The Trial of Trevor Bauer
Trevor Bauer on the Diablos Rojos in Mexican Baseball (2024 from MiLB)
I didn’t like Trevor Bauer. As one of the bigger Astros fans south of the i-10, I thought his remarks against the Astros after the sign-stealing scandal were at best unfair, considering similar sign-stealing tactics employed by other competitive franchises. At worst, they fueled a fire I already had burning against a guy that seemed to rub everyone the wrong way. He seemed selfish, unsportsmanlike, and like he enjoyed controversy. Then, as the news of his sexual conduct came to light in 2021, I too, condemned him.
One of the challenging elements of writing is the pursuit of impartiality. The very fact I’ve picked up my laptop, bought the cold brew, sat down with my legal pad, and have now begun to write this article after the tab-closing stage of comprehension inescapably binds me to having some motive. I’d like to do an aside and say I’m going to “just give you the facts”, but I’m going to be honest as well. Giving the facts is a bank robber saying, “I stole the money”; being honest is giving it back. In a modern era of career-ending social media leaks, sometimes it seems as if it doesn’t pay to be honest. But, I’ll say it. I hated Trevor Bauer, and now, I admire him.
For those that came to scoff, or to get mired in the neck-craning, traffic accident phenomena of gossipy debates, I’ll cut to it: yes, I have realized Trevor Bauer is innocent in the case of Lindsey Hill. He is not charged, made no payments, and has never been arrested. The case is settled. I’m not here to breakdown allegations or matters discussed outside of a court of law. Further, a man can be innocent without being the pitiable Dimitri Karamazov, the unexpected, hero-victim sent to Siberia for crimes he didn’t commit in Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece. This article is part one of a series. Today, we’re going to go through the legal proceedings of the Lindsey Hill case that nearly ended Bauer’s career and began his journey to clear his name.
Sourced from the complaint filing from Bauer’s legal team as well as public reports of the events, here’s a timeline of the events of Trevor Bauer and Lindsey Hill’s sexual and legal encounter:
February 2021: Trevor Bauer signs with Los Angeles Dodgers for 3 year, $102 million contract.
April 21, 2021: Trevor Bauer and Lindsey Hill meet at his home in Pasadena, California for a sexual encounter.
Evening of May 15, 2021: Trevor Bauer and Lindsey Hill meet at his home in Pasadena, California for a second, sexual encounter.
Morning of May 16, 2021: Lindsey Hill posts Snapchat video of her smirking in bed next to sleeping Trevor Bauer, no marks on her face.
Morning of May 17, 2021: Lindsey Hill reports to the Alvarado Medical Center Emergency Room receiving negative CT scans. “The only injuries reflected in her medical records include ecchymosis, or surface level bruising, and some swelling on the left side of her face”, the complaint filing reads.
May 18, 2021: Hill goes to police to request a restraining order, claiming she awoke to Bauer savagely beating her in the face and back, suffering the worst physical damage of their encounter.
May 22, 2021: Phone Call recording (later brought in by Hill’s legal team) of Bauer and Hill discussing their previous encounter.
Hill secretly recorded the call while Bauer was answering it on the LA team bus.
Two Pasadena detectives were secretly listening in on the call and feeding Hill questions.
Bauer and Hill note that he stopped immediately after each use of their safeword.
Bauer: “I tried telling you multiple times, like ‘Hey, do you want to stop? It is - are you okay?”
May/June 2021: LA County Superior Court grants Lindsey Hill temporary restraining order against Bauer and story goes public.
MLB puts Bauer on administrative leave, suspends him later for 2 years.
July 23, 2021: LA county court Judge Gould-Saltman finds Hill’s case “materially misleading” and ruled: ”In this case, the court finds there is no supportable evidence that respondent is likely to cause petitioner any harm or even have contact with the petitioner. For all the reasons stated, the court denies petitioner’s request for a long term domestic violence restraining order, and the court hereby dissolves the temporary restraining order.”
April 2022: Bauer files for defamation lawsuit against Lindsey Hill and Hill files for sexual battery and battery lawsuit against Bauer.
Case moves into discovery phase, where Bauer learns about Snapchat video taken on the morning of May 16, and text messages Hill sent to friends prior to and after her encounters with Bauer:
“Next victim. Star pitcher for the dodgers.”
“What should I steal?”
“Net worth is 51 mil!”
(In reply to ‘Bitch you better secure the bag!’), “Need daddy to choke me out”.
December 2022: Bauer reinstated by MLB, effective immediately. The Dodgers release him and eat his third year of salary.
October 2023: Bauer’s lawyers, Jon Fetterolf and Shawn Holley announce that “Trevor Bauer and Lindsey Hill have settled all outstanding litigation”, noting that no fees were paid to Hill. Bauer leaves the case with no charges and no arrest.
While researching this article, I had to put on my duck hunting hip boots to wade through the platitudinal hit-pieces (like Deadspin’s) that seemed to liken Bauer to a panzer tank coming to steal goodness itself. And to be fair, I also found Bauer’s video documenting his and Lindsey Hill’s legal proceedings to be somewhat misleading, when he seemed to transition from the discovery phase’s (2022) revelation of Hill’s texts and Snapchat selfie as grounds for Judge Gould-Saltman’s denial of Hill’s long-term restraining order request that happened a year earlier. Now, Bauer is just trying to explain his side of the story in a digestible format, and him implying that timeline doesn’t mean he intended to, nor even that this perceived implication exists – but it’s worth mentioning honest concerns I had going through my head as I tried to get to the bottom of things.
Yes, Bauer did engage with Lindsey Hill in a rough sexual encounter. Yes, operating a society purely on consent-based morality is morally problematic. Without getting into political philosophy, it’s interesting to note the idea of coercion when it comes to cases such as Hill’s. If someone agrees to do something, but their options are limited to begin with, are they really making a free choice? Yet, examining the phone call between Hill and Bauer (audio here) – where Hill secretly recorded a phone call between her and Bauer while she had two Pasadena detectives on her side of the line fielding her questions, and, in examining the text message history between them, it seems that both she and Bauer had agreed on “boundaries” and a “safe word” and that both of these were respected by Bauer, to her admission. When Hill initially requested a more permanent restraining order, Judge Gould-Saltman denied the request due to Hill’s clear consent in the sexual encounters. The discovery documents detailing communication such as the call, texts, and Snapchat selfie came out a year later.
At this point – and again, I still didn’t like Bauer – I was falling prey to a common rhetorical fallacy omnipresent in news cycles: argumentum ad nauseam – telling a story enough times until you believe it’s at least partially true. This tactic works in two ways: 1) to muddy the waters with doubt and 2) via duration and frequency, make people throw their hands up and go (in Bauer’s case), “well, a good guy wouldn’t have this much controversy, so he must’ve done something bad.” But, let’s revisit the topic of coercion, this time under the category of motive, as opposed to consent. Could Lindsey Hill, like Bauer’s other fraudulent accusers, have been coerced by the prospect of profiting off of scandal? What if this were the motive: to gum up headlines with rumor, albeit ad nauseam? What if there were a financial incentive to spread falsehood and capitalize on it?
As Bauer and Hill’s legal case wore on, it entered the document discovery phase. Here, Bauer’s team got access to the text messages where Hill seemed to be planning on fishing for financial restitution from Bauer even before their first night together. Days after their second and final encounter, May 16, 2021, Hill proceeded to file a temporary restraining order. Interestingly, “[i]n San Diego and many courts in California, temporary restraining order requests are handled the same day they are filed”, and require only reasonable proof, “the lowest standard we have in the Court system.” With Bauer having just received one of the highest AAV contracts in MLB history at the beginning of 2021, signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a 3 year, $102 million deal following his Cy Young season in Cincinnati, it seems like a perfect target for Lindsey Hill’s strategy to, as her friend told her, “secure the bag”. Coupling her potential financial gain from Bauer’s lucrative free agency with the high headline impact/low evidence cost of getting a restraining order in California, Hill’s victim case quickly could seem like a malicious ploy.
Lindsey Hill (Her own Snapchat Account)
Hill’s leaked Snapchat video selfie seemed to kill her credible case, but not quite. Victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault must be able to come forward without fear of retribution. But, her smiling, unscathed face directly contrasts the police report she gave on May 18th and the bruised eye photographs taken later. But, just because Lindsey Hill was smirking in front of a sleeping Bauer, playfully sticking her tongue out, and showing no marks, bruises, or marring of her visage whatsoever – who is to say that Bauer did not suddenly awake and then beat her against her consent? Practicing attorney and member of California and DC Bar, Alyete Mazeika, founder of Legal Bytes YouTube channel, dissected this selfie video and Hill’s subsequent public appearances regarding it, compared against the interviews of Rihanna after suffering domestic abuse at the hands of Chris Brown. I found it a compelling breakdown comparing the emotional nature of shame and fear of most domestic violence survivors, contrasted to Hill’s carefree, mercurial tone – seeming to back the angle of Hill’s fabrication of the encounter.
However, this isn’t convincing enough. What if Hill had worked through the trauma – must she feel shame to qualify as telling the truth? I considered this, until I read through the case file submitted by Bauer’s legal team containing the discovery documents.
Clearly, Hill’s motives were premeditated on exacting financial revenge on Bauer. Her public interview tour on news outlets does not strike me as a scarred survivor speaking truth in the wake of assault, but rather a furtive, scavenging kid trying to scrape recompense without remorse. I don’t think Hill gives domestic abuse survivors or their legal cases a bad name – I think her glib disdain highlights the sincerity and real trauma of real survivors. This is not to say Hill is not a victim in her own right, but it may be closer to the mark to say she is a victim of pride, greed, and self-seeking motives.
As for Bauer, it’s odd to think of a man with a lot of money as a victim. Despite an unprecedented two year suspension without pay by Rob Manfred, Bauer ended up receiving the remainder of his pay from the Dodgers. Regarding the paying out of his salary, LA Times columnist and Dodgers fan, Bill Plaschke, lauds, “good for [the Dodgers]. Smart for them. They decided to stand on the right side of history at great cost”, as if the right side of history were guilty until proven innocent. However, no major league team will sign him. Bauer’s an ace and hasn’t had an opportunity to pitch an MLB inning since 2021, nor compete for an MLB salary. It’s hard to quantify the financial opportunity cost from his suspension or the emotional fatigue from the headlines created by Hill’s false accusations.
What started to change my opinion on Bauer? I gradually pieced together his innocence. I still did not like the guy. Why did he have to have such beef with Gerrit Cole and other college teammates? Why did he have to get so angry that he threw a baseball into center field mid-game? Why did he have to taunt opposing batters? Well, here’s a thought: maybe I was so upset because I saw some of myself in him. Maybe it’s a little metaphysical, sure, but while we’re talking morality, it’s important to be honest. I’ve told the facts as I have uncovered them, but here is the honesty: I may not agree that fleeting, violent hook-ups, however consented-upon they are, are a healthy indicator of human relationship. I do not need to shout Bauer’s innocence with gotchas of facts and logic via clipped, sound-byte posts that checkmate Lindsey Hill into ignominy. She did that herself. I’m not going to say I think his alleged conduct is reputable. But overall, being behind a keyboard and calling someone arrogant or bad is just a form of dishonesty and lack of self-examination. Perhaps I started to warm up to Trevor Bauer once I realized I relate to him so much. Perhaps, I saw in him a man wrestling with the same energies we all do, and I just wanted to feel better about myself by putting him down. Indeed, it’s as if I enjoyed pointing the finger at him for seemingly taking himself too seriously, as if this were not the most common human affliction.
What finally changed my mind on Bauer’s personality was watching his interview on the Theo Von podcast. There he opens up and speaks about how this Lindsey Hill encounter changed him – “I’ve had to self reflect: how did I get into this situation where something like this is even possible?”. Nowhere is the calculated Bauer I expected. Here is a man that’s been through a trial, both legally and heart-wise, yet shows poise, grace, and pause. Bauer speaks of making a “software update” of his life:
“[I’ve] changed a lot of how I do things in my personal life. I’m very careful of who I meet and how I meet them. I’m not having the same types of casual sexual relationships, I’m not agreeing to do the same types of sexual things, I’m not dating a bunch of people. I’ve locked down my personal life and gone back to square one: what do I care about in a personal relationship? … Let me go try to find those things actively, instead of just being okay with anyone that’s approaching me just to have someone around in those blank moments”.
That’s where I flipped. I was not going to be moved by merely a penitent ballplayer with legal proofs to clear his name. Here was a man that was deliberately wronged, defended his honor, and trusted that the truth would be enough. That’s refreshing. When Theo asks him what’s next, Bauer speaks about his willingness to play for any team for the league minimum — only wanting the opportunity to play while earning his salary based on his performance, game by game. Poking around his YouTube channel, afterward, I found myself glued to an entertainment level I haven’t yet witnessed in the sport. Here was a MLB Cy Young pitcher calling his pitches and narrating his thought process as he strikes out 14 batters in a row – from the mound; it’s like you’re watching a famous baseball movie in real time. This is invaluable content to little leaguers world-wide. Bauer doesn’t seem to be in it for the attention. He seems to care about the next generation of ball players. He speaks about how being bullied and a little different helped to form a self-esteem that really works on the biggest stage. To me, this is why Trevor Bauer is more than just innocent, and his story more than just a cautionary tale – I think he may become a role model for young men in this modern generation.
The Me Too movement is important for liberating sexual victims kept in the darkness of shame or the fear of retribution by those more powerful than them. In a modern world where money, pleasure, and quickness appear alluring sirens, a good movement like Me Too can be misrepresented by grifters like Lindsey Hill. It should not be disparaged because of her behavior. People deserve the right to speak the truth, no matter the powerful forces they face. Despite the media, the MLB, and the monetary cost of court proceedings, the fact that Trevor Bauer has remained true to himself and reflected inward, as opposed to retaliating outward – speaks volumes. It shows other men that there are more important things in life than money and power. Bauer strikes me as a man that has grown stronger from the way this scandal was forced upon him by disreputable people – people that are perhaps suffering from their own demons.
As an Astros fan, a soon-to-be father, a husband, and a man that has made many mistakes himself, I admire Trevor Bauer, and look forward to him pitching in the big leagues, soon. To me, this story is no longer the tragedy of Trevor Bauer, but a hopeful story about resilience and truth. It is the sincere hope of Painting Corners that others will come to acknowledge not only Bauer’s innocence in the court of law, but the vital energy he injects into the love of the game of baseball.
Sources:
