In November, news of longtime MLB executive Bob Bowman stepping down from his position came and went. Bowman, who headed up the league’s digital media arm for 17 years, was credited with making baseball “more accessible and enjoyable to millions of fans” by commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement announcing the move. Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bowman was in fact pushed out of the league for inappropriate behavior.
There’s a lot to digest in the Journal’s report, and you should read the whole thing here, but the gist of it is that Bowman had a extensive history of inappropriate workplace behavior during his years as the head of MLB Advanced Media. The story includes reports of him berating subordinates, coming onto female colleagues, calling women he worked with “cunts,” and shoving a Red Sox executive. There’s also, uh, this:
During the week of the All-Star Game in July 2016 in San Diego, MLB Advanced Media hosted a party at which women were allegedly hired to entertain attendees, according to two people who attended. These people said the women, who arrived at the party by bus, were widely believed by attendees to be escorts. Some of them were heard encouraging attendees to leave to have sex quickly so that they could return to solicit another attendee before the party was over, according to one person who was there.
Manfred said he had no knowledge of the alleged escorts. But he felt MLB Advanced Media’s parties were inappropriate and, after the one in 2016, he said, he adopted a policy that MLB Advanced Media would not host any parties independent of the league office.
In a statement to the Journal, Bowman said that he took full responsibility for his inappropriate behavior. In his own statement, Manfred described the incident in which Bowman shoved a Red Sox executive as a “culmination of a variety of issues” that led to Bowman leaving the league.
You can read the full story here.
[WSJ]