No MLB Team Should Draft Luke Heimlich

     

     Luke Heimlich is one of the top college pitchers in the country. The 6'1 lefty throws a mid-nineties fastball and has a slider that tops off at 83 MPH. The Oregon State Beavers pitcher also has a 15-1 record, a 2.42 ERA, and has struck out 142 hitters in 111 innings. There's only one problem. Luke Heimlich plead guilty to molesting his then six year old niece when he was fifteen years old.
     Heimlich was eligible to be drafted last year, but no MLB team would touch him after the reports of his actions came out. He's eligible to be drafted again this year and as of this writing Heimlich has gone undrafted. That could change by tomorrow and it could change in the days after if a team decides to sign Heimlich as an undrafted free agent. Hopefully, Heimlich remains undrafted. A Major League team drafting or signing Heimlich would be an absolute nightmare for everybody involved and would send the same terrible message that the NFL sent to the public after the Ray Rice scandal. That message was : "We don't give a damn about victims of abuse. We just want to win."
     What Luke Heimlich did was not some case of a teenager or a college student acting stupid. Heimlich did not get arrested for a DUI, he was not arrested for getting in a drunken fight at a nightclub, and he was not arrested for reckless driving after wrapping his car around streetlight. These are forgivable crimes. He was arrested and plead guilty to molesting a little girl. Heimlich has since gone public to the New York Times to plead his innocence. However, this was not just one incident. Heimlich molested his niece on at least two different occasions. There isn't a gray area with this type of crime. False rape accusations happen as the Duke Lacrosse Scandal and the retracted Rolling Stone article 'A Rape on Camus' have shown. However, I don't think that there's much reason for doubt with Luke Heimlich's case. I highly doubt that a six year old girl would lie about being molested or would somehow misunderstand what happened to her given the context of the situation that she found herself in. The girl's parents also have not given any statements to indicate that this was some sort of tragic misunderstanding.
     Any General Manager that chooses to draft Heimlich is going to have to look his wife or daughter in the eye and somehow have to justify why he decided to draft a convicted child molester. A woman who was a victim of sexual assault that cheers for the team that drafts Heimlich will now have to make a decision on whether or not she still wants to support that team. Most importantly, Luke Heimlich's victim will constantly have to hear about him in the news. What does it say about the culture of baseball when it is this much of a debate on whether Luke Heimlich should or should not be drafted?
     The situation here is an absolutely moral and public relations nightmare for the MLB. The best course of action here is to simply not draft Luke Heimlich. There is enough evidence here to conclude that Luke Heimlich molested his niece. The MLB and their teams should lead by example and choose to let Luke Heimlich go undrafted and unsigned. It is the only thing that can be done. Drafting him would be a slap in the face to every female fan and to every fan that has been a victim of sexual abuse.