This morning, ESPN published an article from Senior Writer Tim Keown about Adam LaRoche who retired from baseball after Chicago White Sox higher-ups told him to stop bringing his son to the clubhouse every single day. It turns out that was only part of LaRoche’s decision to hang ’em up. He also entertained the idea after this happened in late Fall 2015…
“LaRoche, along with Brewers pitcher Blaine Boyer, spent 10 days in November in Southeast Asian brothels, wearing a hidden camera and doing undercover work to help rescue underage sex slaves…
Working through a nonprofit called the Exodus Road, LaRoche and Boyer conducted surveillance in brothels and tried to determine the age of the girls — known only by numbers pinned to bikinis — and identify their bosses.
Something huge happened there for us,” Boyer says. “You can’t explain it. Can’t put your finger on it. If you make a wrong move, you’re getting tossed off a building. We were in deep, man, but that’s the way it needed to be done. Adam and I truly believe God brought us there and said, ‘This is what I have for you boys.’
When it came time to board a flight back home, LaRoche hesitated. “I was sick,” he says. “I was thinking about my kids and then thinking about the hundreds of thousands of parents who are searching for their 12-year-old daughters.”
As they waited for their plane, LaRoche asked Boyer, “What are we doing? We’re going back to play a game for the next eight months?”
They wielded their emotions like crude homemade weapons. Every crazed thought ran through their minds. Quit the game. Sell the house and move here. Give up everything and fight the fight full time.”
I think anyone who goes through that experience questions everything in their life. Like, can you imagine arguing a borderline poor strike three call when flashbacks of kids in seedy cathouses is running on loop in your dome? Adam LaRoche saw some shit. That would make pretty much any human contemplate a crusade. Say what you will about LaRoche, but that took balls. I still loathe him because he played for the Washington Nationals and I’m a Mets fan, but I gotta respect how kooky his existence is.