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Former New York Yankees star and Texas congressional candidate Mark Teixeira called Major League Baseball’s handling of a Pride Night dispute a “total disaster” aimed at silencing Christian athletes.
Speaking on the “Fox News Rundown” podcast, the 2009 World Series champion and current congressional candidate argued that sports should not cross the line into being political.
“We live in a Christian culture where people are trying to silence us,” Teixeira told Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich. “And we’re not [going to] let the San Francisco Giants or any outside group, silence our faith.”
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The controversy stemmed from the Giants’ annual “Pride Night” celebration earlier this month. Several players protested the event by writing Bible verses onto the rainbow-colored Pride caps or declining to wear the caps altogether.
In a statement reported by The Athletic, an MLB spokesperson said, “The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.”
Teixeira argued that requiring players to wear the hats would force them to support something they may not believe in, calling the situation a “PR disaster.”
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“Yep, total disaster, PR disaster for the league, PR disaster for The Giants. You know, these players were just expressing their Christianity. They were forced to do something that they didn’t want to do,” he said.
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“I played in the major leagues for 14 years. We play 162 games a year, we don’t have these conversations. We don’t take political stances,” Teixeira said. “It’s a hard job playing baseball and bringing something like a pride night and forcing players to wear a cap. Whether that was the rule or not, that’s what it looked like.”
Some players have spoken about their decision to include Bible verses, including starting pitcher Landen Roupp, who said the message was intended to represent “God’s covenant,” not hatred toward anyone.
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The Giants apologized to the LGBTQ+ community for the incident, writing in a statement that they were “sorry” for the “pain and anger” experienced by its members.
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, however, defended the players’ rights to religious expression.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred told Hawley that the players who wrote the Bible verses will not face fines or be disciplined over the incident.
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In a letter posted by Hawley on June 22, Manfred said the players were issued a “routine oral warning” after the incident. He also said the warning came before they learned the players had not been properly told it was optional to wear the pride caps, writing:
“My office issued a routine oral warning about the uniform policy violation – unfortunately it was issued before we became aware of the Giants’ lapse in communication. The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.”
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