That is becoming clearer with each passing day...
(Genesis 19:28 And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, AND, LO, THE SMOKE OF THE COUNTRY WENT UP AS THE SMOKE OF A FURNACE.)
Posted on 06/25/2026 3:14:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Buster Posey tried to move on from the Giants’ Pride Night controversy. Instead, his response seemed to frustrate just about everyone. The Giants president of baseball operations met with reporters Tuesday at Oracle Park and opened with a brief statement acknowledging that fans had “strong feelings” about the issue. But when follow-up questions came, Posey repeatedly shut them down.
“I’ll answer baseball questions,” Posey said. That did not go over well. The controversy began on June 12, when Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, J.T. Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verse references on their Pride Night caps. A fourth pitcher, Sam Hentges, reportedly chose to wear the team’s standard cap instead.
MLB later issued a warning for a uniform policy violation, though commissioner Rob Manfred clarified the players were not fined, disciplined or facing future punishment. Posey said the organization had already addressed the matter and did not want to revisit it. The problem was that almost no one was satisfied with that response.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Buster? My name is bad enough, but Buster? Must of had a rough time through school.
I looked it up. His real first name is Gerald.
MLB later issued a warning for a uniform policy violation, though commissioner Rob Manfred clarified the players were not fined, disciplined or facing future punishment.
Yeah, I'm sure there will be absolutely no "best served cold" retaliation over this. The only people in the MLB who need to be fired are the entire chain of fools who imposed this ridiculous BS.
This discussion has become a bit of a Sticky Wicket for Buster.
The Post gets it wrong. The side that is angry right now is the LGBTQ rainbow brigade and the San Francisco media (but I repeat myself). There are plenty of people (especially on Giants’ social media) - I would even say a majority - who are asking to please just play baseball and give it a rest. Religious types seem happy enough with the MLB’s response (even if it was a bit “CYA”), and definitely Posey’s recent statements.
How about all the MLB teams just drop the rainbow garbage and just play ball. Follow the Texas Rangers. No gay night.
“MLB later issued a warning for a uniform policy violation...”
The uniform determinations are part of the owners and players unions job and are defined in the rule book and the union and players agreements (contracts). If a player violates it, he signed the contract. The players in question that wrote on the caps with anything violated the rule. Other instances of warnings before were things on caps like happy mother’s day and happy birthday.
They knew they weren’t supposed to write on their caps and did it anyway. They are responsible for their actions and were warned over it. Legally they could have been fired, sent down or suspended. They violated their contract.
wy69
Players should never be forced by management to wear any political statements of any kind. That’s my opinion on it.
Mandatory participation of “Pride” nights should be outlawed.
God had good reason to smoke Sodom and Gomorrah. I can now imagine these nasty people wanting to have sex with angels
The Giants are a losing team so it can’t get any worse.
Do feel the same way about other employees who wear uniforms on their jobs?
You don’t argue that would MLB did was acceptable; what you argue is that MLB needs to lose their special privileges from the US Congress. The very existence of the MLB itself should be ruled as a restraint of trade.
“You don’t argue that would MLB did was acceptable...”
No, I didn’t. But what MLB did was legal and the people that stepped outside the limits of the contracts were the players.
A restraint of trade refers to any contract, agreement, or conspiracy that unreasonably limits free competition, trade, or an individual’s right to pursue their chosen profession. It is a broad legal concept covering both business antitrust violations and restrictive clauses in employment or sales contracts.
If you are talking about the players being admonished for restraint they are not pastors but ball players. If their profession was as pasters or priests then they would not be working under contract as ball players. And if they are using MLB to further a career in religion then they are violating the contract they have with the sport. Standard MLB and MiLB contracts include a “winter league and other sports” clause. This typically prohibits players from engaging in outside employment or activities that involve a high risk of injury, or jobs that could create conflicts of interest. In a roundabout way, by how the players accomplished the issue they created, it did because that’s how it was presented by the media. So this alleviates restraint of trade as there is none outside of the contract.
But the question is since they in knowing the limits of their contracts as they are flooded with agents, lawyers and other players being in the same situation of knowledge, then why did they directly violate a rule by how they did it? And this is not the first instance of players being admonished for breaking the same rule and not for just religious words written on caps. Do I believe MLB was too tough on the players. Absolutely not. If the contract was unconscionable, then that would have been determined when it was written or the players union would have been aggressively attacking it the earlier times and got it changed legally. They apparently didn’t.
Oh, and churches by law are not exempt from honoring a contract if they make one. It’s just legalities. And almost all contracted employees in a business, especially one that salaries so huge, are going to give up things to get the money. So the player if he didn’t like the organization because it didn’t fit his idea of social acceptability, sold his soul for the compensation.
wy69
Baseball very famously operates in restraint of trade. Right now, it survives because the courts would likely decide that because the 1998 Curt Flood Act could have fixed an otherwise illegal situation but chose not to. All the courts need is for a secondary issue that hadn’t been considered in its 1972 decision to ignore baseball’s anti-trust (sometimes misleadingly called an exemption).
In general, employers in a public accommodation (which baseball explicitly falls into) are not permitted to force employees to promote political positions contradictory to their first-amendment freedoms so long as the expression doesn’t relate to their business. Given marketing, that’s often a difficult matter to prove (consider Ben and Jerry’s), but given baseball’s “exempted” space, that’s a bigger problem.
The baseball players in question essentially altered their uniforms in a manner as to say, “This coerced speech doesn’t represent my personal opinions.” It would be a very different matter if a Texas Ranger ballplayer were to wear a cap with a message countering the homofascist propaganda. As such, in order to prevail against the ballplayers, MLB would need to destroy what almost amount to legal fictions that MLB enjoys to prevent an existential crisis.
Which is why MLB backed down.
The very fact that MLB backed down despite their previously expressed fury should be sufficient evidence to support the fact that their lawyers think I’m correct.
The gay activists who insist that gay stuff doesn’t affect anyone else are enraged that someone isn’t letting it affect them.
“Which is why MLB backed down.”
“The very fact that MLB backed down despite their previously expressed fury should be sufficient evidence to support the fact that their lawyers think I’m correct.”
MLB didn’t backed down from enforcing its uniform policies against players who alter their caps. Instead, they chose not to discipline them with nothing more than a warning. But now the league is currently facing escalating legal and political pushback regarding its warnings to players.
The controversy began after Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verse references on rainbow-logo caps during the team’s June 12 Pride Night game. Roupp wrote “Gen 9:12-16,” referring to a passage from Genesis that describes the rainbow as a sign of God’s covenant after the flood.
MLB initially said the writing violated league rules against players altering uniforms or equipment. In his letter to Hawley, Manfred said that rule was collectively bargained with the MLB Players Association and prohibits players from writing, attaching, affixing, embroidering or otherwise displaying messages on apparel or playing equipment. So, by collective agreement, players’ union agreement, and the signed contracts of the players, they all agreed to follow the rule that the players violated.
https://www.mlbplayers.com/resources/major-league-cba
And even though what they wrote is immaterial, they chose to use religion as a tool to argue the league allowing pride night. So it was intentional and should have, and could have, been disciplined but wasn’t because of the league trying not to hurt their attendance. And people bought into it and the media sold their newspapers. And that now includes an investigation by the DOJ for religious discrimination.
wy69
In 2022, MLB backed way the hell off of the gay propaganda thing. In direct response the pride night controversies, 28 teams were instructed NOT to promote alternate uniforms to promote any special nights, themes, etc.
Two teams were exempted, only because they had entered contracts to promote gay nights. The league recognized that imposing obligations to promote gay nights was an unreasonable condition, and faulted the two teams for not having made clear that no-one had to wear the gear. Had the league protected the players’ rights as it acknowledges it should’ve done, there would have been no motivation for the players to have worn non-regulation uniforms, and early media outrage did not distinguish between simply refusing to wear gay propaganda and those who added something.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.