UNITED STATES
Yahoo Sports
June 27, 2018
By Jeff Passan
Two facts define Luke Heimlich. The first is that he pleaded guilty as a teenager to molesting his 6-year-old niece. The second is that he is one of the best pitchers in college baseball. How society reconciles personal depravity with professional excellence is a defining question of today, in politics, in Hollywood, in sports – in all public-facing jobs whose disproportionate hold on our moral leanings places an even greater onus on their role as noble actors.
It is no surprise, then, that the Kansas City Royals rendered the first – and so far only – public comment on Heimlich’s suitability to play Major League Baseball. The Royals, and particularly their general manager, Dayton Moore, see MLB and the platform it provides as a conduit to a greater purpose. Moore’s deep religious convictions guide the organization, and the significant consideration it’s given to signing Heimlich follows the axiom of hate the sin, love the sinner.
Conversations about drafting Heimlich three weeks ago reached the level of Royals president Dan Glass, who nixed the idea, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told Yahoo Sports. For the second consecutive season, Oregon State’s star pitcher went undrafted. That did not end the team’s deliberation over signing Heimlich as a non-drafted free agent, a possibility that Moore first floated into the public more than a week ago during an interview with Fox Sports Kansas City.
And for more than week, it floated in the ether, mentioned by just one person on Twitter, coming to light only after The Athletic tracked it down. Between that and a column in The Kansas City Star that first broached the Royals’ interest in Heimlich, the organization sent two trial balloons to gauge the potential backlash of signing the 22-year-old left-hander.
Whether they can stomach a deluge of bad headlines cannot be the point, not if moral certitude is central to the Royals’ organizational philosophy. In this case, great leadership – the tenet on which Moore most prides himself – demands looking beyond his baseball club. It necessitates answering publicly and transparently the hardest questions a situation such as Heimlich’s offers. Should the Royals sign Heimlich without properly addressing these concerns, they will be branded, accurately and damningly, an organization of hypocrites more concerned with its players viewing sexual acts than admitting to sexually assaulting a kindergarten-aged girl.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.