What Did You Say?

John Daniel Davidson Op-ed: To Beat the Dodgers’ Anti-Christian Hate, MLB Stars Must Refuse to Play Ball

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JUNE 01, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/01/to-beat-the-dodgers-anti-christian-hate-mlb-stars-must-refuse-to-play-ball/

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

VISIT ON TWITTER@JOHNDDAVIDSON

MORE ARTICLES

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ appalling decision to honor an anti-Christian hate group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence during their “Pride Night” on June 16 has been met mostly with a deafening silence from the vast majority of Major League Baseball players. Even Catholics, whose faith is particularly singled out for mockery by this LGBT hate group, have been largely mute.

As of this writing, only four players in the entire league have said anything about it, and one of those four has already caved to the rainbow mob. The only Catholic player to come forward has been Trevor Williams, a starting pitcher for the Washington Nationals. Williams denounced the Dodgers and called on his fellow Catholics “to reconsider their support of an organization that allows this type of mockery of its fans to occur.”

The only Dodgers player to come forward so far has been relief pitcher Blake Treinen, who also released a clear statement Tuesday criticizing the Dodgers organization for honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, rightly saying the group “promotes hate of Christians and people of faith.”

The statements from Williams and Treinen were infinitely better than the cowardly response of Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who contented himself with a nonresponse. Instead of addressing the issue head-on, he weakly announced the return of “Christian Faith and Family Day” at Dodger Stadium after a hiatus. “For us, we felt like the best thing to do in response was, instead of maybe making a statement condemning or anything like that, would be just to instead try to show what we do support, as opposed to maybe what we don’t,” Kershaw told the Los Angeles Times recently.

For Kershaw, it seems, the Dodgers should get a pass for awarding a group that openly mocks Christians as long as the Christians get an appreciation night of their own later in the season. What nonsense. It’s like having Christian appreciation night at the Temple of Artemis right before marching the Christians off to the Colosseum. Far from being “the best thing to do,” it would have been better had Kershaw said nothing.

His cowardice was overshadowed, though, by the Toronto Blue Jays’ Anthony Bass, who performed his very own Maoist struggle session over the weekend, giving a scripted apology for the crime of posting something mildly supportive of the Bud Light and Target boycotts.

“I recognize yesterday that I made a post that was hurtful to the Pride community, which includes friends of mine and close family members of mine, and I am truly sorry for that,” Bass said, promising to educate himself and make better decisions moving forward.

Not good enough, Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters. “We’re not going to pretend like this never happened,” said Schneider. “We’re not going to pretend like it’s the end and move on. There are definitely more steps that are going to follow.”

The double standard here isn’t hypocrisy; it’s meant to demonstrate hierarchy. The Dodgers can insult every Christian in the country, and only two guys will speak up. But a single post obliquely critical of transgenderism means Bass gets flogged in public by the Blue Jays. As my colleague David Harsanyi pointed out, no one was hurt by Bass’s tepid support for boycotts of multibillion-dollar corporations; the real point of all this is “to chill speech and transform relatively common positions about faith and irrefutable biological truths into blasphemous utterances, whether done in private or not.”

And it looks like the Dodgers, the Blue Jays, and the entire MLB are going to get away with it — unless the players themselves make a stand.

As welcome as the statements by Williams and Treinen were, they weren’t enough. Faced with what amounts to open hostility to the Christian faith, MLB players need to do more than issue statements. As Mollie Hemingway suggested the other day on Twitter, players who support religious tolerance should refuse to take the field on June 16 in protest. If the Dodgers want to insult Christians by honoring a group that blasphemes their faith, then players should simply decline to participate that day. It would send a clear message that the MLB pursues aggressive LGBT activism at its peril.

Players could take inspiration from the great Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, who refused to play in the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. “From what I’ve been told, there are no dispensations for this particular day,” Koufax told reporters. The decision to prioritize his faith over baseball is one he had made years earlier, and in fact, Koufax missed a number of games throughout his career when they fell on major Jewish holidays. At one point, he told a reporter that a “man is entitled to his belief and I believe I should not work on Yom Kippur. It’s as simple as all that and I have never had any trouble on that account since I’ve been in baseball.” Saner times, those.

It might be, though, that the courage of Williams and Treinen is becoming contagious. On Wednesday, Robby Starbuck said a large group of MLB players “will refuse to wear pride or trans flags of any kind this year if asked to by their teams. This includes star players.” That would be great if it actually happens. Players should no more be asked to wear pride or trans flags than they should be asked to wear Christian crosses or any other religious symbol — which is exactly what pride and trans flag have become.

But it would be better if a large group of players, including star players, pushed back in a more forceful way and stood up for religious tolerance by sitting out on June 16. They would become instant heroes in a country where most people think it’s wrong to honor hate groups that mock other people’s religious faith. But more important than becoming heroes, they would simply be doing the right thing, which is its own reward.

I’ve argued recently that we’re not really fighting a “culture war” in the sense we have previously understood it, but a religious war in which everyone must choose a side. The controversy now engulfing the MLB is part of that religious war, and every player in the league is involved in it whether they want to be or not. They, too, must choose a side.

Choosing sides will mean different things for different people, but for those who choose the side of the Tao — of objective moral truth, of resistance to the fascism of the left — it’s going to mean some sacrifice. For example, MLB players who refuse to play might face financial penalties. They will certainly be denounced by the media as bigots. Their careers might suffer in the long term.

So be it. Everything is at stake in this fight, and the fate of the country at this point depends more on MLB players refusing to take the field, or suburban moms refusing to shop at Target, or dudes refusing to buy Bud Light, than on who we elect as our next president, or how the debt limit debate shakes out.

This isn’t a fight any of us can escape. Corporate America has decided to wage a religious war on everyone, to force trans ideology and LGBT propaganda on the whole of society, so now everyone must decide what they’re going to do about it. Baseball players have a clear decision before them, one that could galvanize support for them and give courage to the rest of us. Here’s hoping — and praying — they make the right choice.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.