{"id":756755,"date":"2026-06-24T07:33:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T07:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756755\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T07:33:17","slug":"mlb-commissioner-giants-botched-pride-night-cap-guidance-leaving-players-unclear-on-opt-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756755\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Commissioner: Giants botched Pride Night cap guidance, leaving players unclear on opt-out"},"content":{"rendered":"

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a letter to Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that the San Francisco Giants failed to properly explain to players that they were allowed to decline to wear rainbow-themed caps<\/a> during the club’s annual Pride Night earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Several members of the Giants, including starting pitcher Landen Roupp,\u00a0added Bible verses\u00a0to the themed cap, prompting a warning from the league that writing on the caps is a violation of league policy.<\/p>\n

RELATED: SF Giants players draw backlash after writing Bible verses on Pride Night caps<\/a><\/p>\n

Hawley penned a letter to Manfred in which he expressed “grave 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hawley\u00a0posted Manfred’s response<\/a>\u00a0to his letter on social media Monday.<\/p>\n

In it, Manfred noted that because some players aren’t 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 have some of the largest LGBTQ+ communities in the U.S., 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

RELATED: ‘Trump won’: VP JD Vance criticizes Giants’ Pride Night controversy, Sen. Scott Wiener responds<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, this year the Giants’ communication with players was inadequate and not clear,\u201d Manfred wrote in his letter to Hawley. “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 \u2014 unfortunately, it was issued before we became aware of the Giants’ lapse in communication,\u201d Manfred added. \u201cThe players were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a letter to Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that the San Francisco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[362088,64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-756755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-362088","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756755","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=756755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}