Is there room in Major League Baseball for faithful Christian players?
Last week, several San Francisco Giants players wore the Pride-themed baseball cap during the team’s Pride Night, but with a twist: They wrote Bible verses on their caps referencing Genesis verses related to God’s creation of the rainbow.
Now Major League Baseball is taking aim at those players.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules and, consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” said Pat Courtney, chief communications officer for the league, in a statement Monday to Outsports, a website that boasts it’s “Proudly LGBTQ+ Owned and Operated.”
But one conservative senator is raising the alarm about whether MLB has a double standard.
“The league’s claim that it merely forbids ‘writing of any kind’ on its uniforms does not survive a cursory review of the league’s recent history,” writes Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in a Tuesday letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred.
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“In 2020, MLB itself turned its uniforms and its fields into a billboard for political and social messages. It created jersey patches reading ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘United for Change.’ It authorized ‘BLM’ to be stenciled onto pitching mounds. And it suspended its own equipment rules so that players could display progressive political slogans on their cleats,” Hawley added.
Hawley, who notes in his letter that the league “enjoys a sweeping, judicially manufactured exemption from the federal antitrust laws,” doesn’t mince words about his concerns in the letter, which requests Manfred respond to a series of questions.
“The league went beyond tolerating speech—it designed speech, promoted speech, and shoehorned social and political messages into the game broadcast to millions of Americans. Yet when three players added a handful of characters citing the Book of Genesis to their caps, the league reached for its rulebook.”
In a statement Tuesday, the league told The Athletic the Monday statement was not about “the content of the message,” and that the league respected “players’ right to free expression.”’
“We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad,’ ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
The statement comes the same day other conservative politician are speaking out.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on X: “Do you practice religious discrimination in Florida, @MLB? You’ll be hearing from my office soon.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted: “The Texas Rangers are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t host a Pride Night. This week, they’re hosting Faith and Family Night instead.”
“In Texas, we don’t punish people for living out their faith. We protect that right,” he added.
Vice President JD Vance also signaled support for the players, writing: “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore.”
Now, just to put this in context: Many Americans don’t support the LGBTQ+ lifestyle. A third of Americans believe same-sex relationships are morally wrong, according to a recent Gallup poll. Fifty-seven percent of Americans think changing one’s gender is morally wrong.
The baseball players who refused to kowtow and show support for a value they don’t agree with took care to speak diplomatically and in a way that encouraged dialogue. There were no ugly slurs or lack of compassion.
Take San Francisco pitcher Landen Roupp, who inscribed his Pride Night cap with Genesis 9:12-16, which is where God tells Noah the rainbow will be a sign of His covenant not to flood the earth again.
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that He makes to us that, you know, His faithfulness and His mercy,” Roupp said at a press conference after the game, reports NBC Sports Bay Area.
“That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.”
Asked what he would tell someone in the LGBTQ+ community who objected to his baseball cap inscription, Roupp said, “There’s no hate in it at all.”
“First of all, as a believer, I would push them to read the Bible … there’s no hate in it at all, you know, like I said, we live in a country where you’re welcome to believe what you want,” he said.
Roupp wasn’t alone among the players in sending a different message on Pride Night, which was described as a “celebration of Pride and the LGBTQIA+ community” on the Giants website. Pitchers J.T. Brubaker and Ryan Walker also wrote Bible verses on their caps, while Sam Hentges, also a pitcher, wore the regular Giants cap, not the Pride version.
Earlier this month, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen also refrained from wearing the Pride baseball hat during a game.
It’s not clear if the league objects to players not wearing the Pride hat. Major League Baseball did not respond to a request for comment on whether that was allowed.
Like Roupp, Hentges emphasized he had no “hate.”
“I grew up as a Christian, I’ve grown in my faith. There wasn’t any hatred behind it,” Hentges said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support when I don’t morally support it.”
That seems reasonable enough, to refuse to show support for something you morally oppose.
Yet there was enough criticism that the San Francisco Giants issued a statement a day after the game, addressing the matter and apologizing for the “pain and anger” caused by players’ choices:
“The San Francisco Giants are proud to support Pride Night and the LGBTQ+ community. … We also respect that individuals may make personal choices about participating in team activations.
“We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that.”
Yet, have the Giants or any other team ever issued a statement responding to Christians who objected to Pride Night?
I doubt it.
No one is forcing baseball to take moral positions on hotly disputed issues. (I don’t see any baseball teams hosting Marijuana Night or Sports Gambling Night, for instance.) But if the league continues to do so, it should also accept that players should be allowed to be true to their own beliefs.
These baseball players showed tremendous courage. No doubt, they put their future careers at risk, as well as possibly jeopardized possible brand deals. They deserve to be celebrated by Christians and others who hold traditional values—and MLB should swiftly find a way to assure Christian baseball fans they are respected, too.
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