The hardworking staff has met author/ESPN senior writer/former Boston Herald columnist Howard Bryant on several occasions, and he always struck us as a decent, thoughtful, accomplished journalist. So it was distressing to learn of his arrest this past weekend for assault and battery on both his wife and a police officer.

Tuesday’s Boston Globe buried the story in the Miscellany section of its SportsLog column:

ESPN writer Bryant pleads not guilty

Howard Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN, pleaded not guilty to domestic assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer, and resisting arrest charges at a hearing in Greenfield. State police say Bryant, 42, was arrested in front of a pizza parlor in the Western Massachusetts town of Buckland Saturday after witnesses told police they saw a man choking and pinning a woman against a parked car. After stopping Bryant and his wife, Veronique, police said Bryant refused to let a state trooper handcuff him and struck the state trooper in the chest with his elbow. Police said they have five witness statements. At the hearing, the court released Bryant’s $5,000 bail, which he had paid Saturday, and he was released on personal recognizance. Bryant, who lives in nearby Ashfield, said he and his wife had a verbal argument, but that he did not assault her. “I put one hand on her shoulder bone. We had an argument; we had a spat. I did not hurt her,’’ Bryant said. His wife also denied that he assaulted her . . .

Tuesday’s Herald, on the other hand, published a full-throated defense of Bryant:

Wife denies ESPN scribe assaulted her

The wife of ESPN sports scribe Howard Bryant is standing by her man, saying she’s “never been a victim of abuse” — even after state police busted him for what witnesses described as a violent attack on her outside a small town pizza shop.

“I’m not a victim of abuse — never been. Not now. Not ever,” Veronique Bryant told the Herald during a phone interview yesterday — her husband of nine years at her side.

Bryant, 42, a former Herald sports columnist living in Ashfield, pleaded not guilty to domestic assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest in Greenfield District Court. He was released on personal recognizance.

Now comes the tricky part, though – Bryant’s defense. Here’s his initial foray, also via the Herald:

Lawyer for ESPN’s Bryant says race to blame for arrest

The attorney for ESPN senior writer Howard Bryant — who was arrested over the weekend for allegedly assaulting his estranged wife outside a pizza shop in front of their 6-year-old son — said the sports scribe was busted because he is black.

State police said Bryant, 42, put up a fight and struck a trooper with his elbow when they tried to arrest him after witnesses said he roughed up his wife outside a pizza shop shortly after noon Saturday in the small western Massachusetts town of Buckland.

“If Howard Bryant was Caucasian and was on the streets having exactly the same conversation with his wife — nobody would have even noticed,” his attorney Buz Eisenberg, told the Herald today.

This is unfortunate – and predictable – all the way around the course.