Jacque Jones suspended by Nationals pending investigation

Kirby Puckett. Chuck Knoblauch. Now former Twins outfielder Jacque Jones.

The Washington Post reported that Jones and the Washington Nationals, the team for which Jones is an assistant coach, are being sued for “revenge porn.” The lawsuit accuses Jones of having shared intimate photos of a girlfriend without her consent following a breakup. It claims the Nationals knew of this (and worse) behavior by Jones and took no disciplinary measures. Jones has been suspended by the team, pending an internal investigation.

These are allegations; they are not proven. But sports fans are aware of many other abusive incidents perpetrated by athletes which have been proven, ranging from harassment to murder.

When new cases come to light, there is a natural tendency to wonder if this problem is more endemic to sports players than among the general population. A standard response is this one from almost ten years ago, written by Scott Goll of Bleacher Report:

“Sports, by nature—especially the professional kind—are occupations heavily based on aggression. Whatever the particular sport is, it is one where you must be driven, focused, ready to pounce on what you want, and stop at nothing to get it (or, prevent your opponent from thwarting you)....

“So what happens when athletes, who are more predisposed to the me-first attitude, are in what is supposed to be a relationship of equals? If there's a difference of opinion, some of them impose their will. If their will is not accepted by their partner, then perhaps the frustration mounts to the point of becoming physical.”

But, said Stephanie Domurat, who works assisting victims of domestic violence, this isn’t necessarily the case:

“This isn’t something that just happens in sports or just aggressive sports. It’s an issue that happens with pastors to police officers. It’s everyone, and that’s the issue. We don’t want to be demonizing the sports world, and we don’t want to be saying all athletes because they’re aggressive in aggressive sports, or they’re trained to be aggressive are going to be doing this. Ultimately, it’s about control in these situations, and in these family violence situations. They know what they’re doing.”

And there certainly are athletes who speak out vocally against misogynistic attitudes among players. The NFL’s DeAndre Levy has written that athletes need to step up in condemning sexual assault (and raises money to help replace often-outdated police rape test kits).

Dick Hayhurst, author of several fine books about his years in and out of the minors, often describes harsh, sometimes criminal behavior by baseball players towards women. One searing example describes players sharing photos and videos in what they called “Show Time.” The minor-league manager later says, in a players’ meeting:

"I shouldn't have to tell you this by now, but this is baseball. What happens in this locker room stays in this locker room. You play long enough, and you are going to see all kinds of shit in this game. Drugs, booze, sex, affairs -- shit that doesn't even have a name yet. You don't talk about it outside these walls .... Women don't understand what we do in here, and they don't need to know.”

Last year I briefly worked for an outfit which does utility locating (those paint marks on roads and sidewalks, which show construction crews where underground pipes are). On my first day, my trainer showed me a picture of his current girlfriend naked. Then, as we drove around from site to site, my trainer would show the same photo to utility locators from other companies as we ran across them. Much of my first week was spent listening to him scream terrifying threats at his previous girlfriend.

This outfit had perhaps twelve employees. Only one was female, and she did not dilly-dally at the start of shift with everyone else.

A baseball clubhouse (or locker room in football, hockey, junior high, etc.) is a males-only environment, and there are certain ways some men will behave in such an environment. Much of it is adolescent silliness, like Bert Blylevn’s farting or Twins players putting peanut butter in David Ortiz’s underwear.

Perhaps it’s not that sports culture, or even male culture, per se, creates a world where certain behavior is tolerated which would not be tolerated elsewhere. Perhaps it’s any highly insular community. In such a community, it’s easy to adopt whatever the behavioral norms are, and failure to do so can lead to isolation. Often this manifests itself via insider jokes and lingo; my mom was a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and while raised a Midwestern Catholic girl, soon began swearing constantly (never in anger, always humorously — as in “this pizza tastes so $%&ing good!”)

An insular community can also develop darker norms, as it is easy to nudge the norms when there’s little contact with outsiders. Consider baseball’s “unwritten rules” about retaliation for inside pitches and takeout slides. Once established, such norms become difficult to reverse.

Domurat noted that “We’re also seeing recently in new research, middle school is really the prime time for us to implement violence prevention programs. Because once that norm is set in that young person’s mind, it’s really hard to change ... We’re seeing that bringing in those trainings and having that conversation is really good to start at the middle school level.”

Her colleague Sara Behmerwohld said, “When it gets down to it, you’re talking about parents talking to their kids about ‘this is what healthy relationships are like’, ‘this is what healthy dating relationships look like’, ’this is how you’re supposed to treat women and men’, and it has to start there. By the time people get to high school, college, pro, it’s engrained.”

The accusations against Jones and the Nationals are deeply saddening for any Twins fan — or anyone concerned with this issue, as most of us are. Should they prove substantiated or not, they do remind us how important it is to impress standards of respect and consent on the young people in our lives. Both that these things are owed to others, and deserved from others. I’d hope to imagine the day when behavior of the sort Hayhurst describes is so unthinkable, it’s like the office environment in early seasons of Mad Men.

But that day isn’t here yet.