It was a sordid tale from the get-go, and in the wake of #MeToo hitting Hollywood like a hurricane, when the story broke it was more bad news from the Los Angeles area.

To begin the 2021 baseball season, Trevor Bauer — then the reigning Cy Young Award winner in the National League for his prowess during the shortened 2020 season — signed a three-year, $102 million contract with the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. While Bauer had developed a reputation as an outspoken and opinionated free spirit with a large social media following, on the mound things were going rather well as he had maintained his 2020 form over the first half of the 2021 season.

It all changed when Major League Baseball (MLB) placed Bauer on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation into domestic violence accusations. Bauer maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, and he was legally cleared in February 2022 when the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office refused to press charges based on a lack of evidence. Nevertheless, MLB handed down its verdict: a 324-game suspension, or two full seasons. While the suspension was later reduced to 194 games on appeal, the damage was done. No MLB team signed Bauer for the 2023 season, forcing him to resurrect his career in Japan. The unpaid suspension also cost Bauer most of his $102 million contract.

The long nightmare ended for Bauer recently as he and his accuser settled “all outstanding litigation.” Freed to tell his side of the story, Trevor posted a video to X to recount — with a bit of adult language — just how his reputation was destroyed by a woman who told her friends: “Next victim. Star pitcher for the Dodgers.”

A 27-minute phone call between the pair, taped in collaboration by police without Bauer’s knowledge, was also released. It revealed that the two evidently engaged in consensual but let’s say unorthodox sexual behavior.

But the point of this tale is just as much about how the media immediately took the #BelieveAllWomen side without waiting for all the evidence.

As Shawn Fleetwood of The Federalist put it, “Equally egregious as [the woman’s] flimsy accusations is the willingness of America’s regime-approved press to immediately proclaim Bauer as guilty when the allegations dropped.” Comparing Bauer’s story to the unproven accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Fleetwood added: “No longer are the accused ‘innocent until proven guilty’ or given their day in court. Instead, hack-tivist ‘journalists’ decide whether someone deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

Bobby Burack at OutKick agreed. “The sports media was quick to convict Bauer in the court of public opinion, to declare the woman’s claims adequate enough for the Dodgers to release Bauer,” he wrote. “Such coverage was irresponsible and dishonest. And, in the case of reporter Molly Knight, scandalous.” Knight, who was then a writer for The Athletic, falsely claimed Bauer had fractured the accuser’s skull while in possession of medical records stating otherwise.

More concerning, though, is Bauer’s claim that the accuser’s lawyers had the information that could have cleared the matter and Bauer’s name, but “deliberately and unlawfully concealed” the evidence from his legal team.

Perhaps Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine has the right idea. “I would not want to be playing any professional sport in today’s world,” he said during an interview with Dan Dakich of OutKick. “Listen, the money’s great, it always gets better every generation, but the things that guys have to deal with today, it’s off the charts. I mean, you can’t go anywhere without somebody having a camera. You can’t go anywhere without somebody videotaping.” In this instance, the videotape is what helped unravel the case — yet the victim kept demanding a cash settlement to the end.

We’re not here to defend Trevor Bauer’s actions, particularly his choice of casual relationships. But these false accusations cost him millions of dollars as well as three of the most prime years of earning for a baseball player. Trevor will be 33 at the start of next season, meaning he’s starting over on the back side of a career that usually fades out in one’s late thirties. And while he had a relatively successful season in Japan last year, the quality of play there is only considered somewhere between that of MLB and the highest minor league level of AAA.

“Assuming he’s healthy and still able to pitch at that level, I would think somebody would be interested in taking a flier on him and see if he can go out there and help their team,” Glavine added. “But it’s going to have to be a team that’s prepared … to take on the court of public opinion because even though nothing’s happened in this situation, there’s still going to be people that think that, oh, well, you shouldn’t have a player like him just simply because he was accused of something.”

There’s just something wrong with the world when a man can be falsely accused and lose almost everything while the woman who accused him loses nothing. Perhaps if we let these cases be properly investigated by law enforcement and tried in the court system rather than the media, we can figure out which women to believe.