It’s that one of the people celebrating that title tonight in the home dugout was Luke Heimlich.
Beaver Nation has gone all in on the rationalization: “he didn’t do it; he’s paid his debt to society (which contradicts the first one but nobody said this made sense), turned his life around, whatever.”
Bunk. He came out last month in a national magazine interview and said that his 6-year-old niece made up the whole thing (or was told to do so by her mom, who is now divorced from Luke’s brother). According to the court documents, the molestation started when the girl was 4. FOUR. Says he pleaded guilty to avoid a trial and forcing members of his family to testify (which presumably also included avoiding the chance that that little girl points at him and said “Uncle Luke touched me down there, lots of times”). Heimlich accepted the plea bargain the day before the girl was scheduled to testify in court.
By the way, the SI story also says Luke’s brother is no longer speaking to him. Doesn’t sound like big bro is buying what Luke is selling either.
I don’t think Pat Casey knew any of this when he signed Heimlich; those juvenile records from his home state of Washington were sealed. But Casey, and OSU’s higher ups above him, approved letting him remain a Beaver after the news got out, to come back for this season, win 16 games and celebrate tonight with his teammates.
Would I have wanted him on my team? Hell no. No amount of pitching talent justifies what he did to that girl, or his refusal to take responsibility for his actions. The Kansas City Royals GM is throwing up some trial balloons to see if the KC community will flip out if he signs the little pervert. I’m not a Royals fan, but if I were and they signed him, I would be an ex-Royals fan.
It might even be different if he’d said, “I did it, I was a stupid kid, I own up to what I did and have become a better person.” He hasn’t done that. Denial is apparently a river is western Oregon as well as Egypt. And Beaver Nation has built a dam on that river and is paddling around in celebration.
As a father of a minor son there is absolutely no way I would let my son plead guilty to that crime if I had any doubt whatsoever it occurred. I would go bankrupt fighting for him.
Agree 100%. When G1 went the way it did I thought maybe we were going to get some good karma. They certainly didn’t deserve to win it all with a guy like that as the face of their program.
As I said Tuesday, I found it ironic that they of all people were griping about a split-second bad decision at 2B when they’ve repeatedly made bad decisions regarding Heimlich.
I was in Omaha and their fans were pretty smug. I wanted nothing more than to put them away in 2 and celebrate. I’m so bitter about it right now.