I Was Supposed to Write About Elly De La Cruz Today
I was supposed to write about Elly De La Cruz. The Reds’ 21-year-old rookie shortstop has taken the baseball world by storm during his two-week major league career. He’s as fast, as powerful as any player has ever been, and by all accounts, he is a star in the making. He could be the Julio Rodríguez of Oneil Cruzes.
Instead, Rob Manfred addressed the media after a scheduled owners’ meeting in New York. When the commissioner addresses the media, at best there’s a tense verbal interplay between reporters and a subject who’s either unable or unwilling to reveal the whole truth. It’s the Socratic equivalent of the dance-fighting from West Side Story. At worst, Dan Le Batard pulls Manfred’s pants down over the phone.
Manfred’s performance on Thursday was closer to the latter than the former. So now, instead of talking about a re-energized game being bolstered by an influx of prodigious young talent, we’re talking about Rob Manfred. That’s never a good place to start.
The story of the week in baseball has been the near-finalization of the Oakland Athletics’ long-prophesied move to Las Vegas. In just the past few days, the Nevada state legislature debated and approved a public funding package that would pave the way for a new stadium. Meanwhile, fans back in California staged a downright inspiring sit-in at the Coliseum, a tour de force of passion and solidarity seen all too rarely in American sports. (Evan Drellich of The Athletic compiled Manfred’s comments on the Oakland situation here; all the quotes below come from that source unless stated otherwise.)
On his and the owners’ feelings about the Athletics’ move, here is what Manfred offered:
I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it’s not just John Fisher. You don’t build a stadium based on the club activity alone. The community has to provide support and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s just not going to happen.
It takes a special level of audacity to blame the fans and the city when it was Fisher who drove them away, Fisher who allowed the Coliseum to fall into disrepair, and Fisher who walked away from stadium negotiations that had been ongoing since time immemorial. The office of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who attended the protest Tuesday evening, issued a public rebuttal to Manfred within minutes. It began, “This is just totally false.”
I reached out to the Oakland Mayor’s office for a response to the Commissioner’s Comment. https://t.co/JHjSu3QbFk pic.twitter.com/45YzJiylf1
— Casey Pratt (@CaseyPrattABC7) June 15, 2023
The protest itself, which went largely un-remarked upon by league-owned media despite dominating baseball news generally, also came up. Manfred’s comment:
It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That’s a great thing.
Sarcasm is certainly one way to go; NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, for instance, often deflects public criticism by mockingly inviting it. Public speaking has never been one of Manfred’s gifts, which ought to be fine because, all things considered, it’s a small part of the job. But his response here reminds me of the day he announced the cancellation of a week of games near the end of the 2021-22 lockout. Manfred, joking about the imminent retirement of New York Post journalist Ken Davidoff, smiled and chuckled for a few seconds.
Have no clue how he has the ability to laugh about anything right now. Mind is blown. pic.twitter.com/xxwHnF9cUW
— Michael Lorenzen (@Lorenzen55) March 1, 2022
It was harmless, even collegial, in isolation. But the takeaway for the national viewing audience was that the man who’d just canceled a week of the MLB regular season was laughing about it on television. Manfred’s sarcastic response here is further evidence that reading the room is a weakness for him. “Not charismatic enough to pull off Gary Bettman’s shtick,” is a heavy charge, I realize, and I don’t make it lightly.
Manfred also took a question about the overwhelming academic consensus that public subsidies for stadium construction almost never deliver the promised economic benefits. Here he is on that issue:
I love academics, they’re great. I think, take the areas where baseball stadiums have been built, OK? Look at what was around Truist Park before that was built. Look at the area around Nationals Park before it was built. I lived in that city. You know, academics can say whatever they want. I think the reality tells you something else.
This is somewhere between a lie, an obfuscation, and a statement of total indifference. I’m not sure which. Don’t like an academic consensus based on decades of research and dozens of case studies? Dismiss it. Those eggheads will say anything.
Most of the questions at Thursday’s press conference dealt with the A’s, which fits with the news of the moment. But even after mocking or lying about A’s fans, the local government of Oakland, the taxpayers of Las Vegas, academics, and social science in general, Manfred had contempt to spare.
Over the past few years, the issue of gay and trans rights has captivated political elites throughout the English-speaking world, including, for our purposes, in the United States. Not content to live and let live, right-wing anti-gay and anti-trans activists — aided by the limitless credulity of too many gullible centrists — have set out on a campaign to erase queer people from public life.
This ghost has haunted MLB before, most notably last year when five Rays players removed Pride logos from their uniforms. Since then, similar protests littered the NHL season that just ended, while the Dodgers caved to pressure from Senator Marco Rubio and groups like the Catholic League and briefly disinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an organization responsible for decades of charitable work within the gay community, from their Pride Night. (The Dodgers since reversed course and re-invited the Sisters to the event, which takes place this evening.)
Manfred took a question on whether the league would standardize Pride celebrations across the league. He gave an answer worthy of James Buchanan, reported by Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post:
We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views.
Comparisons to the various military appreciation events are easy to draw — God knows you can turn to a random page in the MLB schedule and find a pretext for wearing camouflage caps and socks — but ill-considered. What would the league do if a player refused to wear a military appreciation uniform? We’ll never know, because in the arena in which big American corporations operate, it is a precondition of political participation to accept — or even to praise — the militarization of our society. It is not a precondition of political participation to accept — or even tolerate — queer people’s right to live openly without fear of harm.
I would argue that when a marginalized social group faces systematized eliminationist threats and legal discrimination (such as is seen in Florida), the moral difference between neutrality and complicity is close to nil. But as much as some of us might want Manfred and his benefactors to take up a position reflecting this emergency, they are disinclined to do so.
Major League Baseball needs little provocation to tout its place in American history, whether that’s ballplayers fighting in World War II, the league’s role in ending de jure segregation through Jackie Robinson, or its return to play in New York after 9/11. But if MLB had ever been a driver of social change, now it’s merely a trailing indicator.
Driving social change takes courage. It takes initiative. It takes effort. And a lack of effort oozed off Manfred’s answers about both the Oakland situation and Pride. He didn’t really bother to mount a credible defense of Fisher, or justify the portfolio of fuzzy math and doubletalk that won over the Nevada state legislature. Why should Manfred bother trying to win over the fans, or the media? There’s nothing they can do to stop him.
For all the bad things Bud Selig did for baseball during his administration, he was useful in one respect: He destroyed, for good and all, the enduring myth that the commissioner of baseball was some sort of benevolent trustee of the sport, rather than a frontman for the owners.
In that newly redefined role, Manfred’s job is not to stymie Fisher’s pursuit of profit at the expense of his team, his ballpark, his fans, and his community. Manfred’s job is to enable it, so long as there are sufficient subsidized riches to be had at the end of the rainbow. Manfred’s job is not to champion human rights issues when most of his employers are either indifferent or hostile to those marginalized communities. Manfred’s job is not to defend baseball, as a public institution, but defend and abet the avarice of the 30 individuals and syndicates who have fenced off the commons.
And in this task, he has been most successful.
The reverse boycott of the A’s was a remarkable illustration of what makes baseball great. It brings us together, uniting disparate communities. Ironically, you could not ask for a better illustration of why — under certain circumstances — professional sports ought to be subsidized, just like museums and music halls should be.
Life should not be a ceaseless trudge from work to sleep and back. We serve more of a purpose than to dig ditches, or find and sort the scary numbers on the computer screen, in service of the glorification and enrichment of people like John Fisher. Our government should reflect that, should attempt to support and nourish culture, to give us not just life and liberty, but that too-often-forgotten third thing.
That’s what baseball is, it’s why people care, why people in their tens of millions buy tickets to see players like Elly De La Cruz perform wonders. In 10 days in the majors, De La Cruz has done more good for baseball than Manfred has in 30-odd years. He, and Matt McLain, and Hunter Greene, and a few other guys barely old enough to drink, have done something remarkable. They’ve taken a club, ground into irrelevance by the neglect of another heir to inherited wealth, and turned it into a winner. They’re calling it “America’s Team.”
That’s what I’d rather be writing about. That’s what you’d rather be reading, or talking about. That’s the limitless potential for joy that baseball holds within itself. That’s why it’s our national pastime, I heard someone say once.
That pastime has been corrupted. Its sacred bond with us, the people who give it meaning, has been profaned by people who inherited their wealth and see sport as nothing but an investment vehicle. That’s why 27,000 fans showed up in Oakland on Tuesday to join hands and shout obscenities at Fisher. Their anguish deserves an audience, their grievances deserve redress.
But who can that audience be? Who can enact change, stop this desecration of a cultural touchstone that’s been left to wither? Not the government; Nevada’s state legislature grilled Fisher’s functionaries, ridiculed their lies, and then signed over $380 million in public funding. Amid the furor over the Athletics’ move, two U.S. Representatives, including Barbara Lee, introduced the Moneyball Act. If enacted, it would force teams that wished to move more than 25 miles to pay a penalty, equivalent to 10 years’ tax revenue, back to the community. Noncompliance would result in the dissolution of MLB’s antitrust exemption. It’s a reasonable response, but our government at all levels is so beholden to big business I will eat a camouflage baseball cap if such a measure is signed into law.
The owners won’t respond. Neither will their majordomo, Manfred, whose demeanor at Thursday’s press conference evinces a certainty that neither he nor his masters will ever have to fear the repercussions of their actions. That’s the clearest message the commissioner sent. Not that he can defend his — or the owners’ — choices. But that we are so insignificant that he’ll never have to.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
I changed my mind. Take John Fisher’s half-eaten caviar roll that he was choking on and feed it to Manfred in hopes that he chokes. What an absolute turd of a man. The business of sports is always gross, but this is just a level of obliviousness that can’t be real. It has to be malicious at this point.
Every time I hear NBA fans complain about Adam Silver, I just point to Manfred.
I’m convinced that Manfred is a Russian plant sent by Putin to destroy our national pastime.
Putin should focus on his troops blowing themselves up with their own missile. Again.
Manfred is just MLB’s puppet. Everything that Manfred said is what the MLB owners are perfectly OK with. If things blow up, they can always fire Manfred and wash their hands of any PR blowback – while continuing to support Fisher and the various threats to munis/fans/etc that all MLB owners benefit from.
Screw you MLB.
There is a SMBC comic about the only people left who want to be politicians being people who get an erotic thrill from being humiliated.
Rob Manfred makes a lot more sense if you think that he gets actual pleasure from making humiliating statements for the owners.
You’re missing the point, EonADS. BO JACKSON SUCKS
Bo Jackson was mediocre, and I will die on Tal’s Hill xD
at Age-31, and with a freaking fake hip, he had an OPS+ of 117.
To go along with a whopping total of 0.5 WAR in 75 games. And in his non-fake hip prime of 1988-1990, he only averaged .258/.313/.496 23 SB 2.5 WAR. And for his career, it was an average only .250/.309/.474 10 SB 1 WAR. He was not a good player.
Every time I want to complain about Bettman I just think “Well at least it’s not Manfred…”
Rob Manfred is an intergalactic disgrace. I am 100% convinced he actively dislikes baseball.
I’ve seen very little behaviour that suggests he’s a fan. After all, the WS trophy is, I’m told, “just a piece of metal”.
He reduced the number of minor league teams. Reduced the length of games (pitch clock, good- zombie runner, bad). Is apparently trying to cap spending on front office – so wants to reduce the number of people working in baseball.
He does seem to be working very hard on making there be as little baseball as possible.
An elaboration (made in the spirit of agreement): He does seem to be working very hard on making there be as little (funding or any other form of effort required from the profiteering owners of Major League) baseball as possible. The amount of actual baseball that results from said efforts seems to be of little to no importance to him or his employers.
this isn’t really the place for trolls. go back to twitter and reddit
It’s not about “trolling”- he strikes out all the time now. He might be a Bo Jackson type of player, ultimately (in other words, not good- as the vastly overrated Bo Jackson only averaged 2 WAR- that’s it!!!- per 162 games.
He’s played nine games and has more positive results than negative. And there’s no way he’ll be as bad defensively as Bo Jackson. Stop with the hyperbole.
Ok, well at least you acknowledge Bo Jackson’s suckitude. 162 game average: .250/.309/.474 19 SB, 2 WAR.
And 196 strikeouts!!!
Bo did have some good offensive seasons (140 wRC+ over 111 games in 1990), but his defense was always utterly terrible. His throwing arm was his only advantage. But Cruz is a potential shortstop. His defense will be better than Bo’s, and I don’t think he’ll be anywhere near as bad as Bo with chasing once he gets more experience. He’s still just 21 and has played 47 games above AA. Give him a little room to grow before calling him a bust.
Ok, right.
Manfred, this you?
162 game average is a league average starter with above average bat (112 OPS+) and below average glove.
Right, but he’s remembered/deluded by many to have been a ‘good’ and many think ‘great’ player- when in reality he was an average player at best. At best because his 162 game average was a lousy 2 WAR- which is average- yet he only averaged 95 games and 1.5 WAR.
Technically 96 games and 1.3 WAR.
Deion Sanders is a better athlete than Bo Jackson. Deion Sanders could have gone pro in basketball as well and he even considered being a 3 sport professional athlete but the schedule wouldn’t have allowed for it. Jackson was a terrible basketball player. 3 sport athlete (Deion Sanders) vs 2 sport athlete (Bo Jackson). In addition, Deion was a better baseball player than Jackson in every way except for HRs- despite the fact that Deion was primarily a football player while Jackson was primarily a baseball player- Jackson considered himself baseball-first, while Deion considered himself football-first. Unlike Jackson, Deion was only a part time baseball player, yet he was still better than Jackson in every way except for HR power. Deion also had the more impressive and better all around and more dynamic football career. With football, Deion was offense/defense/special teams, while Jackson was a single position player. Deion is a better athlete than Jackson, and it isn’t even all that close when you think about Deion being a 3 sport athlete vs Jackson being a 2 sport athlete and Deion being so much better in general at both football and baseball than Bo Jackson. Not to mention the fact that Deion’s body was built to actually stand the test of time of being a professional athlete, unlike Jackson. It really isn’t even all that close.
This is a relevant and topical comment
To be fair, at least his name was in the article, unlike the guy that used the Corbin Carroll article to trash Mike Trout.
ETA: should have known it was the same dipshit. Can this guy just get banned already?
Deion Sanders was played by a man named Bo Jackson. Deion Sanders was able to stop the pain of a professional athlete, and he saw the possibility of being a professional sportsman 3 years ago, but his schedule did not allow it. Jackson was a terrible basketball player. 3-athlete (Deion Sanders) vs. 2-athlete (Bo Jackson). In addition, Dejon was a better baseball player than Jackson, in all respects. in Jackson’s eyes, Deacon was robbed of a baseball for non-violent slavery, but this is Jackson in all of Jackson’s barbaric criminal power. Deion also wants to bring this short game of football back to the dynamic. In football, Deion plays offense / defense / special equipment, while Jackson plays as a one-position player. Deion is an athlete, not Jackson, and because he is closer to you, you are an athlete 3 sports videos vs. Jackson – an athlete 2 sports videos, and Deion is much shorter in football and baseball than Bao Jackson. Don’t even talk about what the body of the excited Deion was, which really could withstand the tests at the level of professional athletes, in the form of Jacksonson. If we’re right, let’s go down like that.
Bo was one of the great athletes of all time, baseball or no baseball. Just in regard to pure talent, he was about as good a RB as I’ve ever seen. He should never have played BB.
An insignificant sample size, but I would argue it is more bad than good. He hit a 900-foot HR in his 2nd game, and has a .476 OPS since, with a 12/4 K/W in 27 ABs. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. FWIW, I’ve had this conversation about a lot of high-K guys. DLC has always been young for his levels, but he has an astonishing 333 Ks in 1,041 minor league ABs.
Fair, but if you look at it in terms of players with his relative age he’s been not far off the norm. And he has positive value in both his bat and baserunning so far with plenty of room to grow. I just think mikejason’s posts were too hasty to put down a guy with his tools and relative experience.
He might still be a very good player, but given the amount of publicity he received coming in, it is only fair to point out that the results are quite mixed.
Agreed, but that wasn’t what mikejason was doing.
He’s a human highlight reel – must see TV because you never know when lightning will strike (although to be fair it’s not as often as I hoped )
Baseball has, by some distance, the most socially conservative player base of any major sport (I guess this is probably a reasonable debate, as football is possibly close) . There’s the philosophical issue of companies compelling political speech (bad! Regardless of the speech). Then there’s the practical reality that you will get players flat out refusing to play for one thing and not the other. It’s not fair. It’s not right.
I don’t think you can be pro labor and defend the commissioner forcing players to play with logos on their caps that go against their sincere beliefs (no matter how weird or incorrect those beliefs are). I say this out of a desire for more pushback (from athletes, a lot of veterans groups know the score now) against the attempt to launder sports’ pure profit motive with national pride, but a realization that that will probably never happen after Kapernick got blackballed
I’d put the NHL up there, especially with the heavy amount of Eastern Orthodox players from Russia, but totally agree with the rest of your comment.
And I’d put football slightly less conservative given the amount of players who stood with Kapernick, or at least espoused similar views.
If that’s the metric, I would just like to point out that, on the Giants, 23 out of 24 guys knelt with Jaylin Davis in 2021. I don’t think that means 23 out of 24 guys were “defund the police” activists, but I do think it means that even a trucks-n-fishing guy can respect how upset his teammate is when there isn’t an insane counternarrative being spewed at him.
Standing with Kaepernick and hating LGBT people are not mutually exclusive opinions, and the overlap is common enough.
Not saying anything like that. But having awareness of social issues enough so that you’re willing to take a potentially unpopular action to show your support isn’t a very socially conservative line of thought.
Yeah it’s crazy that writers, as a class, go “these commissioners are sacks of shit who shouldn’t have this job and are bad stewards of the sport and no one should trust them as far as they can throw them” and in roughly the same breath write “AND these commissioners should be free to force players to comply with whatever marketing campaign the league decides to run and crush any protest when the cause is noble.” It’s pretty rare it’s in the same article, like this one.
See, this is a fair criticism. I like that. Having the league be both immoral and the morality police is very disquieting. I would be fine with players having a silent opt-out if they really won’t support certain causes. And of course they can freely express their opinions; this is America. But criticizing them as individuals is also valid for the same reason imo.
I’m an economist at a state school, I know people who grew up in the Soviet Union and China, and just from a utilitarian perspective you want top down speech control to be as minimal as possible because the costs are immense. I’m also cognizant that baseball is pretty small potatoes when state legislatures are trying to blow up tenure because we’re making their kids gay by assigning Tirole (we’re not, I promise, your kids aren’t reading anything I assign)
Baseball is **small** compared to tenure? Man I guess I should be teaching college econ not English, geez, forgot that *tenure* is a multi billon dollar industry.
So cool you personally know ppl who grew up somewhere.
“small” in the sense of overall impact to economy and society when the very mechanism that the US uses to teach new generations is under attack by people afraid of a prism.
Baseball is an entertainment industry. Of course it’s worth billions of dollars. How many doctors, teachers, engineers, chemists, or non-sports entertainers does baseball create, though?
Baseball as a whole made 10 billion dollars last year in net revenue. That’s about half what my university makes (when you exclude the Hospital system). In California the UC system has about 40 billion in revenue. There are multiple states where the state university system is the biggest “corporation” in the state. Compared to the sheer economic size and scope of universities, baseball is pretty small potatoes.
Holy crap that’s so much money.
mikejason is hiring, did you know?
never thought that I would see gay, Tirole, and baseball in the same sentence, but now I’ve seen it I feel there is a model to be built by Jean here…
I was gonna put MWG in there but hell I didn’t read that either until chapter 6, just the solution manual
I would say Tirole makes much more sense in your sentence, like some kind of IO model where identity politics are connected to market power…
Sooo many Canadians and American northeasterners…..
I don’t think it has to be about forcing the players to wear pride apparel. Baseball has so many other avenues and ways that they could support the queer community in a time where my and so many others’ very existence is being attacked and trying to be made illegal. It never had to just be about wearing a rainbow hat. They could do so many other things, but they choose to be largely silent and complicit in an assault on our rights.
Yup, this was the part that really bothered me.
Ultimately, people need to think through what they want to ultimately achieve and how to achieve it.
What would happen when you force players to wear rainbow on their shirt when they really don’t want to?
Would they realize their bigotry was wrong and be supportive of sexual minorities?
or
Would it make them feel more resentful and dig deeper into their beliefs?
If half the players were as strongly against wearing military stuff in their uniforms, then MLB would probably stop forcing them to do so.
But the players are largely fine with it so nothing happens.
It is simple as that.
I’m guessing people around Michael would be more against being forced to wear military stuff than pride stuff (just as people around me), but that is simply not the makeup of MLB players.
MLB players are humans with various backgrounds and various beliefs, and it would not be hard to find some belief they hold that you find appalling and vice versa, And that is okay.
It is easy and tempting to be dismissive of some people’s opinion just because they are “ignorant bigots”, but that is unlikely to get you very far.
A massive portion of this country is simply never going to get behind being proactively supportive of many social causes, Pride included. Many people fall into the category of “I’m not against Pride, but do not make me cheer for it or make my team endorse it, or I’ll get mad.”
Do you not realize that caving and just doing what makes the players more comfortable is exactly why these types of groups need support from communities? Brushing it under the rug instead of pushing to have the conversation is exactly what’s been going on with this discussion for the past 50 years.
Why is a rainbow flag political at this point? It’s not advocating for a specific policy or politician, or party, just a general support of a historically marginalized community. Pretty much every major American brand has rainbows on their stuff in June because of how apolitical pride month is.
Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences, most employers would have an issue with their workers being publicly homophobic.
Not wanting to wear a rainbow flag is not “homophobic.”
When people are scared of being associated with the movement that uses that flag and decline out of fear (which is common), it is the exact dictionary definition of homophobic.
People who have a legitimate fear of retaliation, be it financial, physical, or emotional, are not phobic. I should correct that, as that post came off as too flippant, and wasn’t fair. But the people who are just “b-b-b-but what if people think I’m gay/support gay people! They might not like me!” are irrational. Homophobia is irrational dislike, hatred, or fear of gay people. That’s more accurate.
Frankly, who are you to deem someone’s stance as “irrational”? One’s desire to not wear a rainbow flag may be highly rational.
And to dismiss that rationale as “people may not like me” is insulting. My Iranian neighbor (and close friend) has no issues with LGBTQ+ individuals. But he’s certainly not going to fly a pride flag on his property, mostly out of respect to his traditional Muslim parents who also live with him.
Is it irrational to choose to not wear something or fly something out of respect for your family? Is that homophobic? Is that “irrational?”
I’d argue such a decision was made very rationally and shows a level of compassion and concern for those one might care for deeply.
That’s a fair take. I’m perhaps being a bit harsh, but this is a very personal issue for me. That’s different than the case I’m making, in which you’ve provided a reasonable answer. There are plenty of people who just go “no. No rainbows ever, I don’t want to be mistaken as gay”. And I doubt every MLB player has the level of thought put into their decision making that you or your friend have shown. “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know it.” The more mass pressures get involved, the less rational any person’s decision making becomes.
Making the decision to not wear the flag due to reasons of potential lost income–through lost endorsement and sponsorship deals–or due to the potential of losing relationship, or even due to the potential of someone else being mistaken about your sexual preferences isn’t “irrational.”
Hell, someone who consults their “religious book” and determines they don’t want to wear it on religious grounds still made a rational decision.
That you don’t agree with it doesn’t make them irrational.
That, again, is not what I said. I respect their right to their religious beliefs. And I have no problem with not wanting to wear a pride symbol. I even pointed out the financial or emotional damage point myself. But there are people who either spread hate or don’t accept it at all for no reason. And that’s where the problem is. If you have a reason for doing it, fine. But plenty of people don’t, and I wouldn’t be willing to pretend that all players have good reasons or intentions. Maybe that just makes me cynical. But if I am, it’s not for lack of reason on my part.
I’d wager that the overwhelming amount of players in the league who don’t want to don rainbow-themed gear made that decision on religious grounds or on grounds of financial/relational consequences.
I can’t imagine there are many players who do so purely out of hate.
In fact, go look at the players who have publicly spoken out in Major League Baseball. Of the five players in Tampa Bay, I can vouch for three of them on religious grounds (I grew up with one of the players… he is very devout in his faith): Thompson, Beeks, Jason Adam. As far as Raley and Springs are concerned, I’m not sure. I don’t know them.
Kershaw and Williams have never spoken out, despite being multi-year veterans, and only did so with SOPI coming to Los Angeles.
I don’t know much, if anything, about Anthony Bass, so I can’t speak for him.
But either way, despite my vehement disagreement with these guys, I am not going to be so unfair as to suggest they don’t have reasons beyond “bigotry.”
You’re a kinder and more rational person than most. I can’t claim that for most people, and certainly not most athletes. I can understand your point of view, but I cannot accept it. I’ve just faced too much hate and negative indifference to think otherwise. Hopefully the world tilts more towards your view than mine.
If someone is anti-gay, they may be a “devout” bigot, but they are certainly not a “devout” Christian.
To play devils advocate, if you believe sex is for procreation because of religion, that’s ok but if you—just as an individual—came to the same belief on your own, that’s not ok?
Wait, the potential for lost income isn’t in wearing the flag. It’s in _not_ wearing it. That’s why it’s hard to argue the marginalization and victim status still applies. Show me the money and it’s all rainbow colored at this point.
Huh? I wonder where the CPAC and RNC and Trumpistas get all their money then. Oh yeah Saudi Arabia. Imagine being forced to co-conspire with the brutal Saudis like EPL soccer players do, and now your favorite golfer.
Are they hiring many normal folks? Or does Big Tech and the rainbow brigade hire more?
Then they should call it something else, as the -phobia ending ONLY means fear, NOT dislike or hatred.
Sorry to say, but this is a point you’ve got to retire. Words have meanings and those meanings are not defined by a narrow, purist reading of etymology (same thing for that “prejudice against Black people isn’t racist because Black isn’t *technically* a race” argument).
I know it seems smart to trot out your profound training in Classical Greek but in actuality it makes you sound like you don’t have a very strong vocabulary. Does anyone think hydrophobic molecules experience an emotional fear of water? Of course not. Does anyone get bent out of shape by the use of the -phobia suffix there? Again, no.
It’s not out of fear. It’s out of disagreeing with the movement. Even the rare actual bigots hardly ever actual fear gay people.
Call it a wild and crazy take but I don’t think firms should be compelling political speech, let alone policing private behavior (for reasons that should be immediately obvious)
I agree. We probably have never seen any players protest wearing a camo jersey, because they’d probably be guillotined for doing so.
I see what you are saying but I kind of feel like this is a false equivalence since protesting support of the military is punching up and protesting support of LGBTQIA+ people is punching down. The shitstorm that would result from a single player refusing to wear a camo cap would likely dwarf all the times that large sections of teams or entire organizations were pressured into refusing to acknowledge that queer people are people.
Pride sponsored by Goldman Sachs is punching down?
“Blackballed”?
Putting Colin’s declining play aside, Colin Kapernick did that to himself. What boss is going to tolerate one of their employees taking up side hustle? Zero of them.
How many people do you actually know that has a side hustle? Because it’s way more common and accepted than you present here.
“Now look here, Gehrig, you want to sell breakfast cereal? Sell breakfast cereal! But I’m paying you to play baseball. You’re suspended without pay until I was stop seeing your email mug on Wheaties boxes!”
-Jacob Ruppert, 1934
Funny, then why did the NFL have to pay Kaepernick in that settlement?
Colin Kaepernick did not get blackballed. He started kneeling after he had been benched for Blaine Gabbert, something that happened to him twice, which is meaningful because everyone agrees that Gabbert was terrible.
Kaepernick then got offered a job with the Ravens, which was torpedoed by his girlfriend calling the owner a slave master. He then got a workout with the Seahawks, but that fell threw when he demanded a high salary and assurances that he would compete with Russell Wilson for the starting job. The reality is that defenses had adjusted to him, and his play had declined. There were many players who kneeled, and almost all of them continued to play for multiple seasons.
your 2nd sentence is gold, complete truth. his kneeling was not about racism, it was about pettiness.
Thank you for the dumbest thing I’ve read all month
Didn’t get blackballed yet somehow got an undisclosed settlement from the NFL? Ok.
I would never accuse a politician of being bought off unless I bought him off myself. “And that’s the problem with politician these days, used to be, when you bought one, he stayed bought.” (1975’s Used Cars, a fun movie.)
Regardless, I don’t understand why the Nevada pols think their city/state is getting a Good Deal out of this. I don’t understand their enthusiasm. At all.
Basically, by this point municipalities should know the score! And that’s before you consider an owner that doesn’t exactly have a track record of success
How else are you going to get tourists to come to Las Vegas?
“Put another zero on the roulette wheel and make blackjacks pay 6:5! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” — MGM and Caesar’s corporate overlords
The Mayors of Las Vegas since 1999 (the husband and wife Goodmans) earned their money by being Mob lawyers. The Clark County Commission has a long history of being corrupt. Las Vegans don’t vote in local elections.
What’s not to understand?
Saul Goodman?
It’s almost certainly good for Vegas and bad for Oakland, it’s also better for richer people than not just like everything else.
The writers here have no issue with players expressing support for left wing causes or disdain for right wing causes but as soon as a few players object to participating in “Pride” it’s an issue? Give me a break.
go lick some boots
On brand low-IQ reply
Writers have their own biases because they are human. Every piece ever written is an opinion piece. And this is a site that prizes a willingness to learn and adapt to new information. Why are you even surprised?
No. The fashionable notion that we are all biased so we shouldn’t even make objectivity or straight reporting an aspiration is one of the things destroying modern new media. It is essentially giving oneself a license to not even bother with trying to communicate an objective truth about an event
That being said, this isn’t a news piece it’s an opinion piece
I never said that we shouldn’t do our best to be unbiased, I said that journalism isn’t. Even most news pieces are biased in one way or another. It’s just something that should always be kept in mind, as we attempt to navigate the truth for ourselves.
That’s a fair view. Haha, can you tell this sets me off? I have just had too many discussions with people who treat the notion of inescapable bias as “Whelp, we should stop pretending to try then”
Ditto. I was kind of just shocked that people are like “Bias?! In my opinion-based baseball site?!”
It’s not Fanopinions. It’s Fangraphs. There’s nothing graphable about
I’m pretty sure you could graph the anti-gay sentiment in this country very easily, and this is a limited one-dimensional take anyway.
(Was going to say dude but) Person, all the major employers in the country are compelling attendance to anti-bias trainings and donning rainbows, popular culture is gay, churches are going through “gay Jesus” critical gender theology shifts and the President’s pride celebration has topless trans influencers. Public school systems in Alabama are teaching gender affirmation. Stryker Corp’s founder alone has donated $60M to NGOs who create pro-affirming curricula. The white house press secretary is telling parents “these are our kids” suggesting the federal gov’t is anti-parental rights. Nobody is “coming for the gays”. If anything, the activists are coming for the “normals” and I think, sadly, this sort of corporate rainbow power is actively causing backlash to non-activist gay and transfolx who just want to live fully protected lives with equal rights.
so if you gay you’re not normal? have you asked any “non-activist gay” people whether they’re against activism?
I haven’t asked but many have offered that yes they very much are. I’d personally characterize the non-activist gays and transfolx as normal but if you’re a bigot you do you.
i’m not a bigot. i was seeking clarification. in your comment above you seem to divide people into 2 groups: normal people and gay people.
It was normal people and activists if that wasn’t clear.
You…aren’t paying attention, that is 100% clear. Even a cursory glance at Florida or even your average school board meeting will get you the information you are missing.
Not wanting their kids taught gender affirmation or reading Gender Queer (google the images in the book if you like) isn’t wanting transfolx to be under attack lol.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-knowles-calls-for-eradication-of-transgender-people-at-conservative-political-action-conference
CPAC speakers are saying “transgenderism should be eliminated” and yet you say “no one is coming for the gays”
When Michael talks about eliminationist rhetoric, this is what he means. Those of us who study genocide and research genocide prevention recognize thi statement is past stage 4 (Dehumanization) and ventures into advocating for stages 6 and 7 (Polarization, Preparation) which is where we argue it’s essential for the international community to step in with sanctions.
Activists aren’t coming for the normals, you are equating activists (who tend to be anti corporate) with the actions of corporations (who acknowledge an emerging group to market to). The same people politically who have no problem with letting our corporations destroy our environment and love to vote for them to get more tax breaks now want to take the corporate world to task when its not catering to them? Cry me a river
I think there’s a lot of room between recognizing that all humans have inherent biases and that, as you say, objectivity is an aspirational goal, not an achievable one, and the idea that the recognition of biases is inherently a license to just ignore that aspirational goal.
News piece vs. opinion piece. If only everyone would remember that distinction. I hate it when overt bias gets thrust into a purely news item, but if something is an opinion piece, the author’s biases are a natural part by definition.
Amen, Amen and Amen.
Don’t think a lot of people understand what you are really saying here, which is great in itself
I understand that everyone has some bias, no issue there. The issue is that every writer on this site has the same bias, and in this case it serves to just act as if players’ objections are completely invalid. Whether you agree or disagree with Pride events, these players have a right to express their own opinions and decide for themselves. I think the mini screed against those players just undermines the effectiveness of this article (which otherwise contains good criticisms of Manfred and A’s ownership) and feels out of place.
That’s a fair criticism. Thanks for explaining yourself more clearly.
Player objections to Pride ARE completely invalid. It’s an objection to human rights.
For baseball to hold itself up as some hero of social justice via Jackie Robinson and then allow bigoted players to publicly take issue with supporting the LGBTQIA+ community is an absolutely hypocritical farce.
Folks have a right to rights. Not a right to have employees compelled to celebrate their culture.
The irony here is thick enough to cut it with a knife.
“compelled” and “celebrate” are the key words there
Are religious rights also human rights?
Human right? Are you crazy? A human, and i guess we have to limit this to a human in this country, has the freedom to have a relationship of almost any kind with almost anybody (of age). A person in this country has the right to request to be identified by any name, token, pronoun or identifier he chooses. A person in this country has a right to pursue his or her own life, liberty and happiness. A person in this country does NOT have the right to require anybody else to approve, accept or agree with them.
Objections to anything are most absolutely allowable and valid, even if they’re objections that are later proven to be unfounded.
Your impression that players arent allowed to object to one of their employers’ whims is dead wrong.
We most definitely do not have all of those rights in this country. You should do a little more research.
Legal discrimination against people based off of their identified name and who they have a relationship with. Only in the last couple years have a majority of citizens lived in states where there were legal protections against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation & gender identity. A dozen states, including Texas, still have no laws on the books.
To claim we have achieved equal rights on this plane is absolutely false. We’ve come 75% of the way to some modicum of equal rights (housing discrimination still lags behind) and over that time we have seen increased outrage under the idea that society is moving too far, too fast
If humans have these rights in this country then what’s with all the legislation attempting to remove those rights specifically from certain humans?
MLB teams now have sponsor logos on uniforms. Can players opt out of that? What if a sponsor wants a rainbow flag?
It is interesting that so many people have this very misguided view that Pride is such a status quo and they reel off a screed of pro-tolerance events, but have no answer for why “opting out” of a Pride event is a thing when opting out of any other patch, slogan, mascot, or anything else is not.
Being anti-gay is allowed in society. Other stances are not. Yet the audacity to claim that being against Pride (brought to you by Goldman Sachs) is somehow punching up? A simple and sophomoric argument that doesn’t stand up to reason. Just imagine for a second a player that was anti-capitalism that didn’t want to wear some patch memorializing the late owner of the team. Nobody would call that person a hero. He would receive pretty much universal scorn. He wouldn’t have a large safe space to run hide in line the players protesting gay people’s right to exist.
The very fact of this controversy’s existence proves where Pride stands in comparison to other cultural stances.
By “left wing causes” do you mean “basic human rights” causes? What even is a right-wing cause that’s an actual cause? Fewer government programs to help poor people? Reducing or eliminating social security? Spending public money to support religious schools? Shooting kids?
Yeah man your side is 100% good and virtuous and mine is 100% evil, you got me
I actually am interested to know what a “right wing cause” is. Because it’s good for people I would support it.
Mass incarceration turns out to have been pretty good for people when we talk about cost of crime (cf Leavitt’s 2004 JEP). Though I dunno if that’s a right wing cause when the support of the crime bill was famously bipartisan.
Oh God you truly are an ec*nomics professor.
Yeah it’s great those people who have ridiculous sentences for selling marijuana. Mass incarceration is awesome for making effective legal slavery. Yeah it’s super cool and good especially for minorities
You can google it but mass incarceration has gotten way more equal-er in the last ten years so your “prisons are vastly over-represented by minorities” trope is way less true than you think it is.
“It’s gotten better” is not justification for the mass incarcerations this country deals with. Particularly on the level it’s at compared to other countries.
The crime bill essentially flipped a light switch that reduced crime by between 30% (more recent analysis by Vox) and 60% (in the original AER that gets reviewed in JEP). Cost of a human life is about 10 million dollars. There were 2020 or so murders in NYC in 1991. Even by a conservative estimate (30%) that’s a reduction in 606 murders, so 6 billion dollars on an annual basis. I’d trade that for the lost production of a couple drug dealers to society 6 days a week and twice on Sundays.
Yeah you certainly would. It’s not your life after all. Nothing changed about what I said. We took advantage of the prison system for decades to give ourselves legal slaves to circumvent the 13th amendment. It’s an abomination, and it’s oh so easy to enjoy things you have little to no chance to be affected by. You’ll never have a false drug charge come against you which puts you in prison for 20 years.
I’m willing to trade a couple low production drug dealers (32k or so a year) for 600 murders, and you’d prefer 600 or more bodies, almost always disproportionately black and brown to make it a little easier to get high. It’s pretty clear.
So make the low production drug dealers literal slaves to the government rather than believe in forgiveness or the ability to rehabilitate (increasing prison populations and funding attacks by the right have directly attacked rehabilitation services within the penal system).
How is that christian or “small government conservative”?
Citing an Economist when talking about criminology and social science. Go figure.
Also go figure that you only half-read the work by Steven Levitt (not Leavitt). Dude…I read this in high school Microecon a decade ago and I STILL remember his argument was the primary factor in reducing crime in the 90s was legalization of Abortion.
How does the right wing feel about legalization of abortion in 2023 buddy?
Increasing the prison population was quite literally the least important factor he cited, and none of the factors had any proven causal link, it was a correlative analysis.
Look if you can’t understand an IV design and how it’s causal, I’m not going to convince you about the elasticities on the marginal prisoner release…
That being said, Leavitt talks about abortion, incarceration, police, and the crack epidemic in his JEP (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/089533004773563485)
The biggest factor in decreased crime by far- and robust to many replications in many places (Vox has a nice rundown)- is increased incarceration.
Now if you want to argue the juice isn’t worth the squeeze… that’s up to you
Ironically, do you know which presidency saw the greatest increase in income among minorities, both overall & in comparison to caucasians?
Donald Trump…because the economy was humming & minorities went along for the ride (in a good way). Maybe the answer isn’t more government subsidies/programs/handouts, but, just more opportunities for all?
Instead, all we hear is teeth gnashing on how the 1% got richer (which we can certainly discuss & find ways to redistribute some of), but, very little how the bottom 20% ALSO saw a legit increase in quality of life.
PS- I am not pro Trump. I hate him with the fire of 1,000 burning suns & think he’s done more to harm this country’s political discourse than anyone since 1776. I just find the above info fascinating & something that get’s lost in all of the hullaboo over Trump’s many terrible actions.
As much as people complain about Trump and Biden, under both presidencies inequality has decreased at a stunning rate. I basically assign 100% of the credit to the fed (under Biden)- burst the asset bubble by raising rates, somehow didn’t increase unemployment. This reality is relevant here because this decline in asset values is severely squeezing ownership. If you don’t think the sale of the Mets was a liquidity problem, I have a bridge to sell you. A lot of these people are a lot more cash poor than you’d think, and the assets they use to get additional liquidity aren’t appreciating at all.
That was something I found very interesting, hearing from Mark Cuban. He said that he’d have to dissolve a lot of his assets to pay any wealth tax because it’s so tied up in things like properties, stocks, and other assets rather than being in a bank or CDs and such like the average person. And it makes sense for that to be so; what point is there to letting millions of dollars sit around doing nothing? The wealth problem has more to do with availability than with hoarding wealth. Though I’m still in favor of taxes that scale to wealth.
Exactly.
& here’s the other rub- Say you DO make Cuban (or Bezos or Musk or whoever) liquidate holdings to pay for some “wealth tax”, what is the effect of that? That doesn’t occur in a bubble, the markets would be aware of it, there would be more of a company’s stock selling, etc.
& any market tumult/downturn caused by that would greatly affect/lower middle class/upper middle class 401(K) values, too, since most of them are held in stocks..& those are the ones that would feel the brunt of it & can’t AFFORD it. All of a sudden your 250K 401K is down to 200K, 6 months before you retire type stuff.
Inequality has been increasing at stunning rates under all presidencies since the neoliberal deregulatory order of the 90s and welfare reform.
Most crime is instrumental, high inequality is a predictor of crime globally. You want to lay this on the feet of Biden exclusively at seems, but also not connect this to the issues of crime we are discussing.
That’s not accurate. Wealth increased for top earners across the board, and it just so happened that minorities who are also top earners saw the greatest increase by comparison to the peers. The common link is top earners though. The middle and lower classes did not see their real wages budge at all under Trump
100% incorrect..Do a quick Google search & all kinds of articles (& not just from conservative outlets) show up. See below:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/11/01/donald-trump-african-american-black-economic-progress-vote-column/6081310002/
Lots of data about poverty levels, median earnings, etc.
Not really. Nearly all of the increase in comparison to whites was in Asian households which were already the highest earning demographic, not the bottom 20%.
Black households. for example, increased their median household income from $40.2k to $45.8k from 2017 to 2020, while white households went from to $65.8k to $74.9k.
By raw numbers, white households increased more (5.6 v. 9.1), by percentages about equal (13.9 v. 13.8).
Even if you use non-adjusted dollars, minorities made more raw-numbers headway under Clinton:$19.5k-$27.9k (or an $8.4k, 43% increase)for Black households.
I’m not going to quote back figures for every demographic, this comment is already getting long. There’s a chart by adjusted 2020 dollars on the Census’ Bureau’s “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020” document, page 5, figure 2 if you want to see it.
Parental rights and the protection of the nuclear family as a political unit would be “a cause” that the right wing has at least given lip service to. The “left wing” used to as well but has decided atomization and commodification of identity better serves BlackRock and Big Tech.
Using examples like “shooting kids” and harming poor people or removing social safety nets to describe the Right is like me using these extreme positions to describe the Left.
— Democrats are for murdering children. This can occur inside or outside the womb and can be for any reason.
— Democrats want to take as much as possible from those that work hard, were dedicated and focused on their education, and saved. That money should all be redistributed to people who don’t work, blew off school, continually make awful choices, and are likely to be consistently engaging in criminal activities.
— Democrats want to have a completely open border where anyone can enter at any time. Screening for disease, an immigrant’s ability to contribute to the economy, or even asking questions about their intentions are all signs of racism. New immigrants should be given everything that US citizens enjoy plus some bonus stuff to get them started.
— Democrats would defund all law enforcement and eliminate the military. Crime will come down naturally. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will all calm down and the world will be a safe and prosperous place for everyone.
I can point to fairly mainstream Progressives that support each of the positions above. Does it represent the typical Democrat? No. Of course not.
Let us know when these fairly mainstream progressives run a branch of the legislature.
This might be the worst straw man argument I’ve ever seen. Nobody is advocating these positions as described.
Maybe next time you do a little more than google your right wing talking points about progressives when trying to make an argument. These are literally the points used in every anti-woke argument ever conceived and shows how little you actually know.
well your side certainly doesn’t uphold the values Jesus Christ expected of his followers. Love your dang neighbor! Be good to others! It’s simple stuff, really
you might be more at home in the comments section at MLB Trade Rumors
Read the Bible sometime, it’s a lot more than just Hippie Jesus telling us to love one another.
ETA of course my side doesn’t always uphold Christ’s values, no one can consistently. It’s just not productive discourse to act as if one side is all bad and the other is all good.
There are a couple of quite popular religions that reject the New Testament and consider the Old Testament a holy text. Have you considered joining one?
Hey, and those of us who consider the Old Testament a holy text also remember when Rabbi Hillel said the whole point of religion is the golden rule, but American Christianity has forgotten that in countless cases
Sure, sure. But if you went to Christ himself and asked for a sort of executive summary, that’s Mathhew 22:37-39.
(with a follow-up in Luke 10:36-37 if you needed one)
“Shooting kids” is a weak, massive straw man that blows up anything you were trying to say.
Not only is your point completely inaccurate, but you dont know what a straw man is. All of his dummy ’causes’ were clearly hyperbole, not actual regurgitation of the idiocy the other guy was spewing. Even if that were not the case one side of the political spectrum is clearly more beholden to the gun lobby, whose irresponsibility ensures that the US is the country where virtually all of the school shootings in the world happen. Using ‘shooting kids’ as an example of one side of the political spectrum isnt weak, but enabling it by asking for thoughts and prayers instead of actual discourse, and eventually action, certainly is.
David, you need to be better read. Getting people off the government dole increases incomes and productivity..that’s a good thing. Social Security is great…until it’s bankrupt. You got a plan? And soaking the rich isn’t a plan. They don’t have enough money to make up the shortfall. Public money isn’t supporting religious schools, it’s supporting parents who are choosing what educational environment works best for their children. In many states, the number one recipient of voucher dollars are other public school districts. Shooting kids is just baseline ignorant, and not deserving of a reply.
“Getting people off the government dole increases incomes and productivity”
Then how come that doesn’t seem to be the case for corporations, who take in far more in government assistance than the poors?
(and yes, tax breaks/subsidies are government assistance, as is having lobbyists literally write legislation that directly benefits a firm to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, which happens all the time)
And yes, I have a plan for Social Secuity: right now, the cap for paying SS taxes is earnings of 160K. If I make 160K and you make 160 million, we pay the exact same dollar amount in SS taxes. If the cap was lifted to just 250K it would raise an estimated $1 trillion for SS over 10 years.
Should We Eliminate the Social Security Tax Cap? Here Are the Pros and Cons (pgpf.org)
“getting people off the government dole” also increases income inequality if we don’t have a vibrant labor movement and strong labor protections to guarantee living wages to these people.
So much of the societal instability and divisiveness we are talking around in this thread is tied into these inequalities in society
“Social Security is great…until it’s bankrupt. You got a plan? And soaking the rich isn’t a plan. They don’t have enough money to make up the shortfall.”
I’m not sure you know enough about the economic disparity in this country to even begin making this argument. Hell, I’m not even remotely close to being educated enough to have an in depth discussion about it yet I could break down this comment with about 2 minutes of googling the research disproving it.
If you’re actually, sincerely interested in this I would recommend the book “Moral Politics” by George Lakoff.
Thanks for the rec, I’ll check it out sometime.
Go run in front of a moving bus
A kind and rational rebuttal. Truly you are disproving all his points.
How are you supposed to disprove his points? Nothing you can say will change the mind of a lefty who says something like what he said. But yeah, I can disprove it. 2 reasons:
Conservatism is by definition slow to change and to keep things like they are. There are millions of good things about America. So, a successful right wing cause would keep many of these in plan.His assumption about “left wing causes” only takes into account the “successes” He has blinders on to the failures. Has he heard of the “ferguson effect”? Police have a hands off approach to minority crime,which has led to many more deaths of african americans. Many moreI think it is pretty obnoxious to think you are the only one with good intentions and to think you have the answers.There are plenty of people on all sides who are good people and may be right. Christopher Hitchens said the smartest people in the world are the people who know that there are millions of things in the world that they don’t know about.
See, this is a better response. A reasonable answer with a very nice quote and the use of actual evidence to back your points. That is a fair point, but it’s impossible to have this discussion while only weighing the failures of one side. Right wing policy has had plenty of failures, most notably the repeal of the assault weapons ban in the 90s and the uptick in mass shooting that followed. I’d be willing to discuss such things in more detail if this was a proper place for it.
However, you missed that he actually asked for positive right-wing causes and chose to answer him with a ‘go kill yourself.’ All your other posts have been just spewing nastiness also. Which doesn’t work, as it just makes me want to tune you out. I’m sorry for snarking, though. Kind of a reflex at this point.
It’s kinda hard to try and claim that supporting an assault on queer people and simply wanting queer people to be able to live are morally equal here but okay
Where is the assault?
Go read Hello Baseball’s comments further down this page. You’re doing a good job of being unbiased. People like him aren’t even trying.
Manfred = Goodell … just empty suits collecting a paycheck from the owners. I hope Manfred doesn’t get any kind of accolades when he finally goes.
I think Manfred is way worse than Goodell. Goodell has mostly not tried to fix what’s making a ton of profit for everyone. He works for the owners but it’s possible he’s never worked hard a day in his life. It also seems like he likes football, which is a big difference from Manfred.
I think defining the removal of a patch as “protest” is a bit disingenuous and absurd. To my knowledge, not a single Rays player “protested” anything, especially not anyone’s human rights.
It is also frustratingly convenient to reference a (small) portion of NHL players’ lack of participation in Pride Night warm-ups as a “protest” too, without mentioning the fact that many of these players were Russian-born with international family members living in danger of government backlash and action.
But great job turning a baseball blog into an unnecessary political statement, Baumann!
If removing a logo that supports a marginizled group isn’t a protest then what is it?
I don’t know what a “marginizled” group is, so I can’t answer that for you, lacslyer!
Was wondering the same thing. Does marginalized mean that the month formerly known as June is now called Pride month? Or that the White House had topless trans activists on their front lawn? Or that every corporation in America is celebrating this community?
Marginalized is a leftist term not grounded in reality.
Kind of like “woke”, huh?
Woke is immediately reducing any issue to the smallest categorical victim group’s primacy i.e.
real wages have stagnated since the 70s among everyone outside the CEO class= equal pay for equal work for women is the biggest issue in compensation today (when actually controlled by removing CEO pay from the equation we’re very close to equal pay for equal work)libs hate the truth because they have power and want to retain the status quo while eschew blame for any suffering and redirecting it to bogeymen.
if actual leftists could ever stop fighting one another and join causes with the “ew gross” working class they speak for constantly, we’d see if actual change was possible in America. seems unlikely, however.
The problem isn’t leftists, it’s too few leftists.
Compared to Europe, the U.S. is very far to the right.
Libs don’t even have power–it is politicians who do, which is why nothing gets done.
I’d agree with that but add that american “leftists” forget materialism and instead fight for aesthetics.
You clearly hate that you can’t use the n word in your username, so instead go with wokegraphs. You are clearly as insufferable a person who has ever graced the comment section.
Woke is a term used most by black Americans to remind the need to be socially conscious, and by bigots who use it because they can’t get away with saying the n word in public.
Mmhmm
That’s at least three league shills and counting. Anything to deflect.
I think Michael berry was making fun of the spelling, but you are both being intentionally stupid to try to win an argument, which is an interesting strategy!
Yep, all those poor people would be so upset that they don’t have a month recognizing them. They don’t give a damn about all the bigotry they deal with on a daily basis, nope not at all.
If you want to use a typo to avoid the question you do you lol
I can understand the annoyance with the whitewashing of the Russian players. It’s a serious issue. But c’mon. It’s 2023. When are people going to realize being openly gay paints a target on you from so many people? You can be executed for being gay in 12 countries! It’s illegal in 70! Plenty of people still see homosexuality as a “disease”! “[…] unnecessary political statement” my lily-white arse.
Oh, I didn’t realize that Baumann’s fangraphs blog post is doing anything substantial to combat any of that injustice you mentioned! My bad!
Point is… it’s a baseball blog. Stick to baseball because that is why people are visiting this site. If you have a strong political conviction that you want to express – go for it! But I can’t understand why Fangraphs would be the platform to do that.
Same crap that every talking head said to LeBron when he started talking about social justice. “Just stick to basketball.” Weak argument. And it always has been.
Also, why does opinion and protest need to be “substantial”? Any gay person could read that and feel uplifted that someone has their back. That’s why it matters. That’s why any protest matters. It’s not about enacting change, or creating new programs, or stopping problems. It’s about the individuals for whom it might make a difference. But feel free to keep being mean-spirited and making rude comments. It’s a free country after all.
Lebron is a clown. Full stop. And “social justice” is only justice for whatever leftist causes you’re pushing. Where is justice for women competing against men in their own sport? Or for young girls who have been assaulted and raped in bathrooms by men pretending to be women?
Give me evidence that the last thing is a common problem and I’ll listen. But given that men could outright barge into women’s bathrooms and rape someone, and have more than once, I don’t think your point is as valid as you think it is. Those people who do so should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and they are. But attacking people who haven’t done anything because someone like them committed a crime is stupid. Not even going to bother with the “women competing against men” nonsense.
Calling LeBron a clown instead of trying to rebut arguments using evidence is another weak argument.
“Or for young girls who have been assaulted and raped in bathrooms by men pretending to be women?”
Citations missing and badly needed. Also, and I can’t believe this needs to be said, but 100.000% of leftists would agree that anyone that actually assaults or rapes anyone else should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Fake boogeymen to rile up the base are important, I guess.
They’d also say the child should be able to abort the resulting pregnancy, which right wingers often protest. Real good job of caring about children 🙄
Wait, you’re saying that a rape victim should be forced to bear their rapist’s pregnancy to term? That is uh….quite a stance.
No one will take you seriously if you’re parroting right wing culture war talking points. For example, trans backlash has been big here in Missouri. Do you know how many trans athletes we have in Missouri? Whatever number you’re thinking of right now, it’s significantly less than that. It’s a nonexistent problem for the vast majority of citizens. Instead of dealing with a country-worst education system, we are banning trans healthcare completely, forcing an exodes of trans people out of Missouri.
There are also zero studies that show trans people rape kids more than non-trans people. There are plenty of stories about pastors and teachers and police officers raping members/students/prisoners, but that never gets talked about for some reason.
Intellectual cowardice is a fun thing.
If you ever return to reality and want to actually make a difference, replace the the last 8 words of your comment with “by leaders of various churches.”
My guess is you don’t actually care, though.
Wow….”shut up and dribble” has reared its ugly head!
This article is responding to comments made in a media address by the Commissioner of Baseball.
This guy gets to make up the rules of the sport. His official statements in the role of Commissioner are baseball things.
I mean it’s caused you to squirmily defend your bad ideas in a public forum, so it’s doing a little.
“Paints a target”? What exactly are you talking about. We’re in America…gay marriage is legal, so is gay adoption. It’s illegal to fire a gay person. They’re celebrated for a month straight by every corporation, public school and our government.
Plenty of people do not see homosexuality as a disease. They see it as a lifestyle that goes against their deeply held beliefs. We live in a pluralistic society. BIG difference.
You’re only viewing things from your own point of view, which is understandable. But you’re ignoring the number of people who want to repeal those laws. The fact that gay marriage has been called out by Supreme Court justices as something they would like to overturn. You’re ignoring the people who are fired because they are gay but “legally” because their workplaces accused them of other things. Or refused to hire them in the first place but weren’t overt enough to be called on it. Tell me you’ve never spoken to the LGBT community without telling me you’ve never spoken to the LGBT community.
“It’s celebrated by a month straight”, so is Black History. Are you seriously going to tell me the black community isn’t marginalized in many ways? And “every corporation” puts out rainbow-colored products because it sells. It’s money. That’s all.
And while we live in America, baseball is an international sport and MLB is an international organization. And even in America, you can be killed for being gay. It happens. Frequently. See the Colorado nightclub. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.
“And “every corporation” puts out rainbow-colored products because it sells. It’s money. That’s all.”
Hardly “every corporation” anyway – note also how many people pitch a pissbaby rage fit when a beer is advertised by a transgendered person, or Target attempts to sell clothes with pride logos. Methinks some folks doth protesteth too much…
MLB did it for like less than a day and then these people complained so much that they realized it was bad marketing to try to get LGBT people more interested in baseball
Americans still support gay marriage overwhelmingly. That’s good. If the issue on the ballot was whether consenting trans adults ought to be left to live as they like with equal rights and protections, that would be overwhelmingly supported, too. Being compelled by your employer to celebrate lgtbcia ideology is a whole other thing as is watching your children being taught by the state and authority figures like teachers and social workers to celebrate gender affirmation when they’re pre-romantic and sexuality hasn’t even begun to cross their pre-formed minds.
Sadly—and I mean it—corporations and activists have push so far of late that trans acceptance in American has declined for the first time since 2017 and a plurality of Gen Z are becoming hostile to it by polls. Maybe letting the Gay Rights NGOs post Oberfell do the NATO trick and manufacture a new cause belli wasn’t great after all!
There’s a very wide delta between social normal and nazi that click-seekers like Baumman will never acknowledge.
The problems with this line of thinking is that it’s not going to be a ballot issue, it’s going to be decided in the courts where the average American doesn’t get a firm say. Much like Roe v. Wade, which was repealed over mass objection. And just because a majority of people support something doesn’t take away the harm that detractors can cause. It’s one thing to be neutral, but Hello Baseball and others like him wouldn’t know neutrality if it pegged him with an Aroldis Chapman fastball. That is hate, and I will shut it down wherever I see it.
“as is watching your children being taught by the state and authority figures like teachers and social workers to celebrate gender affirmation when they’re pre-romantic and sexuality hasn’t even begun to cross their pre-formed minds”
Gonna need citations there, because I’ve not seen any wide-spread pushes for this. Basic “some boys like boys, some girls like girls, and that’s okay” is the most I’ve seen, which isn’t any more contentious than telling people that it’s okay to have a non-white skin color. Certain teachers going to far is one thing, but you’re suggesting that it’s institutionalized, which isn’t true. It’s a talking point straight from the mouth of MTG or Bobert, and they’ve been shut down every time because they’re lying.
The last line has nothing to do with anything I’ve posted here. There were parts of Baumann’s article that were too far. But the overall message (that Manfred waffles more than a waffle-maker and can’t find a firm rational position with both hands and a map) is accurate.
I’m sure Moms for Liberty and all the pushes to remove certain books from kids libraries—funnily enough, from both sides of the argument—have just popped into existence because kids early education hasn’t changed a bit. Got it.
You’re deflecting instead of answering the question. Most of those books they’re banning have little to do with the issues you’re trying to champion. Because some teachers don’t have an understanding of age-appropriate learning tools it suddenly means that it’s an institutional problem? No. The vast, vast majority of book bans in history are purely politically motivated, and that’s a verifiable fact. The Grapes of Wrath, for example, has been banned by every side of the political spectrum at some point. Your reductive approach to this is baffling and not based in truth or honesty.
Then why are libs—at the same time—vocal in wanting Irreversible Damage banned on Amazon and liberal librarians removing copies? Also political?
You’re a useful idiot being fooled by people that don’t care about you to hate people so they can gain power. It will get you nothing in life other than a black hole where your heart is supposed to be.
“ It’s illegal to fire a gay person.”
Citation again missing and badly needed.
No, I’ll give him a pass on that one; it was codified in Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC and Aimee Stephens, and hasn’t been overturned. It’s just not enforced very well in certain ways and areas.
Whatever was codified in the Harris decision, it was certainly not “it’s illegal to fire a gay person”.
Look up Title VII, which is the law that was cited from that case, as well as a separate ruling in Bostock
“The Bostock case involved a trio of cases alleging discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers, which the Supreme Court decided together in a single opinion. Gerald Bostock, a child welfare services coordinator, was fired after his employer learned he had joined a gay softball league. Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, was fired after his employer learned he was gay. In a case filed by the EEOC, funeral director Aimee Stephens was fired after her employer learned that she was going to transition from male to female. In deciding these cases, the Supreme Court held that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation (Bostock and Zarda) or transgender status (Aimee Stephens) is discrimination “because of sex,” and is therefore unlawful under Title VII.“
From eeoc.gov
Except, you can absolutely fire someone for being gay, as long as nobody finds out that you fired them for that reason. At-will employment effectively means you can fire anybody you want (outside a union environment), for whatever reason you want, as long as you don’t tell them why other than some banality like “we’re moving in a different direction”.
But because of how our system works, if states don’t also have concurrent laws protecting discrimination, legal discrimination can still continue and happen until we get a fight between state and federal legal authorities where states like Texas have to codify these laws.
I assume it was poorly written and should have included “FOR BEING GAY.”
You’ve finally found something universal! We can, all of us, be fired for no cause because the vast majority of American states are at will employer states. This is because those of us who are workers have no common cause with one another or solidarity thanks to intersectionality and wokeness. You’re so close!
Or its because republicans like you have destroyed the union protections for most workers that I still thankfully enjoy. Workers have not had a common cause they have rallied around since Reagan crushed the striking airline workers…except for the “woke left” now organizing unions again.
Btw, the working class IS inherently intersectional. LGBT people and minorities are overrepresented in the working class, and in 20 years the working class will be a majority-minority just based on demographic trends. This is why people like Tucker and their fascist “white genocide” theories have play.
about a half dozen or so states still have extreme limits if not outright bands on adoption
Sure. I don’t think Baumann was criticising the players per se for not wearing pride patches.
But it must strike you as odd that we can give a Russian or a Christian a pass for not wearing a pride patch, but we are all good with forcing someone from a country that might have been on the *wrong side* of American imperialism to wear Camo.
Really great article. Sadly, the teams are owned by white, male, old, billionaires. I would bet good money they not only don’t support the Pride movement that they are against it.
Please stop with the racism.
So what’s it like being a sad, aggrieved white man?
If you want sympathy, try stopping with the bigotry yourself.
I suspect that if the teams were owned by young, POC female Lesbians they would end up saying similar things because while MLB is a sport, it is also a business and people of all kinds want to make money. That is all that this is, Manfred and the owners trying to maximize profits.
Selig had disdain for “traditionalists” and Manfred has disdain for “academics”.
AFAICT there are exactly 30 people/groups in the world whom Rob Manfred does not publicly disdain. The guy is just spilling over with contempt these days — for the fans, for the players, for the reporters, for everyone involved with the sport whose steward he purportedly is.
Fisher will obviously sell the team. Just give him a few years in Vegas to boost the value… Those with power are so concerned with the next 3-5 years, the disregard of the ramifications over the next 10-20 is stunning. And there is no aspect of society that goes untouched by that short sighted mantra.
Fisher is gonna realize that “line goes up” is zero percent interest rate phenomenon
A’s a grieving A’s fan who has had to defend my fellow fans, I’ve realized this important fact:
John Fisher has offered 0 extensions to homegrown talent, or any good player that was traded to the A’s*
He has signed 0 noteable free agents. Last noteable signing by the A’s was Eric Chavez, who retired a decade ago
*the offer to Semien was basically a joke.. so obviously that does not count
As an A’s fan, you also recall how the A’s plan of trading players at the top of their game for young players on the rise and when they got expensive trading for the next set has reasonably worked for the A’s in the last couple decades than it has for other small market teams, right? I mean, you all have had a better run of things than your peers like the Pirates and Reds.
And while Fischer is no prize and Fischer and Manfred are not always frank/accurate in their statements, the biggest problem is that this latest sell-off did not appear to work… I mean did you all get ANYONE from the Braves worth anything?
Nonetheless, my condolences, @Dieter for losing your team, you honestly have my sympathies.
Yes, I mean they made a movie about it.
Trading all you players every 3 years deters fans. Your kids favorite player is gone, why would you show up? Then they go on an amazing run in the summer when things start to click, and the fans are back – even if the stadium has been falling apart for decades.
Rinse and repeat every 3-4 years, and that’s why you see lower attendance numbers for Oakland.
That’s all I’msaying, is moneyball worked for the team, but it’s hard on the fans.
Thanks for the sympathies, hope this doesn’t happen to other teams anytime soon
Then write about Elly de la Cruz
Honestly – that’s probably the right thing to do.
In 2015, the Supreme Court refused to allow San Jose to challenge the carving up of the Bay Area by the Giants and Athletics which gave the Giants a veto over any intra-BayArea move by the Athletics.
If the Supreme Court will no longer challenge the anti-trust exemption – and Congresscritters won’t (esp now that they have their own MLB team) – then there is no possibility of ever changing anything. At a certain point you either have to say why bother caring about the baseball biz – or turn off MLB (the sport and the biz) altogether. And Fangraphs ain’t gonna do the latter.
The minute the A’s leave town the Giants will own the Bay area and will never allow another team to enter it. You think Angelos drove a hard bargain for DC, you just wait to see what a new Oakland or San Jose team would have to pay to get back in. Steinbrenners would blanch at the ask. I kind of don’t get why other owners would allow this move since it removes a viable city from the “leverage” list.
No I’m serious. Write about Elly.
I do t come here to see political bullshit.
I want baseball. I want data
No one is forcing you to read the article.
How many bandaids do you need for the booboos you got from clicking on this article, reading it, and commenting, presumably all against your will?
The call to be more strident about pride events smacks of writing checks with other peoples’ money. Like it or not, there is a non negligible portion of America who don’t want to see these things pushed by the companies they financially support. Like it or not, there are enough of them that they can significantly damage your bottom line, it is not just a few wackos on the fringe. That is simply the reality of America.
It’s easy to say “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” when you are not the one tasked with maintaining the finances of a massive enterprise in a highly polarized public environment
That being said – I, personally, find the notion that people would whine about a pride event on one of the 162 games of the year, or feel morally compromised by wearing a patch, somewhat childish. But that’s just me
That’s true, but this league has previously done things just like that, in terms of supporting minority groups that had their rights under assault. Also, I would assert that the amount of people they would genuinely lose money from by doing this would be negligible
Painful, but, true..Ask Bud Light how things have been going the last few months. Same with Target.
We can call the people that dislike gay/trans rights whatever we want & we can wish it wasn’t so..but, it is so…& as a steward of the owners, Manfred would be pretty dumb to do something that would cause some type of boycott by those folks..
& again, we can wish Manfred would do what’s right, not what’s profitable, but, that’s not likely to happen..not least of which because he would probably get fired if he hurt MLB revenue/profits by making a stand.
This actually shows exactly why the claims throughout this comment section by right wingers are bullcrap. This is not a fight that is over, not even close. A few examples of corporate tolerances training and a White House event are so flimsy that it’s a wonder even a dullard would use them to try to make a convincing argument. The very fact that right wingers can use bigotry to battle and can win some of those battles categorically proves why those fighting for human rights should be loud, should be aggressive in all avenues of life. Thank you for proving the point of the Left, even if accidentally.
They should be allowed to wear Trump hats if they want to, if they are also going to be forced to wear ‘pride’ patches. He’s the worst POTUS of all time, possibly, just making the point since so many MLB players are strong republicans.
The issue isn’t just about the fans and what they want/don’t want. It’s also about the players. The issues regarding pride nights and pride theme jerseys have become greater issues among the players in recent years: from players in Tampa Bay refusing to wear a pride logo to Trevor Williams & Clayton Kershaw publicly voicing their opposition to the Dodgers’ SOPI invitation.
These frustrations have led to the Players Union having discussions about what to do going forward.
The league isn’t just risking alienating the public… they risk further alienating their own players, who may or may not wish to be forced into wearing a jersey/hat that violates their religious values.
The response from Baumann and others is the result of terminally online people who are delusional enough to think that their ideology is more important than pragmatism. It’s not, and it never will be.
This is the greater point that I agree with. I’d love it if people were not bigots. I’d love if certain media outlets didn’t push the idea of a boycott until it became one. But look at Bud Light. They do *one* SPONSORED VIDEO, with a trans “influencer”, and they take a big hit. It wasn’t even a regular ad, just one of those “before i get into today’s video, let me talk about Raid: Shadow Legends” type things. But the media kept blasting many, many articles per day about it until it became a thing, and it hurt Bud Light as a result. No company wants to risk that.
Far too reasonable of a comment, how dare you.
I agree, but everyone deserves the right to be childish, or act how they want, as long as they aren’t directly infringing on another.
People are always going to say things others don’t like. That’s literally the point of 1A, to protect and ensure all viewpoints can be heard without government sanction.
Ultimately, I really really really want fangraphs to go back to what they were. Seems like most articles now have political nonsense inserted one way or another.
That’s an easy take when you’re not the one being discriminated against. Gay Rights have made huge strides in the last 20 years, and they didn’t get there by sitting on the sidelines and being quiet. There is still a long way to go and I for one don’t blame them for being loud in the face of a large number of bigots that hate them. Having gained some advantage, they are using it. I’m all for that. The bigots need to be beat into total submission.
But this article isn’t about whether or not the LGBTQ community should be loud and in peoples’ faces. They are welcome to advocate for themselves in any way they see fit within the boundaries of the law. This article is about *Manfred and MLB*
I think the success and other data suggest that in addition to being the right thing to do (or at least not a wrong thing to do), it also makes economic sense. Kowtowing to bigots might have made sense at some point, but is a dangerous ploy at this point. And I’ll add that is a good thing and I feel zero sympathy for bigots “forced” to wear something on their baseball uniform they don’t like. Coddling bigots gets you nowhere.
First off, excellent article and I’m just gonna put this up front to add a counter to the angry trolling going on in the comments.
Sadly, while Manfred is a horrible communicator, I’m sure the owners who employ him are completely fine with everything that’s happening. At the end of the day, the As got their big fat government handout (imagine if people got as worked up about this being a government handout as they do about people getting food stamps to feed their families?). Their franchise value will go way up when they move to Vegas in a shiny new ballpark and they’re no longer the second team in their market. And that far outweighs any care they have, if they have any, about how Manfred looked tone deaf when it happened.
Manfreds stance on the A’s I definitely don’t agree with. My preference would be for cities to not give any major sports teams tax breaks and have the owners foot the bill completely. I would say the same for cities to take that approach to all companies really. As for his stance on the pride night stuff, it is taking a less forceful stance. Not forcing teams and players to participate in social/political stances is a good thing regardless of whether or not you agree with the position.
The problem is that while a massive portion of the public overwhelmingly agrees with the notion of making owners pay for their own toys, it’s really a rare bipartisan sentiment, but there’s nothing politicians like more than being the font of public funds, requiring that they be pandered to and wined and dined for access to said funds, and in general, discontent with these funding structures never seems to carry over into elections, at least in my experience – by election season people all have other things to talk about.
So this stuff keeps happening.
And it will continue to happen, that change is highly unlikely to ever take place. Politicians get into power and do things to keep that power. Money is what impacts that. It all comes back to money and power.
Basic human rights is not a social/political stance, and by even voicing these ridiculous viewpoints you are enabling and tacitly supporting bigotry.
The article already made this point but it’s really amazing to see how many people suddenly become workplace-speech civil libertarians when rainbow flags come into the picture! But I’m sure all these same dudes were just as ardently lining up behind Carlos Delgado when he mildly demurred from worshipping the Stars and Stripes with compulsory showtunes…
That is just it, laws have been passed over the years that give people in that group those basic human rights you speak of. The issues at hand now are other aspects in more current legislation that goes beyond those basic rights. As well as the component of peoples opinions towards the group. Respecting those individuals right to be who they are and live how they want to live vs. supporting it and agreeing with it. Those are 2 very different things.
The city of Oakland does not own the team. So it appears “the real question” is “how much can we get from the taxpayers to fund our private business?”
This is true. There are other owners as well. None of them are the city of Oakland.
They support the team by buying tickets and merchandise or watching on TV, which makes the team money as well. But it is the team’s job to give the consumers a reason to spend their money.
Sooo are you going to write about Elly De La Cruz?
One of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever read on Fangraphs. Kudos. That does not mean that I agree with your assertion that baseball “has been corrupted” – it has always been that way, so to pretend it hasn’t been and that we should expect anything less from it’s elites is naive. Go watch Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary series and tell me that this wave didn’t begin at the league’s inception. I love baseball, like I love life itself, but the systems in place to govern both are corrupt/imperfect…let’s be real.
The issue of the “pride jerseys” is far more nuanced and complex than Baumann seems willing to address. It’s not just, “they are marginalized, so wear the damn jersey!”.. There’s a difference between willing support and coerced endorsement. Hell, there’s a difference between willing support and willing endorsement.
The polarization of this topic is something to seriously consider here. If you knew that wearing a rainbow-colored jersey, socks, hat, etc. would draw the ire of fans, and potentially lead to harm to you and your family, you’d be pretty dumb to not at least consider whether you should wear it.
Or think of a player that chooses not to wear it… there are rabid maniacs from both sides of the issue. Should players be expected or forced to endorse something that could put them in a situation that is dangerous to them? Should they be forced to endorse something they don’t wish to endorse? Is endorsement the same thing as support?
The conversation surrounding pride-themed jerseys isn’t just happening in the commissioner’s office. It’s something that is happening among the players. The Player’s Union is addressing these issues as well. The league’s response is likely due to the players voicing concerns, frustrations, etc.
One of the main problems with writers on the internet is that they have no skin in the game. It’s way too easy to talk about morality and take risks on other people’s behalfs rather than do it yourself. Maybe Baumann himself has taken significant risks for his beliefs and if so, he should be applauded. That isn’t the norm among writers though and readers should be cognizant of that, because ultimately too many of these articles are insincere and overly simplified content for clicks.
One of my best friends growing up was a Muslim. Our families (I’m white, BTW) did everything together. Then 9/11 happened. And living in a super-conservative area made it difficult for them. They stopped going out in public. They wrestled with whether they should present themselves as Muslim in the way they dress.
It would have been simple for us to say, “oh, don’t worry about it!” “Forget the bigots” etc… but that was easy for us to say. We weren’t getting harassed for being Muslim.
The people making all the hubbub about players not wanting to wear the jerseys aren’t reading the threatening DMs. They aren’t hearing the voicemails. They aren’t risking ostracizing family, former coaches and teammates, etc. The players are.
And to just write off those concerns over some ideological principle, however noble that ideology may be, is completely devoid of compassion and understanding.
Muslim and white… So, Muslim from Aspen, CO? White and Hindu? I appreciate the rest of the your story, but this was uncomfortable.
Not that it matters, but my friend and his family were from Pakistan. I’m white and non-Muslim.
Part of this is that sportswriters engage in this insane, vicious Twitter culture war that normies never see if they aren’t on there. Basically pushed Rany out of writing, and turned/revealed baseball crank as a fascist (literally in the strict sense, I think he’s a fascist). Sometimes vestiges of it leak through here but it’s pretty rare.
Overall a fairly nuanced take but I would push back on a couple of points:
“If you knew that wearing a rainbow-colored jersey, socks, hat, etc. would draw the ire of fans, and potentially lead to harm to you and your family, you’d be pretty dumb to not at least consider whether you should wear it.”
If players want to wear it or not wear a rainbow-colored jersey or socks I agree that it should ultimately be their decision alone, but I won’t accept the notion that “some harm may come to my family” as a rationale, unless someone can point to a players’ family being actively harmed because of their support for this or similar causes. It’s a convenient excuse using an imagined specter of nonexistent violence against gay allies. I would respect them more if they would just come out and say “I don’t agree with the lifestyle.”
“Or think of a player that chooses not to wear it… there are rabid maniacs from both sides of the issue.”
There may be “rabid maniacs” on both sides of the issue, but let’s not pretend that one side is not much more heavily militant, obnoxious, combative, and weaponized than the other. I only see one side showing up in tactical gear (wonder why they’re always covering their faces?!) to protest the others’ right to exist.
Harm doesn’t have to include violence or physical harm. The loss of sponsorships and endorsements, loss of relationships, loss of income… a player’s family could be harmed in a number of ways by being forced to endorse this.
I’m not really interested in getting into a “our violence isn’t as dastardly as their violence” discussion, mostly because I’m not a 7-year-old. It happens on both sides of the issue.
It does happen on all sides of any issue, but ignoring when and where violence is most prevalent isn’t a great take imo. Saying “both sides” has been poisoned by politicians using that phrase to whitewash. It tends to make people complacent, thinking that it all averages out (which misses the point entirely). I’m not accusing you of doing that, but it’s something to be aware of.
The rest of the takes you’ve posted here are very well-said, and I agree with them. I don’t have an issue with individual players choosing not to wear the pride logo. However, as mentioned below, camo jerseys for the games showing support for the military are compulsory. And that’s not as charged of an issue, but it still exists. So there is an argument to be made there as well.
It’s when people like Curt Shilling stand up and spread hate or not understand that their words can cause harm that I take issue. And there are contemporary players who have done that. Daniel Murphy is the first one to come to mind, when he made oblivious comments while trying to come across as accepting. And Trevor Bauer made an internet career out of being a horrible person.
I get where you’re coming from, but such a take is often done in attempt to summarily dismiss all responsibility from the other side because “ours isn’t as bad.” But it’s still bad, right? Are we not allowed to address the wrongness of both sides because one side isn’t as bad as the other?
It is bad every time, and you’re right to care about that. I won’t disagree with that at all. It’s just that such a take requires more nuance than a “both sides” drop. Because doing so almost always equalizes the two sides in the mind of the reader. I just want people in general to be more aware.
I guess that’s fair, but I would imagine a reader could see, “both sides have bad people on it” and go, “yeah, that’s true” and not go “but, but their side has more badness!!!” without needing a complex, nuanced conversation comparing the badness of both sides.
Maybe I just expect too much out people.
I mean, given what happened below the opposite happens. Some people will react to any kind of equivocation like they’re Anakin Skywalker.
“summarily dismiss all responsibility from the other side because “ours isn’t as bad.” But it’s still bad, right? Are we not allowed to address the wrongness of both sides because one side isn’t as bad as the other?”
That’s fair – any violence or crime done in furtherance of leftist causes is as wrong as any done in furtherance of conservative causes. But saying there are some bad actors on the left (which is true) doesn’t absolve the right from honestly examining the volume and degree of their illicit activities over the last several years.
It’s just like the prosecution for Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. What he did is obviously illegal and wrong but we never get an honest examination of that from the right – it’s always “but Hillary! But Hunter! But Pence!” because it’s hard to defend the indefensible.
“Let’s examine and prosecute any wrongdoing accordingly” is a fair and morally consistent approach. “Let my guy get away with stuff because someone did something bad on the other side” is not.
As far as camo/patriotic jerseys, my stance is to not have those, either. Not every player in the majors is from the United States, nor are they citizens. Heck, we have a team in Canada.
But the question would be: is supporting the US Military or celebrating the United States of America as a nation as controversial as pride events?
I guess if enough players spoke out about Military Appreciation Weekend or Memorial Day jerseys, baseball might respond by not issuing them anymore.
If teams and the league were facing tremendous levels of backlash for these events, baseball wouldn’t do them.
Clearly, it’s not detrimental to the bottom line, nor do players seem to have an issue with them (large enough to garner league response). Our ideals of the situation isn’t going to win over the pragmatism, though.
Yeah, that’s a fair statement. Pragmatism, and moreover “the way things are” is a powerful force, and it often seems immovable. But just because something is doesn’t mean that it should be. No cause in history found support by shrugging and not speaking out. Our own country came into existence because enough people didn’t want to accept the simple, pragmatic answer, which would have been “keep working with Britain and pay their reasonable taxes in order to reap the benefits of such a situation.” There’s more to life than rationality.
And I feel that largely the military appreciation is a non-issue because baseball is still largely a “good ol’ boys club” by many measures, both concrete and by point of view. If MLB had more Middle Eastern, African, or Eastern European players in baseball like the NBA does, it would possibly be more of a discussion. But that’s starting to get pretty far off track, so I’ll leave it there with a hat tip for the strong analysis.
100%. But it’s still probably a good thing for us to recognize that reality will win over idealism, every day. It might help us to not be so angry when it happens.
Also, good on you for consistently discussing with others in good faith, even for those of whom you disagree (as we see in other comments you respond to). Let’s hope you serve an example to other commenters on this site.
I feel like that would just breed passivity, as the natural state for a person is to not get involved with something they don’t feel strongly about. But being more rational so one is less angry or disappointed is a fair goal to shoot for.
They wouldn’t dare because they’d have no protection. Which sorta nullifies the thrust of almost all of the right wingers’ comments in this thread.
“I’m not really interested in getting into a “our violence isn’t as dastardly as their violence” discussion, mostly because I’m not a 7-year-old. It happens on both sides of the issue.”
You’re right, the left is exactly as militarized and dangerous as the right. Way to wave away any and all wrongdoing on your side.
The irony is that I’m probably a hell of a lot closer to “your side” than I am the other side. But you have proven you’re not remotely willing to have a rational, honest discussion in good faith, so I’ll just leave it here.
Yes, your discussion was the epitome of rational and honest! Well said. So uh “I’ll just leave it there”. 😀
Watch some Matt Orfeala video docs, they very much are. John Brown Gun Club and Antifa show up in the same tacticool gear that Proud Boys and other right wing groups do. Looks like madness to non-libs and non-right-wingers.
I guarantee that got downvoted without any further exploration lol.
You told him to watch video documentaries from an unironic “enlightened centrist” and quiet antivaxxer. If your source is crap, it’s not worth exploring. Why are you surprised?
He works with Matt Taibbi lol. One of the few principled liberal journos of my lifetime. You’re probably from the tribe of Anne Applebaum or the WaPo war monger liberal that’s prevalent these days.
Also, it’s video of protests with leftists showing up armed just like rightists. You think he deep-faked the video?
It doesn’t really prove your point though. You said. “they very much are,” in response to the comment “the left is exactly as militarized and dangerous as the right.”
As anyone who reads Fangraphs knows, a single example is merely anecdotal. I could respond by telling you to look up videos of Wadsworth Ohio in March. There’s definitely more open-carry on the side with the swastika flags shouting “sieg heil” than on the side with rainbow umbrellas.
FWIW, this was also Dixie Walker’s pretext for the petition against Jackie Robinson joining the Dodgers, “I had a wholesale business in Birmingham and people told me I’d lose my business if I played ball with a black man.”
So because someone took a rationale and used it for bad purposes, the entire rationale is now bad?
I can’t imagine how one might get through life with such a mindset.
Well, they certainly could bargain for it in the next CBA, but I’m pretty sure based on the current agreement, the team supplies the uniforms and the players wear them (unless Chris Sale has his scissors handy).
The Commissioner works for the owners. All of them, including those who hurt the game by not real caring to succeed in the standings but rather how to optimize profits. I get profit should be made, but when is enough, enough? This is a travesty of MLB. I think a strong message needs to be sent to the Commish and EVERY OWNER.
LETS PROMOTE A NATIONWIDE STANDUP OF AN INNING OF SILENCE ACROSS THE COUNTRY IN EVERY MAJOR LEAGUE AND MINOR LEAGUE STADIUM ON SUNDAY,JUNE 24th. 7th inning…NOBODY SING, JUST STAND IN SILENCE.
Unless we fans can show some solidarity, every town and city is potentially being held hostage to relocations and new stadium construction.
Oh great, poorly thought out politically charged articles of fangraphs. Tell me more about “driving social change takes courage”. Expand on how religous persons are overreacting to celebrating trans persons dressed as nun clowns (don’t they realize it’s basically the same as commending people who died fighting for our country?). I mean, after all, that’s why we read this website, isn’t it?
Although I really do empathize with the author, who was apparently coerced into writing this article instead of the one about Elly De La Cruz he really wanted to write. My hope is that in the future his bosses will let him return to writing about real baseball soon.
Great article.
Not only are the “military appreciation” unis required and not optional, they are bought and paid for in sponsorship deals with the US military…which is a whole other can of worms.
The next logical step is to force MLB’s hand by putting together sponsorship offers for pride nights like the military does. If they will make the players wear camo hats for $150k, they should make them wear rainbow hats for $150k too. If the teams refuse the money, then it would be time to find some ally players to wear the standard uniform on the military nights to call out the hypocrisy.
Military appreciation is not a political issue though, it is just American which is for everyone here. Wars are political, but supporting those who enlist and stand up for all of us, that is nonpartisan American support.
Yes and no. Supporting those who serve (which I absolutely believe in) can be seen as separate than supporting US military leadership and actions. Camo hats don’t really differentiate between the two.
One can reasonably argue that rainbow hats shouldn’t be a political issue either, it is just supporting our fellow Americans.
It sure as hell is a political issue. I know a lot of vets who stay seated during the anthem
Just seems strange to me. When the anthem plays to me all of our differences disappear and the only thing that matters is that we are Americans together. That’s it. The moment it stops I can go back to disliking the Mets fan standing next to me.
The standpoint of my family and friends is that if the league wants to benefit from the warm glow the military experiences in American public life the recruiting center is right there and there isn’t anyone stopping them, and they shouldn’t be wheeling the guy without legs out to the mound for the first pitch and then out to the street immediately after.
That is fine and I agree that it shouldn’t be all for show. My point is that the anthem is a moment for us to drop ALL of our differences and focus on the one thing that does tie us together.
“Take me out to the ballgame” is already that moment.
The national anthem played before baseball games wasn’t standard until WWII. ‘God Bless America’ didn’t get played until 9/11. These are political statements, always have been, always will be.
Yeah, no. Many, many people are opposed to U.S. nationalism and militarism. Hundreds of millions worldwide and millions at home, including countless men and women who served!
Also “it is just American, which is for everyone here” is wrong. There are several non-American fans on this site and plenty of MLB in general. Hell, Canada has a franchise!
“Blame Canada! Blame Canada! It’s not even a real country anyway…”
Also the players who get forced to wear it.
It is a pretty diverse player group, including players from countries that probably aren’t pro US imperialism, and some players from countries that don’t do jingoism.
Have you seen how quickly conservatives turn on members of the military if they display certain traits? Including, by the way, being LGBT!
This post shows a stunning lack of real-world awareness.
If Major League Baseball and the owners decided that the $150K sponsorship to wear camo jerseys was detrimental to their bottom line, they wouldn’t accept the sponsorship.
There are a number of players from countries who I dare say would not want to lend their support to the US military.
They chose to come work/live here. I can’t imagine going to a country I didn’t like and support.
I’ve lived and worked in 8 countries including the US where I’m from.
I liked these countries well enough but I wouldn’t say I “supported” any of them enough to wear their military paraphernalia or sing their national anthems as part of my job (again, including the US).
So HRC just needs to pony up the dough to pay for sponsored uniforms and then the commissioner will tell all these bigots who want to protest to go kick rocks.
I don’t have any interest in jumping into the chainsaw of culture wars, but I think fans can universally agree that sports-as-investment is bad for everyone but the owners.
I don’t begrudge someone taking some profit off the table if they’re willing to fund a team. I’d much prefer owners buy teams as a hobby, not a central part of their investment portfolio. Steve Cohen isn’t a particularly good person, but I do respect his apparent indifference to profit with the Mets.
Fisher’s shamelessness is a symptom of the incentives in team ownership, not the problem. The fact that other owners don’t seem to care very much about him pocketing their money is baffling.
Fisher may have walked away for this exact reason.
I found this to be a disappointing, Ump Show of an article. Without delving into the muddy waters of the issue at hand, the premise of an article being the writers coercion (?) into addressing one issue rather than another is inherently silly and disappointing. This is not Angel Hernandez-Graphs.
Michael, you have a strange understanding of the world…like most leftists.
First and foremost, the A’s are not a public good, they are a private business. Seems like a smart decision to leave CA, Oakland and the Bay area given the large scale decline happening due to progressive policies creating an unlivable environment. Las Vegas is a much better place to operate an MLB team, with the pass through of millions of tourist per year. Professional sports ought to be subsidized? Take your copy of Das Kapital and move to China brother. You can see first-hand how “community” (government) ownership of the economy works out. And that law that Lee is proposing is simply using the power of government to punish people who make the “wrong” choices. Can’t think of a more un-American thing than that.
Second, Manfred is doing his job. He is employed by the owners, and is furthering their interests. Not sure why we need all this outrage about that.
Third, with your critique of his reply to the pride themed baseball answer, it seems thoroughly reasonable for him to answer the way he did. That way each team can determine what path to take. Liberal Toronto or SF can do one thing, and the more conservative Braves or Rangers another. Why are you so scared of letting players and teams live their own conscience?
Also, your quote here “I would argue that when a marginalized social group faces systematized eliminationist threats and legal discrimination (such as is seen in Florida), the moral difference between neutrality and complicity is close to nil.” is a flat out lie. The LGBTQ community is the farthest thing from marginalized. They’re celebrated all over the country, in almost every organization. Nobody is being eliminated. The Holocaust was an “elimination”. Not teaching 2nd graders that there are 50 genders is developmentally appropriate, and true.
Your communist gender studies professor would be so proud of this post. The rest of us see right through it.
My communist gender studies class was so hot. Own the means of boning, I always say.
Anyway, gonna go lay by the pool on another beautiful day here in the Bay Area. Maybe get some ice cream later. The decline is rough.
You know it’s possible to disagree with someone and still be generous, right? When you use words such as “communism” and “leftist” in a way to be condescending doesn’t help anyone see the merits of your side. It just makes you look like an a-hole.
The word “communism” should absolutely be used derogatorily. It’s whole existence is based on oppression of others. It’s the absence of freedom. It’s pure evil and all about having power over others.
It’s someone making decisions for the masses without their consent. This will always end up in the murder of innocent non compliers given enough time. There is no other result. It’s a disaster of a system that has failed spectacularly every single time.
Let’s see…”leftist”, “communist”, “gender studies”, “50 genders”…so close to filling up your nonsense bingo card!
I can’t even imagine going through life this confused and furious. Good luck to you.
Just wanted to note how extremely reality-based this is. Always happy to hear from a real China political-economy expert
Funny how things like this in small communities like fangraphs gets downvoted 15 times, but in larger traffic pools like yahoo, they had to go as far as to eliminating up/down votes altogether because every one of their highly slanted articles that was political in nature was about 2/3 to 3/4 against in the comments. Youtube was quick to follow that behavior as well.
This is eliminationist rhetoric.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-knowles-calls-for-eradication-of-transgender-people-at-conservative-political-action-conference
Btw Hitler wanted to eradicate transgenderism. Thats why he destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld’s institute of sexology and started the Nazi book burning with his entire library of LGBT history and research.
If you defend this rhetoric and see it not as genocide, then according to genocide studies you are already buying into the dehumanization rhetoric that is necessary for mass public participation in genocide like what happened in Rwanda, where I currently study and reside
This board is lame- too many downvotes. I’m out of here.
Buh Bye!
Lol
Thank you, Michael. Our sport needs more voices speaking in solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, and linking that to the disgrace that passes for “leadership” in the sport. Nice job linking it as well to Manfred’s utter failure to effectively promote a sport that should be so easy to love and enjoy at this particular moment.
Very thoughtful article, Michael. And exactly right on all counts. Clearly Manfred has been charged with making sure the A’s move to Las Vegas goes through, and he realizes there are ZERO repercussions to whatever he says in the service of his billionaire bosses, whether that’s sarcasm or just blatant lies. Let’s not pretend to be shocked by this. It is also truly dispiriting that we continue in this country to cater to (and worth, both-sides) ignorant rightwing religious beliefs that hate and marginalize certain groups of people, while at the same time promoting and holding sacred everything military. “I wasn’t making hateful, exclusionary comments” says the white baseball player, as he makes obviously hateful, exclusionary comments, or pulls a patch off his uniform that promotes diversity and inclusivity, because, after all, why would we want to promote those qualities, or love and acceptance for that matter? America and its “Christians” (who certainly don’t embody the teachings of Jesus Christ to love everyone) are not called out nearly enough, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to hate.
There is also a difference between being averse to something that is unhealthy for the family/civilization/community vs. something that is healthy. It’s not bigotry that makes the majority of people against promoting something like hacking off body parts or eliminating the ability to reproduce, it is the fact that if everyone performed that behavior, the human race would become extinct very quickly. It is no different than being against everyone taking a pill that will kill them.
You know what’s really unhealthy for humanity? People killing themselves due to not being able to live the life they want to live. Who’s hacking off body parts and eliminating the ability to produce? Except in exceptionally rare cases, grown adults. Adults who can make their decisions with their lives. It is not your decision. It is theirs. Let them decide.
Let them live. Let them interact with all people, including your children. These people are not hurting you or anyone else. Do not hurt them.
None of your examples were promoted by me in any way. I was simply explaining why not supporting such behavior or approviing of such behavior will never be supported by the majority of humans. If someone wants to jump off a cliff, they have that right, but asking people to support it is naive at best, and evil at worst.
We know exactly what you’re referring to, buddy. You’re not fooling anyone. If you have nothing nice to say about a trans person, kindly keep it to yourself
Treating them like tokens sure helps them a ton, ccjl!
Newsflash: folks kill themselves at about the same rate after transition. There’s a high rate of mental health issues in the community and as long as it’s cloaked in “just let them transition” from activists, teachers and NGOs, it’s not actually helping those folks but just sweeping the mental health problems under the rug so liberals can enjoy luxury beliefs.
That’s just not true. There’s one, count it, one study stating this. In Sweden, they observed no benefit from gender affirming care over a 30 year sample involving 324 total subjects. Every single other peer-reviewed study refutes these findings, as they well should? 300 people in 30 years is a microscopic sample.
By the way, do you have anything resembling a life? You’ve spent the last several hours commenting on this piece like 30 times
And there’s one study stating that kids with gender dysphoria who don’t get blockers kill themselves more often! The kicker is, all of Europe agrees with me and not you that mental health care is what these kids should get and not gender affirmation. Tavistock was shut down. Sweden stopped all minor gender care. Denmark. The clown-activists in the US who stubbornly demand it keep going here will be the next Catholic Church scandal after tragically maiming and rendering infertile thousands of kids.
They don’t actually care about the kids. They care about showing off their luxury beliefs and increasing their community by duping pre-romantic kids with mental health issues.
I’m guessing the answer to my last question is no. Last one buddy, and I suggest you do the same.
Gender affirming care is indeed on the rise for minors. However, life-altering surgery is exceedingly rare. In most cases, minors undergo psychological therapy and, if necessary, hormonal therapy. The effects of either of these are reversible, and the recipients of such care report far reduced anxiety and thoughts of suicide. You are wrong, and this is a common falsehood promoted by right-wing grifters, you absolute bad faith actor.
Odd choices here. Tavistock is staying open despite the lawsuits. Granted, it could still close next year, but it was already supposed to close, and it didn’t. UK’s big thing is exceptional healthcare access too, so I have a hard time buying that they deny healthcare for people experiencing gender dysphoria. Although, to be fair, the UK elected Boris Johnson, so who knows. Denmark is a haven gender affirming care, and Sweden has great availability to it as well. The only change has been that they’re pumping the brakes on different types of treatment due to the increase in volume. Seems reasonable and mindful to me. Are you trying to do some reverse psychology thing here where you point out better countries? You wouldn’t need to convince me. I’d move to Norway tomorrow if I could. It’s either that or you’re one of those people who thinks they’re really smart but they’re incredibly dumb.
The politicians, nearly all of them, certainly don’t. But it’s not about them. Those of us who support access to gender affirming care, do indeed care about the kids. Same reason why we’d object to the revisionist history starting to be taught in conservative states. It’s all about fostering a healthier, smarter society. Nobody should have to live a worse life than the previous generation in any respect.
Touch grass, my guy. I’m outty 5000
if everyone played baseball for a living, the human race would become extinct very quickly. Being against baseball is no different than being against everyone taking a pill that will kill them.
Both the Pride celebrations and the military celebrations are degenerate and serve the same ends.
I still can’t get over “He gave an answer worthy of James Buchanan”. Are we now comparing the pride patches issue to chattel slavery? How do they let this get through the editing process?
Thank you for calling out that line. Manfred isn’t that kind of horror. And that answer wasn’t nearly as bad as Buchanan’s tripe either. Wasn’t something I appreciated, but it wasn’t an outright defense of homophobia either.
Baumann really seems to like to stir things up. To be clear, I would like to see Manfred come out and say “We would like to see all our players participate fully in Pride night” rather than this wishy-washery. Not a fan of the league trying to have it’s cake and eat it, too.
To be utterly fair to Baumann, emotional appeal is one of the pillars of writing any opinion piece (source, I have a degree in this crap). Using his words to give a powerful slant is more likely to generate clicks and responses than neutrality. And since he’s already writing on an emotionally-charged topic, why wouldn’t he use that to it’s fullest? Lots of news sites seem to live by the mantra “the only bad publicity is no publicity”, doubly so for opinion pieces.
That said, the Buchanan line was too far. There’s a difference between emotional appeal and blatant hyperbole.
I think Rob Manfred is an ineffective communicator in so many ways.
But most of the complaints about yesterday are complaints about the role of the Commissioner, rather than Manfred himself. I believe the sport would be better off if the Role of Commissioner were as an independent arbiter of the good of the game… but it’s not. He works for the owners and his job is to represent their collective interests.
Lebetard is a turd
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
The activists are surely just aiming at “live and let live”
Lol exactly
Whatever your views are on anything, the world is full of people that disagree with you. Behave accordingly.
If “free speech” should allow players to vocally object to Pride night activities, then it should also allow players to vocally object to Christian Faith & Family night, kneel for the national anthem, etc.
Obviously, that shoe never fits when it’s on the other foot. It really isn’t about free speech at all.
I want people to do things because they want to do it. Not because they are forced to do it. If I were an advocate of Pride night or “standing for the anthem”, I want you to do it because you believe in it. Not because you are forced
Nope, my idealogy must be exported by force and all others be damned.
Or employer coercion at the very least!
This is, and I just don’t know any better way to put it, Trump-speak. Manfred has thrown off the shackles of empirical reality and is transcending, becoming a luminous ego bathed in pure self-satisfaction; contempt for the proles simply radiates from him like blinding light.
(I would ordinarily avoid making this observation, but since this comment section is already a disaster area…)
The “I lived near a new stadium so I know all about them” is extremely Trumpesque.
What I have learned from this comment board is that “left wing causes” can’t have negative results. They all have good intentions and will result in good things! Thanks David and commenters!
Oakland politicians have already lost 2 major sports teams, and soon to be a 3rd. Their city has been unsuccessful in attracting or keeping businesses and families (are they even trying?). In the past decade, Oakland has become overrun with crime, public drug use, blight and homelessness. Oakland leaders have given A’s ownership every reason to leave and operate elsewhere.
That’s not to say John Fisher is blameless, but if it comes down to believing one side or the other, how can you possibly take the City of Oakland’s side, given their abysmal track record?
In the end, Fisher has a business to run and if Oakland isn’t willing or able to help, he needs to find some city who will. And right now, Vegas is willing to “play ball”.
tb
manfred is really giving goodell a run for his money as most hated commissioner
Great article.
It’s always nice to be able to tell who lives in Fox News world. This comment section today is very illuminating.
Ah yes. I’m sure you live in an open minded and lots of different opinions world.Sirpuffmcdrunk is an expert on everything!
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am! Thank you for noticing 😃
I’m sure. I bet the conservatives are Jennifer Rubin.
Ah, yes, disagreeing with or expressing skepticism towards corporate sponsored and mandated justice movements (looking at you IBM, Hugo Boss, Volkswagen) has always had folks on the side of Fox News and Fascism.
Disagrees me=Right Wing bleatingMaybe that’s not evidence of it, but creating an account called wokegraphs certainly is
I don’t watch Fox News and I’m far to the left of the American Democrat party. I just don’t confuse “left” with identity tokenism intended to destroy solidarity and create minuscule victim classes powerful people who could actually achieve both social and material change in this country go on and on about as if they’re existentially at risk because of some vague “hate” they just can’t put their finger on as the country is materially parted out for scraps around us. Culture war is class war fought for the rich whether from the social justice side or the GOP side. Until woke is overcome, there is no left in America.
This is clearly a boldfaced lie and evidence you don’t even know what “wokeness” truly refers to, like 99%+ of conservatives. Left-leaning, on a world scale, is a humanitarian-focused stance. Part of being a humanitarian often is being aware of what’s going on around you so you can do your best to help out and promote the help for others. And that, yes, that, is wokeness. Wokeness is not whatever your favorite grifter says it. It’s not inherently on one side of political scale or the other. It’s often aligned with leftist values, but that’s coincidental – much like fascism and right-leaning values.
You have to be a really special one to arbitrarily filter groups of victims because they’re too small for you to care about. We can help everyone, you buffoon.
Lol ok, keep working for the capitalist bud. Life sure has gotten better after the woke destroyed Occupy, Bernie’s movement, etc. Things are looking up!
Why don’t you tell me what wokeness refers to, you dolt? Universalist leftism does help everyone. That’s what I’m arguing for instead of woke separationist tactics. Try reading.
Can you read? I stated it above. Wokeness only refers to being awake, as in being aware of the things happening around you. If you think it’s something different, you’re just wrong
And the country will hardly even notice the move to “Las Vegas”, since it’s such a culturally irrelevant sport.
You said you were leaving.
Liar.
LOL at the sympathy for the As fans. If the same number of fans that came to the protest bothered to come to regular season games, the As would still be in Oakland. I assume that virtually none of the 27,759 that attended the protest have attended any regular season games.
FWIW, this is the same as your local businesses. If you are one of the ones that never spend money at the local hardware store, bakery, or diner, then you lose the right to complain when they are no longer there.
In order to spend money on a good or service, it has to be worth that money. And Fisher has made a mockery of raising the value of the A’s as a team or franchise. Being that it’s a crappy team playing in a literally crappy stadium in desperate need of repairs, it’s understandable fans would decline.
How do you reconcile this with the fact that even when the A’s were not a crappy team… in fact, quite the opposite, fans still weren’t going to the games?
Because the other issues like the crappy stadium, crappy concessions, too high ticket prices, bad parking, bad location, ect. were still present. Fixing one issue and leaving five others is a good way to let problems fester. Fans don’t just come to see the game, they come for the whole experience. Look at the Rockies! Their team sucks and has for most of its existence. But the area is beautiful, it’s not insanely expensive, there’s plenty of parking, and there are other things to do if, say, you have young kids who aren’t into baseball.
Thank you for always having honest, rational questions and answers for these things. Even when we disagree I can tell you’ve put serious thought into any discussions you have.
Nothing like coming to support a team when the owner has shown you nothing but contempt by letting the stadium degrade into a squalid sewage-filled hellhole and traded off any and every good player for a bucket of baseballs and a 20% off coupon at the Sizzler. I can’t imagine why they aren’t more supportive!!
But hey, at least we found Fisher’s burner account.
(Or Manfred’s.)
“Players should have to support a cause that is overtly against their religion and personal views because I am the ultimate judge of morality, and whatever I believe in must be the truth.”
but but but who else thought they were on the right side of history in history and would brook no disagreement?
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
I do not understand how this went from talking about the A’s imminent move to politics, like, genuinely cannot understand it, I do not come to Fangraphs to read about political opinions of any kind. (And no, wanting a baseball team to stay in a specific city is not a political opinion.)
Because Michael Baumann is a good person, and people with other views aren’t.
A lot of us say that… and then we go and comment, so the joke’s on us, really. I would love to see a more positive tone, though. If Fangraphs wants to push progressive causes, they can certainly put up posts advertising upcoming Pride, union, or whatever nights at various ballparks (rather than those job posts!). I would be all for that: it’s positive, actionable.
Still, this is the first time I’ve noticed this site using such garbage practices for money, turning into other legacy media sources. I came to read an article about baseball.
Look, if you don’t want men dressed in thongs and Catholic nun habits shaking their butts and pole dancing on crosses in front of children at a baseball game, you’re erasing queer people and I’m literally shaking rn I can’t even, you bigot
near as i can tell, this scenario plays itself out infinitely more times in right wingers’ imaginations than it ever has on a baseball diamond
I’m honestly just curious how you pole-dance at a baseball game. Anyone who can manage that is all right with me!
Why don’t you try it and find out? I can think of a whole host of things you could try and it’d be alright by me!
I’m highly conservative, but just as I don’t care to see “Border Security Night” or “2nd Amendment Night” at sporting events, I am equally uninterested in seeing “Pride Night”. I am fine with, and will tolerate, honoring those in American culture who serve – Military, LE, First Responders, Volunteers, etc. – and I am also happy to support causes for the impoverished, the unfortunate and the unable. Beyond that, count me out.
I, for one, am extremely anti any commercial enterprise engaging in social activism (Bud Lite, anyone?). MLB’s decision to pull out of Atlanta last year was disgraceful. Did Manfred actually read the voting bill? Or was he just reacting to pressure groups? I suspect the latter, which shows the infinite regress of swimming in currents you shouldn’t be in (Bud Lite, anyone?).
Jackie Robinson, yes; Pride/voting laws? No way. Leave the activism to individuals and their right to protest and make their voices heard.
Trans people drinking beer isnt political
Marketing trans people drinking beer to people you’ve been marketing nationalism and masculinity and heartland aesthetics to for half a century _might be_. Seems like the advertised to folks thought it was!
Maybe they will get really political and market black people or other political groups of people drinking beer
unfortunately, nothing is more predictable than straight white male backlash when other people attempt to enjoy something they see as rightfully solely theirs, whether it’s baseball, beer or unemployment benefits
Dudes rock!
Lol “the infinite regress of swimming in currents you shouldn’t be in” is the shittiest piece of writing I’ve ever read.
The “sisters” are an anti-Christian hate group. There is a huge difference between them and a group that are legitimately activists for the rights and protection of the gay/trans community. Going out of one’s way to publicly blaspheme, degrade and insult what is sacred to millions of people is not a virtuous act and should not be tolerated by anyone in society today. Hate groups like the “sisters” should not be publicly honored by the LAD in violation of their own corporate policies, which they make all their players and employees sign.
Yeah. And you must be one of those “anti-gay right wingers or guillable centrists” for being against that. According to the author
No one remotely describable as a gullible centrist thinks that the Sisters are an “anti-Christian hate group.” Only the absolute lunatic fringe of the Christian-nationalist far right. Absolutely repellent, shameful, and deeply ignorant bigotry.
NEIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love Fangraphs, but why go out into the weeds of the pride issue here? Other than to push the writers personal political views and agenda. If I wanted that stuff I’d go back to espn or the athletic
Because it generates more clicks and discussion than doing otherwise. The almighty dollar really does bat from both sides of the plate.
You know, when you’re reading something, and you reach a point where what you read disturbed you, you’re allowed to stop.
Like, you can just exit out of the page you’re on and find something else to do.
I know it’s a crazy concept, but trust me, it might work.
Or, if you are reading something that you disagree with, and they have a comment board, you are allowed to comment negatively. I couldn’t find anything in the ToS that says all comments must agree with the writer.
Having BOTH positive and negative comments is a crazy concept, but it might work. If you think Oakland deserves a team, even though no one in Oakland actually goes to the games, I’ll be able to survive your disagreement.
It looks like aschroyer67 actually pays for a membership, so his opinion about what he’d like to see on the site matters.
Kind of like how you can just scroll past comments that you don’t agree with?
EonADS is right on here. This is done for the purpose of aggravating people who think critically for themselves, and is trolling with a side-effect of pushing the groveling about membership.
Being reductive isn’t actually funny or insightful. The article raises several points, among them that Manfred is a sh*t communicator and this whole situation sucks on every level, but isn’t surprising given the behavior patterns of Manfred or the owners he represents. Certain parts are just poorly handled. If you drop the one part about the James Buchanan comparison, the article is tolerable.
No, it’s still terrible and dumb, and was eviscerated above: the author believes the commissioner is a slave to racist billionaires, but still thinks the players should be forced to compelled speech to support whatever he wants to. It’s an absurd article, and its contradictions are all over the place. It’s comical FanGraphs published it.
Should have known an article by a Baumann would turn in to a shame-on-you piece for people who do not wish to promote something that is against their religion, conscience, and common sense. This is the clown world that make so many people nauseous these days. That comment by Manfred was the only thing that he SHOULDN’T be berated for.
There shouldn’t be any honoring. I’m there to watch baseball. I don’t need to be honored because I am white, or Irish, or male, or a senior citizen, or any of the 100 sub-groups I might belong to. Or let’s have one day to honor every conceivable group and get it over with.
Then can we please stop with the national anthem, God Bless America, and the military sponsored special uniforms? I’d probably be willing to make that trade.
The whole point of Pride isn’t even to “honor” the LGBT community. It’s a celebration. Like St. Patrick’s Day, or Thanksgiving, or Black History Month. It’s people being happy they’re alive and accepted, and that others are willing to show solidarity with them. I agree that making it compulsory isn’t great, but Manfred distilling Pride down to “putting logos on [players]” is outright gross. We aren’t a label. We’re people.
Everything you mentioned is just a marketing ploy anyway. I kind of cringe when when the players wear green on St. Patrick’s. I really, really couldn’t give a rat’s a$$ whether they recognize the Irish. If only because then you kind of have to recognize 186 other nationalities. Where does it stop?
And I thought I was a cynic. Jesus. Having views that support one group of people and don’t necessarily support others is one of the most human things in existence. If certain things are “marketing ploys”, that’s only because human nature made it so. People like feeling included or acknowledged. I can’t believe I even have to explain that.
This. I was at Polish-American night at a White Sox game in Chicago a few years back. It was wasn’t an endorsement of Poles, it was a night for them to come out to the park, have a few beers, watch the dancers in authentic ethnic garb by home plate after the third inning, watch some ball and have a few more beers. Have all the miliary folks out on a Saturday, lets have gays next weekend and see about teachers once school lets out.
This gets spun up worse than it needs to be by online entities that make some from it. Simple religious objections should be honored by the teams and protesters should be ignored. Just restrict the official response to “we’re just here to celebrate with a group of fans.” Creating whole uniforms for the team is mostly about sales after the game, not some inherent recognition of worthiness. Mother’s Day only gets socks, wrist band and bats, and they’re all optional, so fancy rainbow hats should be as well.
If they’re accepted, they’re no longer marginalized, right?
If you’re not a logo and actually people drop the identity politics and be a person. The facile, infantile, one dimensional nature of identity politics is tired, lame and separatist. Grow up.
You can’t have it both ways. If you want treated as more, be more. Don’t be a clapping capitalist seal clown.
There is zero insight or nuance of any kind in this piece. It is so predictable and party-line it feels like it was written by an AI trained on 800 progressive journalists and then published with no human oversight whatsoever. Michael Baumann is the worst Fangraphs writer since Sheryl Ring, and it’s not even close.
1-Oakland doesn’t deserve a team. I’ve gone as far back as 2013, and I think they always rank between #26-30 in attendance. If you don’t patronize the local hardware store, bakery, or diner, you do NOT have a voice when they choose to leave.
2-IRT the Pride issue, everyone has the right to be left alone and be treated equally. NO ONE has a right to have a day dedicated to them. If the Yankees want to have a day dedicated to old white guys, then whatever. But I don’t have the right to demand that they have a night honoring old white guys.
As an “old” white guy myself, my eyes are still open enough to see that every day is still dedicated to old white guys in this country.
Companies don’t really fight for any “old people money”. It’s why marketing demographics favor that 30-47 group.
I guess you don’t watch any commercial TV. It’s all about the latest monoclonal anti-body wonder drug targeted at the AARP crowd.
This is ridiculous. People only pay attention to the rich. The rich are overwhelmingly old and white but we’re talking about fewer than a 1000 people who are actually *rich*. Let’s hold them against the folks who look like them who aren’t rich.
Yes, 80% of slaveholders in America were white. They are now our ultrarich. Another 20% weren’t. Some historical accounts say ~10% of slaveholders in America were Black! Here’s another interesting stat: only 2% of white Americans at it’s height owned slaves. Aim for the rich ones right now because they’re probably rich for bad reasons.
What are you talking about? Whites are hated by everyone in the university and media class that creates the consensus of our democracy. Our entire nation is anti-white.
To test this theory, show my anything that suggests our county is dedicated to “old white guys.”
You’re not going to like the response.
“Whites are hated by everyone in the university and media class that creates the consensus of our democracy. Our entire nation is anti-white.”
This is the, uh, single dumbest thing I have ever read anywhere ever.
great article — thanks!
Good article. I agree it’s probably good that the fanbase in its entirety is coming to realize that MLB is entirely a business, and only cares about cities/fans/tradition insofar as it helps them extract value. I think just about everyone who reads and posts on Fangraphs already knew that, but it’s to our collective benefit if the fanbase as a whole comes to understand that as well.
I do have to call BS on a few things, namely that Fisher is the sole architect of all of this. Before Fisher there was Wolff, and before Wolff *gasp* Charles Finley. The A’s have had many owners who refused to put any money into the team, who let the stadium fall into disrepair, who tried to move the team to new cities (each of those three owners did), etc. As I noted in the previous article on this, despite being a lifelong fan, I can admit that Oakland has never been a good baseball market outside of the 88-92 years… and we should all be aware that even during those boom years, the A’s were being run at a loss by the Haas family. It’s not a good market. It never has been and it may never be.
The second bit is the City of Oakland’s line that they had made serious attempts to construct a new ballpark, and were in the process of doing so now. I love Oakland, it’s my home, but no, this is a lie. The city has never made a real attempt to build a new park, for the simple reason that they don’t want to. FWIW I agree with them – sports stadiums cost a ton of money that they don’t return, and the city has bigger problems to deal with. Without revealing too much, I used to have access close to this story, and believe me the A’s were never going to get a deal. Never. The City was never going to spend the money. And they shouldn’t. The plan was and has always been to keep the A’s in the Coliseum for as long as possible, and figure it out as they went. They weren’t going to build a stadium in 2008, and they weren’t going to build one now.
I personally would like to see baseball’s anti-trust exemption killed. They don’t deserve it, and it allows bad actors to hold cities and fanbases hostage. The A’s should have moved to San Jose. The market would have supported it, and splitting the territories between the A’s and the Giants in that manner would have synced with the natural geographic/cultural lines of the North Bay and the South Bay.
It’s just a crap situation.
and only cares about cities/fans/tradition insofar as it helps them extract value.
===================
There is a lot of logic behind this. The whole idea of capitalism is that all companies fight for the consumers’ money, and that the consumer picks the winners. If no one goes to the games, the A’s (and all companies) will leave for greener pastures. It is actually the A’s fan that drove the A’s out of Oakland by not supporting the team.
Capitalism is a two-way street, and companies who provide crap services tend to get crappy return on investment. Such as John Fisher and this franchise. Baseball is more than the product on the field.
I just want to say that I really liked this piece, and I appreciate that this site is still willing to post stuff like this.
There was no reason to shift to an unrelated gay/trans issue in the middle of the article, and then you completely misrepresented the issue as well!
There’s a huge difference between not supporting Pride organizations and not tolerating such people at all! Most people against certain gay/trans rights have no issues with the people themselves, merely their lifestyles, and only the worst bigots would think of actually harming someone just because of their orientation or identity. Love the sinner; hate the sin!
Huh. One of the longest but definitely not one of the better comment threads I’ve seen here.
Lots of crap in these comments. Sorry to see that. But I did want to thank the author for the work. Well thought out, and very well articulated. Thanks, Michael.
John Fisher has truly become MLB’s version of Stan Kroenke, hasn’t he? He’ll never be able to step foot in Oakland again once this is over.
Why should an employee be REQUIRED to wear a patch promoting a cause he/she personally disagrees with, whether that cause be the NRA, Vladimir Putin, the Tea Party or BLM? I suspect Baumann supported Colin Kapernick’s write to kneel during the National Anthem; how is this different? It’s a HUGE leap equate a person choosing for religious or other reasons not to support LGBTQ causes to “a campaign to erase queer people from public life.”
That’s precisely why I object to this. Wear do you draw the line? We’ve seen all the drama in the NBA and NFL. We’ve seen what happened to Bud Light and Target. How about just showing up and watching a baseball game?
Has a FG article ever gotten 1000 comments before? This one might.
Oakland is a terrible market for sports. They lost all of their teams for a reason. Remember Fischer doesn’t own the Raiders or Warriors. Fans there chose the Giants. It doesn’t really matter about the stadium, the A’s had no future there. Leaving is the right call.
mikejason is the true MVP of this thread. unites left and right in hatred.
Fuck yes another Baumann banger. I would call you king but I know you’d never consider royalty a good thing
He would in the yas kween variety
What an absolutely weird hill to die on
Not when you see it for what it is–as the first comment posted, it, with the subsequent comments by the same commenter, is meant to deliberately deflect from the substance of the article.
IOW, mikejason is an owner shill.
I don’t like your tone.
I don’t click on FanGraphs for a full day, I swing by to see what I have missed and there are THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX comments on an article. What could it be? Could it be about the move to Las Vegas? Could it be an ill advised political comment being blown up by ill advised commenters? Could it be trolls talking about Bo Jackson? I am probably not even a third of the way through this and we already have all three. Just a perfect storm here; should I keep reading? Does it get even more ridiculous than this?
Update: it’s all downhill after the first 3 sets of posts. What a disaster.
You chose the right day to leave off. I wish I had…
I think if I had read this before I got in the car and drove basically all day I might have gotten sucked in, but now I see it and know better. Except for this comment, apparently.
I thought you were deciding to sit this one out with me, ST! Haha.
If anyone is coming to this article for the first time after 300+ comments have been posted like I did just now, I can assure you that the responses to this first comment are the best part by far (probably better than this article, TBH) and it is all downhill from there. I read the comments so you don’t have to; you can stop here without missing anything I promise.
Thanks.
Will do.
Manfred told 27,000 baseball fans (and to an extent many more) to fuck off forever. What a total and compete loser. That’s what you think of god’s honest baseball fans?
Cruz is no Corbin Carroll but he’s got special skills. He reminds me of the transcendent Eric Davis before the injuries. Not necessarily the same type of player but someone with skills that no one else can match
He’s going to be great once he figures it out.
I just played our country’s national anthem, stood up, and saluted this article. Well met.
What a dogshit article
Michael, as I’m sure you know, John Locke’s original statement referred to life, liberty, and property, so in that regard, the owners, commissioner, and government do seem most focused on that third thing.
“and Fisher who walked away from stadium negotiations that had been ongoing since time immemorial.”
Since the negotiations have been ongoing since time immemorial, maybe it is reasonable to question whether a deal would actually ever get done? I don’t think cities should subsidize teams ever, but if some city is going to give a team/owner hundreds of millions, then you would take the money too.
I bet the author would have gladly turned down a new stadium and all the money that comes with it. Sure.
Fisher wanted out of Oakland. Manfred wanted baseball out of Oakland. Sports gambling is a gigantic source of potential revenues for the potentates who pay Manfred’s salary. Las Vegas is a center of it, and wanted a team. I can’t imagine they got binding promises from Fisher or Manfred to field a competitive one. So, let’s see what Vegas buys for its welfare for the uber-rich. What is it about our culture that we faint with indignation over the cost of providing a school lunch, but shovel cash at a billionaire owner? When will we learn to say “no” to this type of exploitation?
Yup, great article.
I am not a conservative but this thread has shown me that liberals do group think way better than conservatives do. They will gang up and cooperate to coerce rightthink. Conservatives in a comment thread don’t even go out of their way to support one another (there are obviously a bunch in here ranging from moderates to conservatives). The liberals group downvote. They groupthink. They herd. It’s super interesting! I guess it’s the conservative sense of “individualism good” that has allowed the braying liberals to own the internet. We materialist leftists hate you both!
Omg, where is Ukranian to Vietnamese to French is back when you need him?
Amen..I’m one of those moderates & I see it.
Posted the economy being good for minorities under Trump post- downvoted
A liberal replies that my post is not true,says it was only rich minorities, provides no proof- upvoted
I take 5 minutes & literally find 10 articles supporting my initial post. Some are from conservative orgs, but,among the 10 also included CNBC, WSJ, etc & link to one from that right wing conservative newspaper, USA Today- downvoted.
“Boy oh boy do moderates suck. They suck long and they suck hard” – MLK Jr paraphrased
Maybe we should spend a little more than 5 minutes on researching things so we can actually find some data to interpret rather than some written pieces telling us what to think. But I don’t, that’s just me, the radical leftist. Maybe a moderate who can’t distinguish between a white supremacist and a humanitarian sees it differently
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf
Conservatives have been easily tricked into thinking their imaginary sky man believes keeping trans people from existing is the most important issue of the day. They believe this en masse because they were told to believe it by right wing media. It’s astonishing what republicans can be convinced to believe in furtherance of more power for billionaires who don’t care about you.
Very interesting article. I have long thought that the powerlessness of fans is the greatest flaw in professional sports, and the only way I can see to fix this is for fans to unionize and force all negotiations to be 3-way bargaining with the fans, owners and players. I don’t think laws/government intervention are practical solutions, for the same reasons mentioned by the author. If government was a solution, blackouts would have ended decades ago. For many reasons, boycotts are also ineffective, have too much collateral damage, and will not ultimately influence the next CBA. There are obviously a huge number of tricky details about how this Baseball Fans’ Union would work, how it would be funded, how it would gain leverage, etc., but I would love to hear your and others’ opinions about how to do this, and how it might work. Perhaps it could be the next great innovation started in baseball which transforms the entire professional sports landscape. Many other sectors, e.g. event ticket sales, would also benefit from consumers forcing their way to the negotiating table. The As leaving Oakland is just wrong. Growing up near Cleveland, I am still scarred by Art Modell’s immoral decision to deprive some of my formative teenage years of Browns football. And when I moved to St. Louis, the Rams were ripped away, facilitated by lies and owner greed. Fans need to demand an equal interest in all collective bargaining between owners and players, and in all MLB decisions which affect fans and their communities. That should be the price of the monopoly exemption.
Did we all delete their shitty app yet?
Damn I miss the baseball on Fangraphs. Fuck you guys.
Wow, just absolutely triggered.
“De La Cruz has done more good for baseball than Manfred has in 30-odd years”
What? I certainly am not a fan of Manfred (who is?), but on what basis? If I’m calling balls and strikes, I can rag on Manfred and still appreciate the positive components (largely the rule changes made this off-season which will seemingly benefit the health of the sport moving forward). We are comparing that to a immensely talented kid with less than 100 MLB plate appearances?
I’m glad you feel convicted to speak on social matters and have an outlet to do so, however it’s apparent that you are very biased towards one side without, journalistically, attempting to provide any understanding for the other. It’s tough to digest journalism that doesn’t fully explore these issues with the readers. Without that, it just comes across as a writer who is disgruntled that not everybody agrees with his personal opinions.
With that, I respect your overall work as a writer and am grateful to have this forum.
This statement is so far removed from fact that it has no place on a baseball website. Pure personal agenda.
“Over the past few years, the issue of gay and trans rights has captivated political elites throughout the English-speaking world, including, for our purposes, in the United States. Not content to live and let live, right-wing anti-gay and anti-trans activists — aided by the limitless credulity of too many gullible centrists — have set out on a campaign to erase queer people from public life.”
Bravo, Michael.
These comments are pure garbage. So many people treating a stand for the civil rights of a thoroughly oppressed minority as beyond-the-pale tyranny on the part of MLB. This has nothing to do with the religion or personal beliefs of the players protesting Pride; they do not believe that LGBTQ+ people deserve the same civil rights as straight cis people, and those beliefs should not be tolerated in polite society.
Serious question since you reference it; what specific civil rights are people trying to take away from this group of people?
They’re not oppressed by any metric. The state and the overwhelming majority of corporations and nearly all your hated billionaires back their rights. You are whining that a handful of players don’t want to be compelled to speak, and pretending that this means everyone wants to kill all gay people or something.
It’s just pathetic. Get over yourself.
Best writing I’ve ever seen in fangraphs, thank you for so eloquently and thoroughly laying it out.
He should have been honest and just called Oakland a cesspool.
For sure, not having gay pride hats threatens their right to live lol. Get over yourself
mikejason, you obviously came here just to be a jackass. Congratulations on your amazing success.
Except I just posted directly about who the article was about and then others interjected topics such as reddit, Bo Jackson, and Twitter.
Oh noes, I have to write about my topics that allow me to completely rant on my political biases. Oh woe is me, I soooo wanted to write an article about a young Red’s player that maybe 20% of the site would bother reading and maybe ten would comment on. Sigh, how terrible for me that I get to write this rant that will have higher engagement numbers than anything I have ever written on this site. My god what a Sisyphean task I have been forced to endure.
I notice how you guys never talk about manfred changing the balls in season or for players like Aaron Judge but you love talking about people’s sexual preferences. I fully support the LGBTQ community but I don’t think baseball needs to be focusing on people’s sexual lives.
Bravo!
Hey Michael IDK if you’re gonna see this but I want to thank you for your words. I appreciate all your hard work and it is pieces like this (and writers like you) that put my thoughts down so eloquently. Thank you.
I thought I was reading a column about Manfred and Oakland. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of a condescending uber-woke anti-conservative rant.
Well you got “woke” in there but missed several of the other key buzzwords…
Seriously, you want to defend the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? That mocks Christianity and the Catholic Church in the most vile manner imaginable? Would you defend a group that mocked Islam, or Judaism? Or is it just Christianity?
Load of 100% pure crap from Baumann. Utter horseshit. You ever been to CA, Baumann? You EVER tried to get anything from the psychos in gov’t in that state? Of course not. Oakland lost its football team (twice) and is about to lose its baseball team because the city gov’t is the biggest collection of imbecile worthless pricks ever to walk the face of the earth.
Oh, and thanks for the bullshit trans plug, idiot. “Over the past few years, the issue of gay and trans rights has captivated political elites throughout the English-speaking world, including, for our purposes, in the United States.” No, it really hasn’t – just a bunch of mentally ill demanding to be accepted.
“Not content to live and let live, right-wing anti-gay and anti-trans activists — aided by the limitless credulity of too many gullible centrists — have set out on a campaign to erase queer people from public life.” Horseshit. 99.9% of the population has had enough of 0.1% of the population – a mentally ill segment that believes a man can have a baby and putting a dress on a man makes him a woman – wagging their weenies in front of little kids.
Why the hell do “trans” mental patients insist on performing inappropriate shit in front of little kids and yet don’t have the time to read to OLD PEOPLE?!??
And your moronic statement about a group of weirdos mocking nuns – women who have dedicated their lives to helping others – is absolute dogshit. Stop lying. Bunch of psycho freaks and Dodger fans rightfully said “fuck you” to the weirdos. Thousands of protesters >>>>> a few freaks dressed as nuns.
Stick to baseball, Baumann. You don’t know shit about that either, but at least it does not endanger little kids.
“Endanger little kids” – citation missing and badly needed.
Any other terms you’d like to toss out to denigrate and dehumanize people different than you? We’ve got “mental patients”, “weirdos”, “freaks”, “mentally ill”, the word “trans” in quotes to suggest it’s not a real thing…
and you think they’re the ones “endangering little kids”? Hmm. Interesting…
I’m no fan of Manfred, but it’s worth noting that many of the complaints raised here are design flaws – this is what commissioners do.
The business of baseball (and football and probably most sports leagues) is very ugly. It is a regulated monopoly where 30 very rich owners happen to be on different stops along the journey towards realizing their fancy toy is a poor investment that will never deliver returns commensurate with their past experience. Ultimately most owners will redeploy capital towards other pursuits. I suspect the same will ultimately happen with Steve Cohen. If he continues to throw money at the team and fails to win, at what point does he say enough is enough?
With that lens, the commissioner’s job is to grow the business and curb or offset costs, while keeping a sufficient subset of the 30 owners sufficiently happy. If baseball were a high growth entertainment property, we would see more growth strategies. And while some evidence suggests baseball on the whole is in fact high growth, there are several teams that act like value players, whether they should be or not. With those teams, we see greater focus on curbing costs, and one of MLB’s most effective levers in this regard is regulatory capture. Owners and the league maximize deal terms by playing cities off of one another at the expense of taxpayer money while local politicians get to claim the stadium deal as a shiny bauble they can pin their hat on.
I can appreciate the author’s complaints against an ugly system, but a more cogent analysis on the industry structure and economic incentives is needed.
I mean I get it Manfred is talking to please his bosses. Fine, I guess. It sucks, but that’s reality. I applaud the public officials for not backing down. Manfred is essentially saying that the city should have given Fisher everything he wanted. I don’t really have any issue with him not condemning the Dodgers for inviting a hate group to their games (Seriously, you’re using a hate group’s charitable work to give them a pass? The Klan gave a lot to charity too, are you going to defend them? Their very name and dress are deliberately designed to be offensive). I don’t think it’s the league’s responsibility to police such things. I could see case for the MLBPA speaking up, though. It does, arguably, create a hostile environment for many of their members. I mean, I’d complain if my company brought in a group that openly and explicitly disparaged my beliefs and culture in a deliberately offensive fashion.
Exactly. I’d consider myself generally on the left when it comes to gay rights, but the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are just straight-up an Anti-Catholic hate group. I have no qualms with teams hosting Pride Nights (hell, I think it’s nice that they do), but inviting and honoring a group like that is beyond the pale.
I haven’t seen an article get anywhere near this many politicized comments since the days of Sheryl RIng. 498. 500 soon. There’s too much politics and too little baseball here. You have more in common than the media want you to believe. Commonality doesn’t sell.
Marcus Semien is good. And positional adjustments need adjusting. Just getting the 500th comment in here.