{"id":368258,"date":"2026-06-20T11:10:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368258\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T11:10:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:10:25","slug":"mlbs-pride-night-cap-condemnation-is-not-an-anti-christian-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368258\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB’s Pride Night cap condemnation is not an anti-Christian crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amid the first days of grief after Alex Vesia and his wife lost their newborn daughter<\/a> last fall, Vesia noticed something as he watched the World Series<\/a> on television. He paused the broadcast, then checked the video, then texted another player to make sure.<\/p>\n

51.<\/p>\n

Dodgers<\/a> teammates wore his number on their caps. So did players from the Toronto Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was awesome,\u201d Vesia said. \u201cIt was a very heartwarming moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving.<\/p>\n

Touching.<\/p>\n

And, under baseball\u2019s rules, illegal.<\/p>\n

Who knew, really, until this week? Three pitchers from the San Francisco Giants wrote the name of a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps and, amid an uproar,<\/a> Major League Baseball said it had warned the players that \u201cwriting of any kind, with any message\u201d on any playing apparel is not permitted. The issue, the league said in a statement, was not what they wrote on their caps but simply that they wrote on them at all.<\/p>\n

Said MLB in the statement: \u201cWe have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as \u2018Dad\u2019, \u2018Happy Mother\u2019s Day, I Love Mom\u2019 and names of family members.\u201d<\/p>\n

To its credit, the league did not enforce the rule when Vesia\u2019s number started appearing on caps in the World Series. But, if you\u2019re going to draw a line on enforcement, where should you draw it?<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, the actions of the Giants\u2019 pitchers were widely condemned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were in for a rude awakening with the response, and it wasn\u2019t just from the gay community,\u201d Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow told KNBR,<\/a> the team\u2019s flagship radio station. \u201cIt was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to media inquiries, and as first reported by Outsports,<\/a> MLB confirmed it had warned the three players. I asked the league whether warnings had been issued in two other instances in which players had written on their caps, including Clayton Kershaw<\/a> last year writing the same Bible verse on his Pride Night cap that the Giants\u2019 pitchers wrote this year. MLB declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got chastised by the league when I put Charlie [Kirk]\u2019s name on my hat last year, because a man was murdered in cold blood,\u201d Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen<\/a> told me, \u201cand now these gentlemen who are relievers in San Francisco are getting chastised by the league for putting a Bible verse on their hat. It\u2019s crazy to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treinen said league officials had told him the rule is strictly enforced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI straight up asked Clayton last year, \u2018Did they call you when you put that on your hat?\u2019\u201d Treinen said. \u201cHe said, \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pride caps feature team logos decorated in the colors of the rainbow, a symbol long associated with the gay community. In the Bible verse cited by the pitchers (Genesis 9:12-16), the rainbow represents \u201cthe everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

That the league would warn players against writing a Bible verse on their caps ignited a wave of conservative outrage, from Vice President JD Vance<\/a> to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.<\/a><\/p>\n

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley fired off a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred,<\/a> alleging apparent discrimination \u201cagainst baseball players who profess their Christian faith\u201d and threatening the league\u2019s antitrust exemption. Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said on national television that players might be able to file a claim for employment discrimination.<\/a><\/p>\n

That is complete nonsense. This is what you want: When employees raise an issue to their employer, the employer listens and addresses their concerns.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the year after five Tampa Bay Rays players declined to wear rainbow logos<\/a> for Pride Night, Manfred said the league would no longer compel players to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don\u2019t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views,\u201d Manfred said then.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Dodgers <\/p>\n

Teammates congratulate Freddie Freeman after his walk-off home run gave the Dodgers a 1-0 win on June 5, when the Dodgers held their annual Pride Night. Blake Treinen, the winning pitcher that night, elected to wear his regular Dodgers cap instead of the Pride version.<\/p>\n

(Katelyn Mulcahy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Manfred said the Pride Night celebrations could go on, however a team wished to stage them \u2014 or not, in the case of the Texas Rangers, the only one of the 30 MLB teams that declines to hold a Pride Night. And the league still sells Pride gear on its website for all teams, including the Rangers.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the cases of the Giants and Dodgers, MLB grandfathered each team\u2019s long-running use of a rainbow logo on the cap, with this accommodation to players: If you don\u2019t feel comfortable wearing the Pride cap, just wear your regular cap.<\/p>\n

That is what Treinen and outfielder Alex Call did when the Dodgers celebrated Pride Night. That is also what a fourth Giants pitcher did.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is to abide by the rules,\u201d Treinen said. \u201cUltimately, the only rule we have is to wear our team-issued uniform. So that\u2019s what I chose to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Treinen, the decision over whether to wear a Pride cap is not about passing judgment on anyone else but about what he sees as the push \u201cto force something on people that you know that is controversial to their faith \u2014 and, in fact, straight up against their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

He expressed his support for the Giants pitchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cKudos to those men over there who are standing strong in their faith,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sad thing to corner someone and try to make them feel bad about their convictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

I respect Treinen for explaining his viewpoint. To me, wearing a Pride cap for one night does not diminish your faith at all. It might sharpen your convictions. More important, it signals a welcome to everyone in the community who buys the tickets and broadcast subscriptions that help pay your salary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a few people made it about themselves and not about the community,\u201d San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told the Bay Area Reporter.<\/a><\/p>\n

We always proclaim the life lessons of sports. One of them: Sometimes you have to put the team\u2019s interests ahead of your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the first days of grief after Alex Vesia and his wife lost their newborn daughter last fall,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[16711,147524,39642,149362,426,142410,10897,48,52,51,10572,47,50,49,1334,4256,9442,149361,20460,427,92550],"class_list":["post-368258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-alex-vesia","tag-bible-verse","tag-cap","tag-christian-faith","tag-dodgers","tag-gay-community","tag-giants","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-league","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mlb","tag-pitcher","tag-player","tag-pride-night-cap-condemnation","tag-rule","tag-team","tag-treinen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}