The Giants and Aubrey Huff is a no-win situation for all involved

Aubrey Huff is once again embroiled in controversy, and this time he’s dragging the San Francisco Giants front office down with him.

In case you missed it, the San Francisco Giants are not inviting former first-baseman and key contributor to the 2010 World Series Championship run Aubrey Huff back to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their title this year.

That lit a powder keg of reaction across the MLB landscape.

Here’s the full statement from the organization:

My initial reaction was of disappointment and I’m disappointed for a multitude of reasons.

I was 16 years old in 2010 and I watched the Giants—a team nobody believed in that was dubbed a “band of misfits” by Andrew Baggarly—go from zero to hero in the Bay Area.

Flashback six years, I remember listening to Game 3 of the NLDS against the Florida Marlins on the radio. After J.T. Snow was tagged out at home by Ivan Rodriguez, I cried in the car.

After that, yearly futility resumed. As a young boy, those six years were a long time after coming so close to winning it all. Then came Aubrey Huff, huffing and puffing around the bases for an inside-the-park home run early in the season.

Right then and there, I knew something was different in 2010.

Then came hit after clutch hit from Huff, none of which was bigger than the bomb he sent down the right-field line in Game 4 of the World Series to put the Giants within touching distance of a title.

Unfortunately, that’s now a moment that likely will not be included in the montage of 2010.

The role of a guy who was a hero in the eyes of an adolescent at that time, will not be celebrated. And the reason why is another part of the overall disappointment.

Huff’s political views didn’t get him here. If you thought most of the Giants were left-leaning liberals because they’re from San Francisco, think again. The ownership group has a documented history of donating to Republican politicians and campaigns. This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with human decency.

Huff has proven time and again on Twitter that is something he lacks.

Over the last year, he’s made misogynistic comments time and again. He suggested kidnapping Iranian women to bring them over to fan him and feed him grapes, among other things, while also ranting and railing about how new Giants coach Alyssa Nakken does not belong in men’s sports.

During a radio interview with 95.7 The Game on Tuesday morning, instead of choosing to be apologetic for his tweets and views of women, he doubled down, saying that he didn’t even think men belonged in women’s sports. He chalked up his tweet about kidnapping Iranian women to “I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet” and, eventually, host Joe Fortenbaugh hung up on him mid-interview.

While you can argue whether 95.7 The Game should have given him a platform to begin with, they gave him a fair shot at trying to clean up his image. To no one’s surprise, he doubled down on the ignorant, spiteful rhetoric that got him into this situation to begin with.

The whole situation is just disappointing.

We’re here because Aubrey Huff said appalling things about women and chose to make those comments public, including his views on a woman currently employed by the Giants organization.

It’s disappointing that the Giants can’t celebrate what an integral role he played in winning the 2010 World Series, because they have to distance themselves from those views. I’m not upset the Giants have chosen to distance themselves. That’s exactly what they should have done. His tweets reveal his underlying views of women, which are vile and disenfranchising.

And no, they’re not violating his freedom of speech.

The Giants are not a government entity rejecting him of his rights. He has zero right to be invited to a 2010 reunion party. They are simply an organization that is concerned that their public image would take a hit for associating with someone who displays such distasteful rhetoric towards women on a near-daily basis.

You may have a right to say what you want, but private organizations have a right to distance themselves from you if you fail to represent them in a positive manner. The Giants are doing exactly that.

It’s still disappointing that the Giants ever had to distance themselves from someone who played such a big role with the franchise because that person can’t display a basic level of respect and human decency.

At this point, it seems the Giants are going to start taking Pablo Sandoval’s lead, and that looks like the right course of action.