The San Francisco Giants baseball team recently held a Pride Night. As part of the evening’s pageantry, they required players to wear a Giants cap that had been rainbow-fied for the occasion. Two Christian players wrote Bible verses on their caps, pointing to the passage of Genesis in which God makes the rainbow a sign of his covenant with humanity never to destroy the earth with a flood again. MLB and the Giants have warned those players that future violations could result in punishment.
This is far from the first controversy about Pride celebrations and American sports, and probably far from the last. Over a decade ago, the Mets hosted former ballplayer Billy Bean to speak as MLB’s ambassador for inclusion. A NJ.com reporter asked Mets slugger Daniel Murphy about the visit, and Murphy said, “I disagree with his lifestyle.” He reiterated that his Christian faith called on him to love everyone and that he could “invest” in Billy Bean as a person, and that he was open to having a gay teammate. But these caveats and nuances didn’t save him from controversy, which has followed him ever since. His remarks were widely litigated in media. When he was traded to the Cubs, Chicago media made a controversy about the appropriateness of the move given how close it was to Chicago’s own Pride Night. Even some progressive Mets fans complained when Murphy returned to the club as a broadcaster and was assigned a game on June 1, the first day of Pride Month. The controversy mostly subsided as Billy Bean showed Murphy public grace.
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