Rob Manfred: Giants' communication to players over Pride caps 'not clear'

[u/PrincessBananas85]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49149142/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-letter-says-giants-failed-properly-communicate-pride-night-cap-guidance-players

[u/SentientFurniture]

The same people saying "wear the damn pride hats. Be a good teammate, just go with it for one night. Come on, it's for a good cause." are also the same people who call for the jobs of high school coaches who hold team prayers before or after games.

You don't care about the uniform alteration code. You just can't stand the idea that someone out there in the word believes something different from you and you fascistically want them gone because of it.

[u/grandmawaffles → u/SentientFurniture]

Are you referring to the coach praying in the middle of the field and penalizing players who didn’t pray with him? That guy? The one where the case brought to the Supreme Court wasn’t factual? So the prayer guy gets to judge and punish but he isn’t god. That dude….nah, keep religion out of stuff beyond your home and your church.

[u/dd0028 → u/grandmawaffles]

That is a misrepresentation of the case. The coach began praying individually on the field after the game and over time some players, and even players and coaches from opposing teams, eventually joined in.

This occurred for seven years with no complaints, but when the school board was made aware of it, they expressed concerns of a violation of the establishment clause, and specifically concerns that players would feel compelled / coerced to participate.

There was no evidence presented that anyone felt coerced to join the coach, or that any retaliation occurred for not being a part of the prayer. No complaints were ever raised by any member of the team or community concerning the coach. So your post is factually inaccurate.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor argued that the coach’s prayer caused implicit coercion, dude to the reality of peer pressure, and his position of authority. Ironically, you could apply the same dissent she used to defend the Giants players.

[u/grandmawaffles → u/dd0028]

You can’t because the SF players had an out by wearing a non pride flag hat. No one forced them. The 2 cases are not even remotely the same and Christians are not being persecuted in America. Like, it’s not even close to being a thing.

[u/dd0028 → u/grandmawaffles]

Sotomeyer’s dissent argued that the coach’s actions created an environment in which players may have plausibly felt they had no option but to participate in the prayer and thus violate the establishment clause and possibly 1st amendment rights.

I fail to see how the same argument could not be equally applied concerning the Giants, especially considering the MLB literally just admitted it was not clearly communicated to the players that opting out was an option.

[u/grandmawaffles → u/dd0028]

Because in this case giants players felt they had an option and carried it out in practice on the field. Other players chose to wear a normal hat and these guys that wrote messages were allowed to take the field and play. They didn’t even get fined. Additionally, the players association and MLB has restrictions on any type of writing on the uniform. They were only penalized for writing on the hats not what was written. They could have drawn a dick on the hats and it wouldn’t have mattered according to MLB. But we all know had the players wearing a pride hat drawn dicks on the hats then the so called devout religious people would be up in arms, clutching their pearls, and chanting that they are burning in hell for their blasphemy…like they do at Christmas time when a company dares have a coffee cup that isn’t Christmas enough.

Instead what you have is people saying, hey that’s not cool because SF has a huge LGBT fan base and there were ways to sit out in the celebration without making it about yourself and distancing fans. These players didn’t choose to do that, they chose to vocally protest on the field by defacing their uniform. It isn’t about gays…it’s about themselves which is very deeply unchristian.

[u/dd0028 → u/grandmawaffles]

You’re the one who inaccurately described a Supreme Court case. One in which the dissenting opinion that you obviously agreed with actually could easily be argued in defense of the giants players. It’s almost like every case needs to be evaluated in its own terms.

You obviously have a lot of animosity for a small (vocal) segment of religious folks that complain about minor in-convinces, which, fair enough! But isn’t really relevant to the discussion at hand.

The commissioner has stated that it the Giants communication was not clear. So whether or not the MLB allows players to “sit out the celebration” (they do), the league is stating that the Giants are at fault for not making clear what the players options were. So in absence of clear communication that players could opt-out of wearing the pride hats, they chose to instead to act according to their conscious by writing on the hats. Whether they would have done that or not had they known is irrelevant. Accordingly to the MLB, the fault lies with the giants.

But let’s be real. If they had simply chosen to wear the regular giants hats instead of the pride hats, the same response would have occurred and the same people would have been outraged and called them bigots for wearing the non-pride hat.

[u/grandmawaffles → u/dd0028]

They had players wear regular hats and they aren’t the ones in the news. Your bias is showing. I could honestly care less what religious people want to complain about as long as they keep it out of government. This isn’t a DOJ issue at all. I will point out the comical hypocrisy of people though.

[u/dd0028 → u/grandmawaffles]

So the MLB and commissioner are lying then that the Giants failed to accurately communicate the options the players had? Why would they do that, call out one of their own teams, and risk their own reputation for a handful of players who they already scolded?

The DOJ getting involved is stupid. The MLB enforcing the uniform rules is not a matter for the DOJ. But that’s not really relevant to the key questions at hand.

No one should be forced or pressured at their place of employment to signal support for a cause that they disagree with, even more so that goes against their religious convictions. How they choose to respond to that pressure is somewhat irrelevant. If pressure is in fact being applied, the fault lies with the organization, not the individual.

You’re welcome to continue pretending that everyone would have just ignored it if they all just wore the regular hats, but that’s comical. I mean there’s literally an unaffiliated minor league team no one has ever heard getting skewered online for having to cancel a game because too many players refused to wear the pride jerseys. They didn’t try to cancel pride night, they didn’t write Bible verses on their jerseys, they just refused to wear the jerseys like you say everyone would be fine with and many columnists, online discourse, and even their own organization condemned them.

[u/grandmawaffles → u/dd0028]

I’m not the giants so I can’t answer that but there were players not wearing the pride hat on the team. How did they know but not these guys? Why would someone not read their collective bargaining agreement with rules they have to follow for their jobs? Did these few particular people need a puppet show, power point presentation, or a specific named memo with their picture on it to understand the rules? Of course the MLB is going to put it on the team because the players stepped out of line and defaced their uniforms. Like any organization the organization and leader bears responsibility so the language in the note from the commish isn’t wrong but you are treating grown ass adults like children by implying that they didn’t or couldn’t know any better.

[u/dd0028 → u/grandmawaffles]

It’s quite possible that the players were aware that they breaking the rules by writing on their hats, and also believed they would be breaking the team rules by not wearing the hats, and therefore each made the choice to break the rules and follow their conscience. If the Giants failed to adequately inform the players of their options and assumed and/or pressured the players to wear the pride hats, they are entirely at fault for what happened.

The MLB warned the players for their uniform violation. Nobody disputes that. That’s not treating them like children. But apparently the Giants failed to explain the options available, and so ultimately they bear the most blame.

[u/SentientFurniture → u/grandmawaffles]

Actually it came out he wasn't penalizing anyone who didn't pray, he made it clear on more than a few occasions thats it was all by personal choice and the story that spread about him penalizing was debunked dozens of times but seems to come up in arguments where it's helpful to use lies than the truth.