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After several San Francisco Giants players wrote Bible verses on their uniforms in apparent protest of an LGBTQ+ Pride Night event earlier this month, Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner Rob Manfred is defending the league’s decision to assert its policy against writing on uniforms.
Manfred responded this week to a June 16 letter from Missouri Senator Josh Hawley in which the lawmaker accused the league of engaging in religious discrimination for telling players not to write Bible verses on their uniforms. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.) The letter, sent shortly after news of the protest and the league’s subsequent reminder to the players became national news, accused the league of a “pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.”
Aside from facing heat from Hawley, assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon has also called for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate, citing concerns that the league’s warning constituted religious discrimination, per Fox News.
However, in his letter to Hawley this week, Manfred denied any charges of religious discrimination and instead explained to Hawley what it means to enforce a policy unilaterally. Saying that the league takes matters of discrimination “very seriously,” Manfred noted that the policy states that players may not “write, attach, affix, embroidered or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment” in order to avoid the “potential to offend some segment of our fanbase.”
“MLB’s policy must be uniformly enforced regardless of the message in order for it to survive legal challenge, which means prohibiting both the positive message and the negative message,” Manfred wrote in a letter, which Hawley posted to X on Monday. “By warning Giants players that they may not include Bible verses on their caps in the future, MLB was not discriminating or chastity those players based on their religious beliefs; rather MLB was enforcing (with only an oral warning) a long-standing, collectively bargained rule that keeps uniforms clean and avoids controversy.”
Manfred went on to explain that there are only 12 league-wide events where players are allowed to wear non-standard uniforms, but that both the LA Dodgers and San Francisco Giants requested that Pride Night, and the Pride uniforms, be grandfathered in due to the history of LGBTQ+ support in those specific cities. Manfred added that the league allowed both teams to have Pride uniforms but that players would not be required to wear them.
Manfred said that Giants leadership did not communicate this to the players; he called the communication “inadequate and not clear.”
“Some apparently did not understand that they had the option to wear their normal uniform and elected to add messages to their hates bearing the pride logo as a result,” Manfred wrote. Manfred wrote that though his office did reprimand the players, it did so before he found out that the policy had not been communicated to members of the Giants.
“The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be,” Manfred wrote. “MLB believes in the right of our players and fans to express their religious beliefs, and at the same time supports the communities in this country that are fans of Clubs, including the LGBTQ community.”
Despite receiving a three-page response that outlined the history and significance of the policy, all that Hawley seemed to glean, based on his tweet about the response letter, was the MLB “admitted they were wrong,” which clearly never happened. He also pointed out that the players would not be disciplined, which they were never going to be anyway, as Manfred noted.
In the responses to his post, several pointed out that Hawley’s reading comprehension would barely pass muster in an SAT prep booklet.
“That isn’t what it says at all? It says they’re enforcing their policy that you’re not allowed to write on the hat, no matter how positive it is,” one person wrote.
“Hey, I think you accidentally uploaded the letter, which completely refutes the lie you were trying to tell,” another person wrote on X.
The controversy-stirring Pride Night game occurred on June 12 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. During the game, pitcher Landon Roupp took to the mound sporting a hat with Genesis 9:12-16 scribbled next to the Giants rainbow-soaked logo. The verses tell the Christian origin story of the rainbow as God’s covenant with Noah following the flooding of the world.
In part, the passage in the New International Version reads: “Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’”
In a post-game interview, Roupp explained why he wrote the verse.
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy,” he said, per 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."
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