As the Houston Astros and Washington National got set for Game 1 of the World Series, a dark cloud loomed over the Astros front office following a reportedly ugly incident involving the team’s assistant general manager.
In a story posted Monday to SI.com, Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein reported an incident in the Astros locker room after Houston’s dramatic ALCS Game 6 walk-off to eliminate the New York Yankees in which assistant GM Brandon Taubman lashed out verbally at a group of three female reporters regarding Astros closer Robert Osuna.
“Taubman turned to a group of three female reporters, including one wearing a purple domestic-violence awareness bracelet, and yelled, half a dozen times, ‘Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so (expletive) glad we got Osuna!,'” Apstein wrote.
Osuna, who allowed a two-run home run that tied Game 6 in the top of the ninth, allegedly assaulted the mother of his child in May 2018. He was suspended by Major League Baseball for 75 games, leading the Toronto Blue Jays to trade the right-hander to Houston for a low price (in baseball terms, at least). The charges were dropped that September.
The Astros then released the following statement on Monday night, after SI.com’s report was published, calling the story “misleading and completely irresponsible.”
After multiple outlets corroborated Apstein’s story, including the Houston Chronicle and Yahoo Sports, the Astros released statements from Taubman and owner and chairman Jim Crane on Tuesday with a different tune. Taubman said he used “inappropriate language for which I am deeply sorry and embarrassed.”
“My overexuberance in support of a player has been misinterpreted as a demonstration of regressive attitude about an important social issue,” Taubman said via the statement. ” … I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.”
Later on Tuesday, NPR’s Dave Folkenflik reported that Taubman’s outburst was directed at a female reporter that had tweeted repeatedly about the issue of domestic violence and Taubman had “complained about her tweets offering info on DV hotlines when Robert Osuna appeared in Astros games in 2018.”
MLB announced in a statement that it would be investigating the incident. The BBWAA and the Association for Women in Sports Media also released statements on the matter.
Leading up to Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday, Astros manager AJ Hinch addressed the situation, per The Athletic’s Jake Kaplan, saying he was “very disappointed for a lot of reasons.”
“I didn’t know until the story came out and I read it about the same time a lot of people did,” Hinch told reporters. “You know, obviously my reaction, I’m very disappointed for a lot of reasons. It’s unfortunate. It’s uncalled for. For me as a leader in this organization down here in the clubhouse, on the field, I take everything that happens in the clubhouse to heart.
“No one, it doesn’t matter if it’s a player, a coach, a manager, any of you members of the media, should ever feel like when you come into our clubhouse that you’re going to be uncomfortable or disrespected. So I wasn’t there. I don’t know to the extent of what happened. I read, like everybody. I haven’t talked to every single person in the organization, as you would expect. I’ve been knee-deep in the Washington Nationals.
“But I think we all need to be better across the board, in the industry. I understand why it’s a question today and I appreciate it. But I was disappointed.”
