Astros fire Taubman, people who baselessly smeared reporter in his defense still there
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This was necessary, but also not enough:
The Astros fired assistant GM Brandon Taubman, the team announced on Thursday.
Houston’s parting with Taubman comes three days after Sports Illustrated‘s Stephanie Apstein reported he turned to three female reporters in the Astros’ clubhouse after the team clinched the American League pennant on Saturday and yelled multiple times, “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so f—— glad we got Osuna!” One of the reporters was wearing a purple domestic-violence awareness bracelet.
In May 2018, Osuna was arrested on domestic violence charges while playing for the Blue Jays. The charges were dropped but Major League Baseball suspended Osuna for 75 games for violating its domestic violence policy. Houston traded for him last year shortly before his suspension ended.
[…]
After SI published Apstein’s report on Monday, the Astros released a statementcalling it an “attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”
The thing is, though, that the statement calling Apstein a liar even as her account was being corroborated by multiple reporters reflects serious misconduct in itself, and the statement doesn’t even say who was responsible for it, let alone hold them accountable:
For journalists, credibility is everything. For female sports journalists, we have to work even harder to earn it, and I don’t think the Astros’ latest apology goes far enough to right the wrong they did to Steph Apstein.— Lindsay Jones (@bylindsayhjones) October 24, 2019
So the Astros’ move after reading the Sports Illustrated story was to accuse the writer of fabricating it, instead of saying “we will investigate.” When they were basically forced to investigate they found out their first statement was complete bullshit. Not good enough.— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) October 24, 2019
The Astros fired Taubman, and apologized to SI. And what should happen next is MLB discipline of whoever approved Monday’s absurd team statement; Taubman didn’t have the stature to make that decision:— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 24, 2019
Quite so. MLB cannot just let this drop here. (I’d love to know what the “investigation” the Astros allegedly conducted before smearing Apstein consisted of; it apparently didn’t involve speaking to any neutral witnesses.)