COMMENTARY

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 10:30 p.m. ET June 28, 2006

Brett Myers is sorry. Really sorry. Really, really sorry.

We know this because he had his agent send a statement saying he was.

He’s sorry that he embarrassed himself and his family. Sorry that the Philadelphia Phillies might get distracted from a season going nowhere.

So sorry that he’s taking some time off to think about it all.

Interesting, because before that the only thing Myers was sorry about was that people were making such a big deal over his arrest for allegedly punching his wife.

“I’m sorry it had to go public,” Myers said the other day.

Yeah, it’s better to keep those domestic violence things private. It can be so inconvenient otherwise.

Memo to Myers: Next time you feel like dragging your wife around by the hair and beating her on the face, as witnesses said you did, do it at home, not on a Boston street corner with people around.

Baseball fans are by and large a tolerant lot. They’ve watched the game ruined by steroid use and the greed of both players and owners, yet still come to the ballpark in record numbers.

But they draw the line at guys accused of beating their wives. That’s why Myers was booed Saturday in Boston when he pitched despite his arrest a day earlier, and why he likely would have even been booed at home if he had not taken a leave of absence.

The fans get it, but unfortunately the Phillies didn’t. They were going to keep trotting their best pitcher out to the mound every five days even as the uproar built in Philadelphia over his arrest.

Now it turns out the Phillies are sorry, too.

Sorry that they’re being taken to task for not speaking out sooner. Sorry that the club is being portrayed as indifferent to domestic violence.

We know this because Phillies president David Montgomery finally broke days of silence to say so. He issued a statement of his own saying how tough it was to balance everyone’s rights without getting it all wrong.

Yeah, it’s tough. But so is getting hit in the head by someone twice your size.

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