Sports

According to Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred, Jr., the San Francisco Giants pitchers threatened over putting Bible verses on their caps “were neither fined, nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.”

The admission comes just days after league officials warned the Giants’ Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker for writing “Gen. 9:12-16” beside their team’s rainbow logo.

The modified cap was part of San Francisco’s far-reaching “Pride Night” spectacle, an event that included various other manifestations, including on field drag queens. While complying with the team directive to wear the cap, the players chose to reclaim the biblical meaning of the rainbow. By including the scriptural reference to God’s use of the meteorological and optical phenomenon as a symbol of God’s covenant of mercy and faithfulness, the pitchers were simultaneously witnessing and objecting to having to wear propaganda on their head.

Mr. Manfred’s explanation came in response to a letter from Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In his letter, Senator Hawley noted MLB’s “dubious” claim that they maintain a “content-neutral policy” and that MLB “respect[s] players’ right to free expression.” 

Senator Hawley also noted:

Your organization’s recent action follows an undercover investigation which revealed an admission from a Washington Nationals executive that a Catholic player on the team was not included in promotional materials for the team because of his faith. That executive has since been fired, but not before the anti-Christian bigotry was exposed. 

Commissioner Manfred responded within only a matter of days, explaining that MLB’s verbal warning was made without knowing that the San Francisco Giants’ club had not properly or clearly communicated league policy to players. He specifically noted league policy doesn’t require players to wear any special uniform that “make them uncomfortable.”

“Unfortunately, this year the Giants’ communication with players was inadequate and not clear,” Manfred wrote. “Some players apparently did not understand that they had the option to wear their normal uniform and elected to add messages to their hats bearing the pride logo as a result.”

Mr. Manfred assured Senator Hawley, “MLB believes in the right of our players and fans to express their religious beliefs …”

At the same time, the commissioner emphasized league policy regarding independent messages on uniforms – a policy MLB has not consistently enforced. 

“We respect players’ right to free expression,” he wrote. “However, writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited per Major League Baseball’s uniform regulations, which provide in part that, ‘(a) player may not write, attach, affix, embroider or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment…’”

We appreciate Senator Hawley’s swift action in reaching out to Major League Baseball. Not only did he expose the league’s overreach, but he also forced the commissioner to acknowledge and affirm the players’ religious freedoms. 

Yet, at this point, it seems MLB officials remain committed to charging full steam ahead with their full LGBT embrace, especially during the month of June. Instead of blindly bowing to radicals pushing the sexually confused agenda, they would be wise to consider what most of their fans really want. The Texas Rangers’ Faith and Family Night has been a rousing success, a welcome breath of wholesomeness in a culture too often caving to immoral special interests.

Major League Baseball has admitted it was wrong to threaten Christian players – and we pray that in the days and years to come, the league will come around and do what is right by reemphasizing the faith and values of many of its fans. 

When it comes to resisting the pride month propagandists, Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers are batting 1000.

Owned and run by majority owner Ray C. Davis of the Rangers Baseball Express, LLC, the club remains the only team to not hold an event or recognize “Pride Month” in June. Instead, the team is planning again this year to hold “Faith and Family Day” on June 18.

Here’s how the team is promoting the special festivities:

Join us for a special afternoon of community, connection, and celebration. Tickets purchased through this offer include an exclusive experience featuring personal testimonies from Rangers players Wyatt Langford, Josh Jung, Cody Bradford, Jacob Latz, Jalen Beeks, and others, sharing how faith impacts their lives both on and off the field.

Josh Jung, who plays third base for the Rangers, has been especially vocal when it comes to sharing his Christian faith. Jung has said he finds his identity in his faith in Jesus Christ, not being a Major League baseball player.

“Sports aren’t gonna last forever,” he reflected. “Being a baseball player is not gonna last forever, and eventually your name will fade away. When all that’s over, where is your identity gonna be? Who are you gonna be?”

According to Jung, who committed his life to Christ as a freshman in high school, Christianity is core to who he is and everything he does. He also believes it’s what should be motivating him to accomplish far more off the field than on it.

“God has equipped us and gives us strength to go out into the world and spread the Good News, to spread the Word of God,” he says. 

Davis, known for being reserved and understated, lets the team’s actions speak for themselves. He’s chosen not to address what the Rangers aren’t doing and focused on what they are. The silence has frustrated the agitators, but oh well.

Last week, Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Blake Treinen chose not to wear the special rainbow “pride” themed hat that was part of the team uniform on Friday night. Similar to Davis, Treinen didn’t talk about it – he just followed his conscience.

It’s not the first time he resisted riding the woke wave.

Back in 2023 when the Dodgers featured the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” – the drag queen “nun” group – Treinen spoke out and denounced the event. At the time, he said he was “disappointed” to see them “honored as heroes” – and noted “many of their performances are blasphemous, and their work only displays hate and mockery of Catholics and the Christian faith.”

Was he run out of town for his comments? No. He’s helped his team win two straight World Series since pushing back and speaking up. 

With 29 out of 30 MLB teams still jumping on the pride month bandwagon, it’s obvious the tide, while turning a bit, is still strongly churning in favor of same-sex propagandists. They wield and yield tremendous influence and power. But the steadfastness of the Texas Rangers and players like Blake Treinen demonstrate that those with the courage to resist represent a formidable and principled opposition. 

They have earned our admiration and appreciation – and are deserving of our prayers.

This year’s college football bowl season consists of 41 games, including 11 that are part of the playoff system that first began in 2014. What schools make it in and what teams are left out is a matter of perennial controversy, especially this year’s snubbing of the University of Notre Dame.  

The lackluster and lopsided results of last week’s first round playoff games did little to quell the uproar, but those of us Irish fans still smarting from the injustice can take heart from an otherwise forgotten message from the university’s longtime president, the Reverend Fr. Theodore Hesburgh.

It was December 1951. “Fr. Ted,” as he was affectionately known, was speaking at the team’s annual football banquet. The Irish had finished the season at 7-2-1, ranked 13th, ending with a win over USC. As was school policy up until 1968, they declined playing in a bowl game.

“By now, the last whistle has sounded,” Fr. Ted began. “The cleats are cleaned and stored away … But there is something left after this season that is very much a reality … Not just a pile of bricks, not just a system or a practice, not just a feeling or an abstraction, but something very real, a person. You might call him the forgotten man, although he is really what remains when all is said and done about football.”

Invoking the “forgotten man,” Fr. Hesburgh was borrowing a phrase from a President Franklin Roosevelt radio address in 1932. FDR was referring to the individual at the bottom of the economic ladder – but Fr. Ted was stressing the multi-dimensional nature of the student-athlete.

“Because he is strong, he can be drilled to greater stamina or allowed to get soft and lazy; he can be trained to join skill to strength or can be asked to use strength in a wild unreasoned way like a bull … In a word, football players are to be trained and respected as men, not as circus animals.”

During his 35-year tenure, Fr. Ted was sometimes criticized by boosters and accused of deemphasizing football in return for improving the university’s academic reputation. In reality, he believed the two endeavors were inextricably linked, saying, “There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose.”

Notre Dame won’t be winning any bowl game this season, but its student-athletes have already won an even greater prize. As Fortune, played by Charles S. Dutton tells Rudy Ruettiger, the ambitious but undersized walk-on, played by Sean Aston, in Rudy, “You’re gonna walk out of here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this lifetime, you don’t have to prove nothing to nobody except yourself.”

Over the years, the University of Notre Dame has consistently led the way in graduating athletes in football. Known as the “Graduation Success Rate” (GSR), the Irish scored a 99 rating this year, edging out Boston College, Cincinnati, Duke and Stanford, all who scored a 97. It’s the 19th consecutive year the school has held the top spot.

Fr. Ted closed his remarks that cold December night by saying he hoped the Irish players “leave us matured in mind and heart and soul as well as in body. We hope that you who come to us strong in body will leave strong in your attachment to the values that matter in life.” He then added, “We hope that all you players find your intelligence growing towards Christian Wisdom during your four years here at Our Lady’s University, that you leave here better men, prepared to work hard and intelligently and honestly as you played the game.”

Traditionalists and purists are understandably uncomfortable with the way NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) money has upended the game. Yet when so many dollars are being generated over a sport, it’s difficult to keep some of it from the players responsible for bringing it in. But Theodore Hesburgh’s words are a good reminder that the whole genesis of student athletics is first the student and then the sport.

Thanks to head coach Marcus Freeman and the University of Notre Dame’s continuing high standards both on the field and off, bowl or no bowl, that mission will be accomplished for those players who, like Rudy Ruettiger, will leave South Bend with a college degree in hand.

To quote the last line of the “Notre Dame Victory March,’ – “March onto victory!” indeed.

Photo from Getty Images.