball is a business. And I get attached to players that come and go, but it’s business decisions that come and go who is on the roster. Period. So let’s talk about the fact that in 2016 there’s still highly paid people making a business decision that someone with this public track record on domestic violence is considered a profitable asset.
“It’s stunning to think about that. That’s just where we are.”
Matson thinks about the messaging it sends that Reyes, and others like him, can play again. A borough across in New York, Aroldis Chapman returned from a 30-game suspension to become a dominant closer again after the Yankees traded for him this offseason despite the allegations of abuse already hanging over him. Later this season, Hector Olivera will return from an 82-game suspension after the Braves outfielder was involved in an alleged incident in a Virginia hotel.
What does it say to her daughter and other children, Matson asks. And what about the narrative unspooled about Reyes, one of redemption and second chances and not about the most glaring issue: That he never should have done this at all.
Still, as she expresses her indignation, Matson comes to a stop when asked if Reyes should be able to play again. This is where the policy-making of punishing domestic violence jars with the morality of it. Where her life as a victim meets her experience as an advocate.
“While it seems really good to say ‘Oh, you should be banned from the sport entirely’ - and there’s a part of me that’s right there - but from a victim advocacy standpoint what makes me very uncomfortable about that is that actually places an incredible burden on people who may be abused,” she says. “It might actually put them more at risk because if your abuser is caught, whether or not it’s your fault, there’s something much bigger at risk. You hear about this at victim advocacy community -- if their abuser loses their job not only are they at more risk because the abuser is at home more, but also that anger may come out at them.
“I just want to throw that out there that it feels really satisfying to say that people should be barred and on a certain level I believe that, and yet, on that, I’m afraid of constructing black or white policies that might in fact place victims in more danger.”
It’s a key concept when examining and understanding MLB’s and other leagues’ policies. It was a point that Southworth says she and others from NNEDV stressed when Major League Baseball consulted with them as they built their own regulations.
While it may feel unsatisfying for the public, a one-strike-and-done approach is actually not the best route.
“Counter-intuitively, we don’t want sports leagues to have a zero tolerance policy,” she said. “And the reason for that is if we would say that the first time your partner calls 911 your career is over, her risk of homicide shoots through the roof. Because he has nothing to lose and everything to lose at the same time. We’ve actually been advising the sports league to take a very swift, very robust approach but not to say that first-time and you're out of it, your career is over because the pressure then on the victim not to call for help is massive. And we want them to be able to call 911. We need them to reach out for help.”
The penalty phase
To this point, Southworth has been impressed by MLB’s domestic violence policy. It is sufficiently strong and, like the NNEDV lobbied with the NFL, doesn’t take the zero tolerance tact. But baseball is also in an interesting place - unlike the NFL, it is not revising previously meek penalties. Instead, it didn’t create one until last August. Now, every suspension it gives out sets a precedent.
The policy was put into place in an agreement with the Players Association. It gives Manfred near-unilateral power to impose punishment as he sees fit with no minimum or maximum mandates, as long as the commissioner sees enough to deem just cause. But to this point, every suspension has been accepted without appeal - akin to a plea bargain to avoid the union and the commissioner’s office ending up in front of an arbitrator.
Creating the penalties has been the hardest part of all. While there is a joint advisory board of consulted organizations that helps make a treatment plan for offending players, and Manfred relies on outside parties for help in devising a suspension, there is no background to work on and nothing codified in the CBA, unlike violations of the drug-testing agreement.
“In terms of why 30 for one guy, 50 for another guy and so on and so forth, we have ultimately a lot more facts than the public knows about,” Dan Halem, Major League Baseball’s chief lawyer, said. “You do as best as you to take into account factors such as the violence of the incident, the harm to the victim, whether it was a first time offense or a second time offense, whether there was any potential mitigating factors that the commissioner should take into account. It’s easier after you discipline one or two players and you have some precedent, to compare facts.”
Imposing a penalty means weighing a sliding scale of the severity of the incident and the facts MLB can prove. The more muddied the facts, the less certainty the commissioner’s office has and the lower the penalty it can impose. And while MLB’s investigators have access to players, they cannot always compel their victims to cooperate -- which could lead to just one set of facts to work off. That, too, can cause problems.
Because Major League Baseball runs its investigations concurrently or sometimes after law enforcement finishes its own, it must make a choice on when to finally punish players. With Reyes, Manfred waited until charges were dropped before suspending him. But charges were dropped because authorities in Hawaii could not get Ramirez’s cooperation. They still have until November 2017 - when the statute of limitations expires - to charge Reyes again. Until then, the police report will remain sealed.
And if Reyes is charged again and even convicted, Major League Baseball can’t punish him further.
“Quite a bit of time and effort was invested by both the Players Association and the Commissioner’s Office in developing a policy that would address this very sensitive and important issue in a thoughtful and competent manner,” MLB Players Association spokesman Greg Bouris said. “As a result, the policy has worked as it was intended; and all involved understand that there is no standard that can be applied to each and every case, because each and every case is different.”
