Julio Lugo

[fluharty]

Just heard he has cleared wavers. Should he be given another chance, conditional that he agrees to counceling? I say baseball doesn't need people like him.

[ill16ca]

I never heard... what did he do?

[fluharty]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/bas...o_arrested_ap/

[ill16ca]

That's disappointing to see. And to think that the media made a fuss last year over Orlando Hudson claiming he thought J.P. Ricciardi dressed like a pimp.

[sixto]

you know what's interesting about all this...this morning i interviewed a former crack addict who is starting up a tv talk show and wrote a book about his addiction (self-published) and he was talking at length about how fortunate he is to have turned his life around, how grateful he is to be able to set things straight and how terrible it was to be addicted.

and i'm thinking, i want to publish a story about this compelling person, and yet in the back of my mind i am thinking that this guy may have stabbed someone, or shot someone, at some point in his long drug-addled life, and for certain there are dozens to hundreds of people who are missing money or possessions because of things he did while addicted.

and it just makes me think, about forgiveness and second chances. if you don't know what a person does, you're much more likely to be willing to forgive him than if you are familiar with his transgressions. here we are talking about the punk julio lugo, and yet dozens if not hundreds of baseball players have beaten or roughed up their wives and girlfriends.

if you can forgive someone whose flaws you don't know, why can't you forgive someone whose life is public? does julio lugo deserve to be blacklisted without being given a chance to turn things around?

i in no way condone any violence toward anyone, and what lugo is accused of is certainly an "unforgiveable" act. but i don't think "unforgiveable" is a circumstance we contemplate enough. if you break your arm, it does heal, even though that's almost the worst thing that could happen to your arm. why is it that we have so much trouble letting mental damage heal?

[magicmike]

It's probably just the cynic in me but why do I have a hard time believing that things would have gone down this way if it had involved Lance Berkman rather than Julio Lugo?

Not to pick on Berkman, but does anybody seriously believe that the Astros would immediately demote and prepare to trade or waive Berkman (or Bagwell, or Oswalt, or Wagner, or any of their other star players) if one of them were accused of the same thing?

[magicmike]

Originally posted by fluharty
Just heard he has cleared wavers. Should he be given another chance, conditional that he agrees to counceling? I say baseball doesn't need people like him.

That's a profound question. Should we have any kind of system where a person loses the ability to work at his profession if he's found guilty of some non job related criminal act? Particularly one that is not premeditated? I think we have a civil and criminal system that is supposed to address these kinds of wrongful conduct. I'm not so sure that the person should necessarily lose the abiity to work at his profession too.

[Crapshoot]

First thing first- Its an alleged attack- its not guilty until proved innocent. If he did it, I think Im glad he's waived, but magicmike has a valid point.

[fluharty]

yes, excellent point magicmike

[kq76]

I think we all understand that the judicial system often fails society. I think a better question should be, why shouldn't he lose his chance to work in his chosen profession given the particular circumstances of his situation? If it's found that he is guilty (hoping that the judicial system does not fail), I say that he should lose his job in this case. If losing his job meant that he was also losing his only way to provide a decent standard of life for himself, then I would agree with you, but the guy is making hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. I'm sure he can be a labourer and still have a decent standard of living for himself, not as good as he'd like I'm sure, but I don't think making ludicrous amounts of money is punishment.

[kq76]

Originally posted by sixto
if you don't know what a person does, you're much more likely to be willing to forgive him than if you are familiar with his transgressions.

...

if you can forgive someone whose flaws you don't know, why can't you forgive someone whose life is public?

Interesting point sixto, but by talking to that former crack addict, you did get to know him and I imagine you only really forgave him once you did get to know him. I doubt you forgave him before you got to know him. If you don't know a person or know about what bad things they have done, what are you forgiving? Or put another way, how can you forgive what you don't know about? You need to know about the transgression before you can forgive it. And I don't believe I'm just talking semantics, I honestly don't understand how this is possible.

Maybe you're trying to say that it's easier for us to forgive all those people out there that we don't know about who beat their wives. But there you're assuming it happens, which I'm sure there are cases we don't know about, but why would you forgive those people unless you got to know them a bit and felt that they deserved to be forgiven?

[jgross68]

From the Newberg Minor League Report 5/14/03:
"(The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting) that Texas has expressed interest in shortstop Julio Lugo, who was released by the Astros last week after he was arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife. Ugh. Apparently, Texas would only be interested in giving Lugo a AAA job, and (one source) writes that even on that basis it's unlikely that the Rangers will pursue him."

So, I think that answer the question "will someone else give him a chance?" Goes no further to answering the question "should he be given another chance?" though. Personally, I think the Astros did the right thing - and possibly the only thing they could do after the dude was arrested at the ballpark. I also think he will be given a second chance at some point; probably sooner than later. It may not be the Rangers, but I'm guessing he will be signed to at least a minor league deal before the month of May is over.

[SmoothLikeNick]

Enter the D-Rays. Lugo is in the process of signing a deal with them as we speak....

[marioh]

Didn't Jason Kidd smack around his wife ?
Seems to me that he's still playing b-ball.

If Kidd is still allowed to play in the NBA, then I don't see the problem with Lugo being allowed to play in MLB.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally posted by marioh
Didn't Jason Kidd smack around his wife ?
Seems to me that he's still playing b-ball.

If Kidd is still allowed to play in the NBA, then I don't see the problem with Lugo being allowed to play in MLB.

Right... because if one person is allowed to get away with a crime, everyone should be. If one murderer gets away with it and is set free on a technicality, everyone should be allowed to murder, right?

[marioh]

Not exactly the analogy I was hoping would be made with that.

More like...

If Kidd is still allowed to play ball and Lugo isn't, that would be called a double standard. As someone else stated previously, if it was, say Lance Berkman or Bagwell, do you really believe that either one of those players would be cut and this debate going on ?
Kidd is a basketball star and is treated as such (as proven by him not being cut by his team at the time).
Lugo is a baseball scrub and is also treated as such (as proven by him being cut).

If you have a problem comprehending that and differentiating between domestic violence and murder, then that's your problem.

[CBL-Commish]

Double standard? Absolutely.

First, there is nothing that says the NBA and MLB have to have the same rules. If they want to, the NBA could allow murderers out on parole to play, or they could ban anyone who ever shoplifted a pack of gum at the age of 4. The same goes for MLB, and there is absolutely nothing that says the two leagues have to agree.

If this was Berkman, no he probably wouldn't have been cut, but we'd definitely be having an argument about it. It's not right, but like it or not, fair or not, all rules don't get applied the same way to everyone. If the CEO of a company takes some printer paper out of the supply closet and uses it at home, chances are no one says a thing. If the summer intern does the same thing there's a good chance they're fired on the spot.

Berkman is a player the Astros have millions or tens of millions of dollars invested in. They probably have advertising campaigns with him as the centerpiece. They have bobblehead dolls with his face on them. They make money and draw fans because of him. Lugo probably makes something like the ML minimum and is relatively invisible to the average fan. As much as you'd like to operate in a vaccuum and not have money come into play, you have to weigh the costs to the organization when you dole out punishments for things like this.

I have no problem differentiating between murder and domestic violence. That wasn't in any way related to the point of my post. You could insert any crime and the meaning would have been identical.

[magicmike]

Good points made. The thing that bothered me most about that article was this:

[quote] Astros president of business operations Pam Gardner is on the board of directors of the Houston Area Women's Center, which assists those affected by domestic violence.

"My first reaction is how our organization deals with this and I was proud that our organization dealt with it in the way it did," Gardner said. "We made a statement how we deal not with just domestic violence but violence of any kind.

"It's unacceptable. We clearly stated that and I'm proud of that." [quote]


I can certainly understand and support this woman's statement. But it's crap coming from a team official when everybody in the world knows that this decision would not have been the same if this had involved a star player.

[holyroller]

Jason Kidd did smack his wife around. He is playing pro ball. How many people even think "wife beater" when his name is mentioned? How many people think "great player" when his name is mentioned?

We live in a strange society. People still hold Chris Webber getting busted for pot as a huge sin while Jason Kidd or Julio Lugo or Wil Cordero beating up a woman isn't that big of a deal. None of the three had to worry about repercussions from the law of course, they are celebrities. What I wonder is whether Kidd, Lugo,or Cordero are getting any help with their problem.

[cooper_gd]

^^^ Nice point