Scott Budner became the manager for the Brothers after the original manager Cory Snyder went back to California late 2018 season due to a forest fire threatening his house. The Brothers placed dead last that season, having fired a bunch of their stars for having direct conflicts with Snyder.
This year, Scott Budner was able to motivate the young players to turn things around post the all star game, and fight their way for a spot in the post season and the Taiwan Series.
However, after winning game 2 of the TS, Bundner’s Brothers lost 3 straight games at home and watched as Lamigo Monkeys completed the Three-peat in their final season, as the team was sold to the Japanese company Rakuten.
After the Brothers lost the Taiwan Series, reporters went into the club house for a post game interview. Bundner had just finished taking a shower and only had a towel wrapped around his waist, which is something pretty common in the US. A female reporter claimed that Bundner showed the reporters a plush toy shaped like male genitalia, and introduced it as Mr. Dick.
I mean you can find that penis shaped plush toy at every claw machine shop around the island. If people found it controversial, they should have taken it up with those claw machine places.
Yet the female reporter said Bundner made her feel uncomfortable. The league banned Bundner for one game and fined him for some amount of money. However, just a few days later, the Brothers announced that they are terminating Bundner as Brothers’ manager, mainly because of the alleged “sexual harassment.”
I don’t quite understand how things got to this point. If you don’t want to see people wearing only a towel around their waist, then don’t go into the club house. As for the plush toy, it’s not like she was the only one there.
Idk what exactly happened. But it’s the locker room…people are going to be naked. Maybe he was harassing her. It seems pretty silly though.
I believe both the NBA and NFL had some female reporters complain they are at a disadvantage because they either have to go in or lose their job. And interviews should be done outside the locker room.
Which is a fair argument. But considering that players really talk to reporters on their own digression. I don’t think it’s reasonable to enforce such rules. It is just the nature of sports being a male dominated industry.
kind of simple.
get rid of ALL reporters, male and female, in clubhouse where there are showers.
allow interviews only at those set-up tables in some conference room away/outside of changing room.
that would be my clubhouse rule if I owned a sports team.
IDK about the dugout, but it is a men’s clubhouse and locker room. Perhaps from the men’s perspective, they don’t necessary want women in there. I wouldn’t think of it as discrimination or anything if a male journalist wasn’t allowed into the softball teams locker room.
The thing is there are plenty of women working in the clubhouse. Nowadays there are plenty of women working as either staff, doctors, or therapists on a professional team. They understand players and other members on the team would take showers and change in the clubhouse. The fact that Budner not properly dressed was one of the complaints made by that female reporter makes it sound like she has no idea what her job even is.
Bundner should probably have given his plush toy a more original name. Perhaps calling it Nixon, Robin, Randy Johnson or any other name would have avoided this whole mess.
Its fair to say reporters enter a locker room at their own risk in terms of how dressed people are, but it sounds like the Manager crossed the line with his conduct…
From what I understand he showed it to many reporters as a joke calling it Mr. Dick. I don’t really feel like it’s a big deal. Sounds like something guys would find amusing. We are visual creatures, notice how 2 circles and a triangle catches our eyes on the bathroom wall.
Sounds like a convenient excuse to fire him and not pay him off ?
If things are unclear in Taiwan never underestimate being cheapskates, although the team was sold to a Japanese company ?
Their rival at the Taiwan series, Lamigo Monkeys, was sold to a Japanese company.
If he picked up the plush toy, put it in the general area of his towel, and said something like wanna meet Mr. Dick? Then yeah, that’s definitely harassment. Though, as seen in the photo, that wasn’t at all what happened.
