Putting The “Buster” In Buster Posey

The San Francisco Giants have permission from Major League Baseball to wear Pride-themed gear. This was explained by commissioner Rob Manfred in a recent letter to Josh Hawley, Republican senator from Missouri. The Giants and Dodgers have a special exemption: Other teams have only the 12 league-wide special uniform events, but these two teams can print and wear (and, of course, sell) Pride gear. As part of the deal, it is the responsibility of the Giants, as a condition of their special exemption, to “speak to the players to make sure they [are] comfortable with the apparel,” and to make it clear that they are not required to wear it.

Here is how the Giants and Major League Baseball intend to dart out from under the towering victimhood of Hawley and the hordes of deranged evangelical bigots that he represents: According to Manfred, what happened on June 12, when three Giants pitchers scrawled bible versus onto their Pride caps and were subsequently scolded by the league office, was a simple and innocent miscommunication. “Unfortunately,” says Manfred, “this year the Giants communication with players was inadequate and not clear.”

This won’t survive very close scrutiny. For one thing, all three of the offending players—Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker—were on the Giants last season. For another, this was not a spur of the moment thing, undertaken in the confusion of unclear expectations: Giants players told the San Francisco Chronicle last week that there “were conversations in the days and weeks leading up to the Giants’ Pride Night” about how exactly the small group of dissenters would protest the event. Finally, per the same Chronicle report, none of the three players who were scolded by MLB for writing on their Pride caps felt pressured by the team to wear them in the first place. They knew they had the option to wear normal caps—Sam Hentges, the fourth Giants pitcher to protest the event, wore a standard Giants cap and kept it unmarked—but wanted to make a statement.