Mitch Williams believes he's been blackballed by MLB

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It wasn’t too long ago when Mitch Williams was a sort of ubiquitous baseball media figure. Radio. TV. Our collective sports consciousness. He was seemingly everywhere. And then he was gone. That has a lot to do with Williams’ regrettable actions. He’ll admit as much. But to hear him tell it, the fact that he’s stayed gone — that he hasn’t made a comeback, that he hasn’t managed to repair his image this time the way he did after giving up the home run no one in Philly will ever forget — has less to do with him than it does with Major League Baseball and its media partners freezing him out.

“It’s pretty tough to get a job when Major League Baseball is partnered with every network and that sort of thing out there,” Williams said this week during an interview on The700Level Show. “For the last almost two years, I’ve been pretty dormant. I haven’t done much.”

He said there have been some autograph appearances, but those have “dropped off tremendously.” Mostly he just hangs out with his family these days. They still live in the area, but they’re planning to move to Texas, south of Fort Worth, sometime this summer.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” Williams said. “There hasn’t been a job opportunity even presented that I could even go do and do what I like and what I thought I was getting good at, and that was analyzing baseball.”

Does he think he’s been blackballed?

“In my mind, yes I have,” Williams said. “That’s sour grapes. I’m not someone who’s going to sit around on sour grapes. I continue to go out and try to find things to do, and that’s what I’ll continue to do."

It’s been almost two years since Williams — who was coaching one of his sons in a 10-and-under Ripken Baseball tournament in Maryland — was ejected from a game for allegedly cursing an umpire in front of children. Pictures surfaced of Williams nose-to-nose with the umpire in what appeared to be a heated exchange. The next day, Williams was accused by coaches and parents of an opposing team of calling a child a lewd term and ordering one of his pitchers to intentionally hit a batter, according to Deadspin. The Deadspin story also quoted “a number of parents, coaches, and other observers” who questioned Williams’ conduct that weekend.

Less than a week later, in May 2014, a spokesman for MLB Network — where Williams was working as an analyst at the time — told the New York Daily News that Williams was “taking a leave of absence.” The spokesman also said the network was “continuing to look into the matter.”

Williams — who apologized on Twitter shortly after the incidents, and who was adamant during our interview that he’s “not guilty of what I was accused of” — is suing MLB Network and Gawker Media. He said a trial date has been set for this summer.

According to Philly.com, “the suit alleges that on June 13 [2014], the MLB Network wanted Williams to sign an amendment to his contract saying he would no longer attend the sporting events of his five children (or as the suit says, ‘sign away his rights as a father’), including his 11-year-old autistic son." When he refused, Williams said he was fired and lost millions in salary as a result.

While he waits for the legal process to play out, Williams said he’s become “basically unemployable in my field based on rumors that were absolute lies.” You can watch the entire interview in the video above.

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