MLB Pride Nights Co-Opted And Consumed By Owners And Culture-War Freaks

Major League Baseball will never get through a season without a Pride Night controversy. If that becomes the goal, then the only sure option is to eliminate the promotion altogether. That may not be the worst idea: The cowards and vampires who run the league and its teams don't deserve the simple goodwill that comes from saying "gesundheit" to a stranger on a bus, let alone the presumption of human decency that might otherwise belong to those who in sincere good faith open their doors to a marginalized group. All-devouring billionaire demigods are no more committed to dignity and equality in this context than in any other. The very moment they can get away with it, the very moment prevailing winds make it strategically advisable, MLB's owners will host Eat The Homeless Nights. On the other hand, think of a trans teen in San Francisco who shows up on a Pride Night Friday in June to watch the lousy wayward Giants lose to the Chicago Cubs, with the expectation that for this one night they will be more surrounded than usual, and maybe more surrounded than ever, by friends, fellows, and allies. The event itself might be passive, square, carefully guarded from any genuine cultural engagement, but its simplest, easiest objectives—one night where "you're more likely to see other queer people, and maybe your friends who don't like baseball could be convinced that it would be a fun time," as described by our Lauren Theisen—don't have to stand up as a symbol, or function as a lever in a movement, in order to accomplish something meaningful for someone. For the queer spectator who shows up only for a good time (one who can escape social media, anyway), Pride Night really should hold up as an experience of feeling basically whole and basically welcomed at the ballpark. It's exhausting how reliably this gets yoinked into a matter of religious freedom and thus contorted into a battleground of the culture wars. It's relatively new, in the scheme of things, for Pride Night festivities to include alternate uniforms. The San Francisco Giants have been doing it since 2021, and Friday night they rolled out caps with rainbow-colored lettering on the front logo. The majority of Giants players wore these without any fuss. At least four, all of them pitchers, staged protests. Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker wore the hats but scrawled bible verses onto them in shiny silver. Sam Hentges refused to wear the hat altogether, and instead wore a standard black cap with orange lettering. Roupp and Hentges made sure to insist to reporters afterward that their actions were motivated not by hate but by a belief system that apparently precludes support for the dignity of gay people.