The Yankees gave up trying to explain Aroldis Chapman’s behavior.
Chapman, who was suspended for domestic abuse before joining the Yankees in 2016, posted a strange video on social media.
The reliever, who played last season with the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers, signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates in January, posted the 30-second clip on his Instagram stories page.
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The video shows Chapman lying on a couch, snuggling up against an older, gray-haired woman. While smiling, Chapman squeezes each of her breasts as she tries to brush his hands away. Before he stops groping with his hands and hugs her, he kisses her right breast over her clothing.
The video was still on Chapman’s IG page early Wednesday morning.
Online sleuths, using other photographic evidence, identified the woman as Chapman’s mother, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
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Chapman, 36, was accused of pushing and choking his girlfriend during an alleged domestic violence incident in October 2015. During the episode, Chapman is alleged to have fired eight gunshots. Although Florida police never filed charges because of inconsistencies with witness reports, MLB suspended him for 30 games in the 2016 season.
He pitched for the Yankees from 2016-22, but deserted the team when he was left off the postseason roster. Chapman was cut after he refused to show up for a mandatory, pre-playoffs workout at Yankee Stadium in 2022. It was an unthinkable act of defiance, but somehow Chapman blamed Aaron Boone and GM Brian Cashman for his decision to break the rules.
They’d asked the reliever, who was coming off the Injured List, to throw a simulated game before finalizing the Division Series roster against the Guardians. Chapman was deeply offended by the request, believing a player of his stature shouldn’t have had to audition for a job this late in his career.
So instead of putting on the pinstripes, Chapman boarded a plane to his home in Miami. And that was that.
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First appeared on www.nj.com