{"id":755177,"date":"2026-06-23T14:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755177\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T14:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:09:09","slug":"manfred-defends-mlbs-response-to-bible-verses-on-players-pride-caps-mlb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755177\/","title":{"rendered":"Manfred defends MLB\u2019s response to Bible verses on players\u2019 Pride caps | MLB"},"content":{"rendered":"

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has defended the league\u2019s policy over Pride celebrations<\/a> in a letter to Republican senator Josh Hawley.<\/p>\n

Most of MLB\u2019s 30 teams celebrate Pride month with a themed game to acknowledge the LGBTQ community and its baseball fans. During a 12 June game against the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verses on their hats<\/a>, which featured the Giants\u2019 logo in rainbow colors, while pitcher Sam Hentges chose not to wear the themed cap at all.<\/p>\n

MLB later said in a statement that writing on hats \u201cviolates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawley wrote a letter to Manfred in which he expressed \u201cgrave concern\u201d over the warning to the players. Hawley called the warning \u201cdubious\u201d because he feels MLB is already promoting a political viewpoint by having Pride-themed uniforms. Assistant US attorney general Harmeet Dhillon also wrote a letter<\/a> to Manfred saying the justice department had referred the league to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate whether the discipline amounts to religious discrimination.<\/p>\n

But in Manfred\u2019s response to Hawley, the commissioner said the Giants failed to properly explain to players that they were did not have to wear Pride-themed clothing.<\/p>\n

Manfred noted that because some players aren\u2019t comfortable wearing Pride-themed uniforms or caps, the league adopted a policy in 2023 of prohibiting clubs from using special uniforms, caps or equipment in their celebration days except under very narrow circumstances, such as special patches honoring deceased members of the baseball community.<\/p>\n

That same year, the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who play in cities with large LGBTQ+ communities, were granted an exemption from the new rule and were permitted use of pride emblems on caps and uniforms on Pride Night \u201cprovided that no players or uniformed staff would be required to wear them, and that the team would speak to the players to make sure they were comfortable with the apparel.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his letter to Hawley, Manfred wrote: \u201cUnfortunately, this year the Giants\u2019 communication with players was inadequate and not clear. Some players apparently did not understand that they had the option to wear their normal uniform and elected to add messages to their hats bearing the pride logo as a result.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Giants players were allowed to wear the hats with biblical references for the entire game. After the game had concluded, my office issued a routine oral warning about the uniform policy violation \u2013 unfortunately, it was issued before we became aware of the Giants\u2019 lapse in communication. The players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has defended the league\u2019s policy over Pride celebrations in a letter to Republican senator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-755177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}