CLEVELAND, Ohio – I knew Mickey Callaway for the five years he worked for the Indians. I thought he was a good guy, good quote, good pitching coach. But that’s just it; I’m a guy who has covered baseball for a long time.
This business can be different if you’re a woman.
If you’re a woman reporter covering baseball, or even working for a team, you may start getting anonymous emails when a new manager, coach, player or executive joins the team you’re covering.
One woman reporter in New York told me the emails started arriving a few months after the Mets hired Callaway as their manager on Oct. 23, 2017. “You’re a woman in sports, you’ll figure it out,” said one. “Dig into his past,” said another.
The emails arrived from February through May. The reporter, who asked that her name not be used, replied to the emails to try and find out who was sending them to her. She never received an answer.
Callaway arrived in New York from Cleveland, where he had been the Indians’ pitching coach from 2013-17. He’d spent three years in the minor league system before that.
On Feb. 1, The Athletic published a story quoting five women in sports media saying they had been subjected to lewd and inappropriate behavior by Callaway over a five-year period that included three stops in the big leagues – Cleveland, New York and Anaheim, Calif. Callaway joined the Angels as pitching coach after he was fired by the Mets following the 2019 season. The Angels suspended him a day after the Athletic story was published.
According to the story, the behavior included texts, emails, and photos of himself shirtless; and he asked one reporter for a nude picture.
MLB is investigating Callaway with cooperation from the Indians, Mets and Angels.
I talked to several women in Cleveland’s sports media who covered the Indians or were associated with the team during Callaway’s tenure there. None said they’d been harassed by him. But one said she wasn’t surprised after The Athletic story was published.
Some women said they had no problem with Callaway. Others did not want to talk about him.
The Indians say there was never a complaint filed while he worked for them. MLB told The Athletic the same thing.
There is often a casualness about a baseball season. At least, there was before the pandemic. The manager usually talks to reporters once before a game and again after. But if you spot him in the clubhouse or dugout before a game he’ll likely stop for a brief one-on-one interview. According to The Athletic, Callaway would stray from the subject of baseball in such conversations and comment on a female reporter’s body or appearance.
Another reporter told The Athletic that Callaway would massage her shoulders when he thought no one was looking. I never remember Callaway doing that to a male reporter during his days with the Indians.
The clubhouse belongs to the players, managers and coaches. To do their job there, women reporters sometimes pretend to be one of the boys. To get along, sometimes you go along. But that doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it less painful should they be on the receiving end of unwanted behavior.
The Indians, according to Bob DiBiasio, senior vice president of public affairs, were the last team in the big leagues to let women reporters into the clubhouse. Gabe Paul, president of the team at the time, thought women reporters shouldn’t be subjected to walking into the tiny home clubhouse at Municipal Stadium because the entrance door led right into the bathroom, complete with urinals, toilets and a shower before reporters hung a sharp left and walked into the clubhouse.
The barrier was broken on May 15, 1981 when Len Barker threw a perfect game against Toronto.
“You can’t keep me out of there tonight,” Alison Gordon of the Toronto Star, one of the first women to cover Major League Baseball, told DiBiasio, who agreed and accompanied her into the Indians clubhouse.
That was almost 40 years ago, so…
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