Over the years, I've taught several college classes called variously "Sport and Culture," "Sport and Society," titles like that, and there was always a lot to talk about because issues that come up that splinter society so often play out in the sports arena. Such was the case recently with similar incidents in the vastly dissimilar locales of San Francisco, California, and York, Pennsylvania. It's impossible to categorize these incidents easily. Are they about free speech, the First Amendment, gay rights, separation of church and state, the right of the individual versus the mandates of an organization? I don't know.
You may have heard of the incident in San Francisco that involved the major league Giants. The team held a Pride Night—hardly a surprise for the Bay Area—and four players staged a protest against it. Three wrote Bible verses often cited by anti-gay Christians on the team's rainbow themed hat, and a fourth wore the Giants' standard cap.
Four nights later, in a town 3,000 miles east, the York Revolution elected to forfeit a baseball game because several players refused to wear a uniform that featured a rainbow design that was part of the team's eleventh annual Pride Night.
Fox News hasn't covered the lesser known York event but predictably, they've turned the four Giants players into freedom fighters, bravely raising swords against the powerful rainbow tide. One of their stories wondered why there had been no specific outreach to Christian fans. Well, I'm not sure why there would be. I assume Fox would not be okay with a specific outreach to Jewish fans, Muslim fans, Hindu fans. But somehow they arrived at the conclusion that Pride night and Christianity are diametric opposites. I don't think that's a universally-held opinion.
Just about every team in every league and every sport has some kind of promotion—some kind of "Night" in recognition of something. On the York Revolution site, they have an upcoming Bark at the Park Night. Should cat-owning or cat-loving players boycat that because there's no comparable feline fan fandango? There is First Federal Credit Union Appreciation Night. Should fans who bank with FCU competitors rise up against that?
The larger issue here is that we seem to be going backwards as a society; less tolerance, more hostility. Three decades ago in 1994, there was another controversial promotion involving the San Francisco Giants that has resonance to today. The Giants hosted a Until There's a Cure Day, an event founded by an organization promoting HIV and AIDS awareness. Again, it was an obvious promotion for a San Francisco based team because ground central in the then still ongoing fight against AIDS was the Bay Area. Still, it wasn't universally popular, and the team received dozens of negative calls. But the Giants manager at the time, a veteran named Dusty Baker, and several Giants players had advocated for AIDS research and approaching the problem as a medical crisis. So the game went on. The Giants players participated, as did the opposing Colorado Rockies. The world kept on spinning.
Is there any doubt that had that happened today, it would not be as accepted? And that just seems sad to me.
I forgot to mention that among the York Revolution promotions is Papa John's Customer Appreciation Night. Man, I could easily protest the taste of that pizza, but were I member of a team, I would suck it up and play the game, even if they added a Papa John's logo to the hat. It's just what you do when you're on a team, man.
