On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance chimed in on Major League Baseball’s frustration with three San Francisco Giants pitchers who wore Bible verses on their Pride Night caps during Friday’s game. In response to MLB’s warning that this behavior would not be tolerated in the future, Vance wrote on Tuesday afternoon, “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore.”
MLB clarified in a statement to The Athletic on Tuesday that “this routine verbal warning not to wear the hat in future games is not disciplinary and had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message. … We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad,’ ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
Vance’s post is not solely focused on the MLB’s uniform policy. The exchange over these baseball caps at Pride Night raises a question that large American institutions are now navigating: whether diversity and inclusion programs and initiatives are legitimate social policy or, as Vance and his allies argue, a political imposition now being reversed.
“When JD Vance says, ‘Trump won, we don’t have to do this anymore,’ he’s setting this up as a win-lose situation, and that’s the problem,” Suzanne Ford, the executive director of San Francisco Pride, told HuffPost. “There is no win or lose when it comes to celebrating human rights, and there is no in between. You’re either for human rights, or you’re not. Nobody wins when you shut down inclusion.”
