If there’s one thing ESPN does well, it is apologizing when things go wrong. It was Bill Simmons’ turn to attempt to clean up the mess from the Dr. V story in Grantland.

Yesterday, the Grantland editor posted an explanation for Caleb Hannan’s story on the inventor of new putter in golf. How it went from being lauded initially to vilified.

Simmons writes:

Caleb’s biggest mistake? Outing Dr. V to one of her investors while she was still alive. I don’t think he understood the moral consequences of that decision, and frankly, neither did anyone working for Grantland. That misstep never occurred to me until I discussed it with Christina Kahrl yesterday. But that speaks to our collective ignorance about the issues facing the transgender community in general, as well as our biggest mistake: not educating ourselves on that front before seriously considering whether to run the piece.

We found out that Dr. V committed suicide sometime in October, at least four or five weeks after Caleb’s last interaction with her. Caleb was obviously shaken up. We had no plans to run the piece at that point, but we decided to wait a week or two before we officially decided what to do. When that period passed, Caleb decided to write another draft that incorporated everything that happened. A few more weeks passed, and after reading his latest draft after Thanksgiving, we seriously considered the possibility of running the piece.

The dilemma:

We never worried about outing her posthumously, which speaks to our ignorance about this topic in general. (Hold that thought.) We should have had that discussion before we posted the piece. (Hold that thought, too.) In the moment, we believed you couldn’t “out” someone who was already dead, especially if she was a public figure. Whether you believe we were right or wrong, let’s at least agree that we made an indefensible mistake not to solicit input from ANYONE in the trans community. But even now, it’s hard for me to accept that Dr. V’s transgender status wasn’t part of this story. Caleb couldn’t find out anything about her pre-2001 background for a very specific reason. Let’s say we omitted that reason or wrote around it, then that reason emerged after we posted the piece. What then?

I agree with Simmons here. What would have been the ramifications for Grantland if it withheld that information? Surely, a site like a Deadspin would have uncovered and written that part of Dr. V’s life. As I wrote previously, how do you write 7,700 words on an individual and leave that out?

Simmons writes many people within ESPN signed off on the story.

Before we officially decided to post Caleb’s piece, we tried to stick as many trained eyeballs on it as possible. Somewhere between 13 and 15 people read the piece in all, including every senior editor but one, our two lead copy desk editors, our publisher and even ESPN.com’s editor-in-chief. All of them were blown away by the piece. Everyone thought we should run it. Ultimately, it was my call. So if you want to rip anyone involved in this process, please, direct your anger and your invective at me. Don’t blame Caleb or anyone that works for me. It’s my site and anything this significant is my call. Blame me. I didn’t ask the biggest and most important question before we ran it — that’s my fault and only my fault.

More at fault:

To my infinite regret, we never asked anyone knowledgeable enough about transgender issues to help us either (a) improve the piece, or (b) realize that we shouldn’t run it. That’s our mistake — and really, my mistake, since it’s my site. So I want to apologize. I failed.

More importantly, I realized over the weekend that I didn’t know nearly enough about the transgender community – and neither does my staff. I read Caleb’s piece a certain way because of my own experiences in life. That’s not an acceptable excuse; it’s just what happened. And it’s what happened to Caleb, and everyone on my staff, and everyone who read/praised/shared that piece during that 56-hour stretch from Wednesday to Friday.

And finally:

As for Caleb, I continue to be disappointed that we failed him. It’s our responsibility to motivate our writers, put them in a position to succeed, improve their pieces as much as we possibly can, and most of all protect them from coming off badly. We didn’t do that here. Seeing so many people direct their outrage at one of our writers, and not our website as a whole, was profoundly upsetting for us. Our writers don’t post their stories themselves. It’s a team effort. We all failed. And ultimately, I failed the most because it’s my site and it was my call.

Naturally, Simmons’ apology was picked apart and criticized. All in all, though, I think it was a honest assessment of what happened.

More to come.