{"id":734473,"date":"2026-06-24T16:39:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T16:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/734473\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T16:39:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T16:39:24","slug":"someone-help-josh-hawley-understand-mlbs-three-page-rebuke-to-his-pride-tantrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/734473\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Help Josh Hawley Understand MLB\u2019s Three-Page Rebuke to His Pride Tantrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for\u00a0The Agenda<\/a>, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays.<\/p>\n

After several San Francisco Giants players wrote Bible verses on their uniforms in apparent protest of an LGBTQ+ Pride Night<\/a> event earlier this month, Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner Rob Manfred is defending the league\u2019s decision to assert its policy against writing on uniforms.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t.) The letter, sent shortly after news of the protest and the league\u2019s subsequent reminder to the players became national news, accused the league of a \u201cpattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s warning constituted religious discrimination, per Fox News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cvery seriously,\u201d Manfred noted that the policy states that players may not \u201cwrite, attach, affix, embroidered or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment\u201d in order to avoid the \u201cpotential to offend some segment of our fanbase.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMLB\u2019s 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,\u201d Manfred wrote in a letter, which Hawley posted to X on Monday<\/a>. \u201cBy 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Manfred said that Giants leadership did not communicate this to the players; he called the communication \u201cinadequate and not clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome 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,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be,\u201d Manfred wrote. \u201cMLB 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cadmitted they were wrong,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for\u00a0The Agenda, Them\u2019s news and politics newsletter, delivered Thursdays. After several San Francisco Giants players wrote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,22705,4,185],"class_list":["post-734473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-congress","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116806075300965993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}