Jared Porter is everything wrong with the male-dominated culture of MLB management

Over the past 24 hours, I’ve tried to put my thoughts together about the abhorrent behavior by now-former Mets GM Jared Porter. Over 60 unsolicited texts and numerous lewd photos to a female reporter in 2016, while he was in charge of the Chicago Cubs professional scouting department. This reporter has now left the profession, in part due to the disgusting and inappropriate actions by Porter.

The initial reaction on social media last night and early this morning was that of surprise and shock, mixed in with a bit of LOLMets. My reaction was the opposite- how can this be surprising to anyone anymore? The sport of baseball is male-dominated, and the same can be said for leadership and management, and even society at-large. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Jared Porter’s out there, and unfortunately, we do not know enough of them publicly.

Rather than going long form for the rest of this, I’m going to provide some bulleted one-liners:

• We need more women in places of leadership.
• It is not up to women to be the “saviors” of fixing this horrible culture; men need to be better, do better, and call-out this bullshit when the see and hear it.
• Listen to women.

One of the purposes of this blog is to raise the voices of those who deserve to be heard. I ask anyone who’s reached this part of my post to read the following article from Deesha Thosar, who is the Mets beat writer for the Daily News: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-jared-porter-sexual-harassment-20210119-r556mbcwrvfadjypc7otbnkc3a-story.html. Her story and experience in the industry that deserves to be lifted up, because as she wrote, “This is a universal experience for women working in sports media.”