Major League Baseball and commissioner Rob Manfred have allowed individual teams to hold Pride nights, but the league office has told teams that having players wear anything bearing logos for those events is a step too far.
When addressing LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations, Manfred said that the league wants to do its best to “protect players.”
“We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players,” Manfred told reporters on Thursday, according to the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes.
“Not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views.”
Instead of having a uniform Pride night across the league, Manfred felt those decisions were best left up to the teams that knew their markets and locals better than Major League Baseball.
Of the 30 clubs, 29 of them are holding some variation of Pride celebrations this season with the Texas Rangers being the only team not to, according to OutSports.
The Mets are holding theirs on Friday against the St. Louis Cardinals, while the Yankees scheduled their Pride celebration for June 21 when they host the Seattle Mariners.
How professional sports franchises have handled Pride-themed nights has become an increasingly controversial subject and Major League Baseball is no different.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have been embroiled in controversy surrounding their Pride Night this year when they upset both Clayton Kershaw and Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams over the team’s decision to include the controversial group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
The trans and queer group is known for using religious imagery to mock Catholicism.
“You see the horrific videos that were posted of them. You read about what they’re trying to do. There’s things that are deeply offensive to us,” Williams said this week. “And then you see that, well, they’re doing these things, they’re raising money for this that and the other.
“They’ve been doing it for over 30 years. But there’s a point where the Dodgers re-invited them after knowing very well what they’ve been doing for the last 30 years.”
The Dodgers initially invited the group only to disinvite them after blowback.
But the team re-invited them after they faced criticism from the LBGTQ+ community.
Last season, the Tampa Bay Rays had five players decline to wear Pride-themed logos on their jerseys.
The NHL also has been engulfed in Pride-related drama as three teams, including the Rangers, scrapped plans to wear Pride-themed warmup jerseys this year.
