The Giants hosted their latest Pride Night at Oracle Park, and four of their five pitchers who appeared Friday’s game chose to add biblical verses to their rainbow Pride caps or not wear one at all.
Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker were seen with passages on their Pride caps, and Sam Hentges ditched the cap altogether and wore his usual Giants cap. Erik Miller was the lone Giants pitcher to wear a Pride cap with no inscriptions. Ditto for every other Giant on the field.
Of course, the reaction was extreme, including on social media. Many people criticized the pitchers and accused them of being divisive and disrespecting the team, city, and LGBTQ+ community. Others applauded them for supporting their faith.
Others called it a breakdown in team leadership while some couldn’t give a hoot about any of it and simply were ticked off the Giants collected just four hits and lost once again.
Amid complaints by fans, including those at Friday’s game who didn’t appreciate the pitchers’ statements on a night the Giants were celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, the team issued a statement Saturday:
“The San Francisco Giants are proud to support Pride Night and the LGBTQ+ community. Baseball should be a place where everyone feels welcome, respected, and valued.
“We also respect that individuals may make personal choices about participating in team activations. We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that. Those choices do not change our organization’s commitment to inclusion, belonging, and creating a welcoming environment for all.
“We remain grateful to our fans, partners, employees, players, and coaches who help make Pride Night a meaningful celebration.”
Logan Webb, the longest-tenured Giant and one of the team’s most respected team leaders, grew up in the Sacramento area and has friends from different backgrounds throughout the clubhouse. He said, “You can’t force anybody. They’re grown-ups, they can make their own decisions.”
Asked if the acts of the pitchers could divide the clubhouse, Webb said, “No, no, no, There’s a lot of guys in here that have their personal values and beliefs. It’s a big-league clubhouse. You’ve got guys from different countries, different areas. I grew up in a different place than, say, Landen, than a lot of guys. It’s different. It will not divide the clubhouse at all.
“At the end of the day, I just want to win baseball games. Sometimes those sort of things take away from that. That’s important to me. Hopefully today we can get back to winning baseball games.”
The Giants played another sloppy game and lost to the Cubs for the second straight night 6-1, falling to 28-43. Starter Trevor McDonald yielded a homer to Pete Crow-Armstrong on the game’s first pitch and coughed up four runs in 3 ⅔ innings. McDonald retweeted a video from the night before of Roupp explaining the Bible verse on his Pride cap, Genesis 9:12-16.
Hentges said Saturday there had been discussions among several players in the days leading up to the Pride event on how to proceed. The reliever referenced “other Christians on the team that have the same beliefs” and said the group went to team leaders and then made a “collective decision.”
“It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support when I don’t morally support it,” Hentges said. “There wasn’t hatred behind it. I think that’s kind of something that’s misinterpreted. I don’t hate the LGBTQ community. It’s just something I believed and talked with teammates and family, and they supported it.”
The Giants have been Pride pioneers as the first MLB team to include Pride colors on their uniforms in 2021. They also staged Until There’s A Cure Day beginning in the 1990s when then-owner Peter Magowan dedicated a game to AIDS awareness, care, and research.
Over the years, the support for Giants Pride events has been overwhelmingly positive, but there have been dissenters beginning with pitcher Mark Dewey, who in 1996 refused to demonstrate in solidarity with teammates to fight against AIDS and wore his red AIDS ribbon sideways, resembling the Christian fish symbol.
For every Dewey, there were far more Rod Becks; the popular reliever helped organize Until There’s A Cure Day.
Reliever Jeremy Affeldt, from the Giants’ championship era, admitted in his 2013 book “To stir a movement: Life, justice, and Major League Baseball,” that he had been homophobic in his pre-Giants days and that when previously visiting the Bay Area for games against the Giants and A’s, he stayed in his hotel room except when going to the ballpark.
“There’s a chapter in there of me coming to San Francisco and being hesitant because I had homophobia, and now I don’t,” he told the Associated Press at the time. “I see more San Francisco as a city of love and a city of passion and compassion. It’s unbelievable this city. To see that and to have my heart change as a city I didn’t ever want to come to, to a city that I’m so thankful I’m going to be part of for a long time, it talks about that. For me, it was an awesome deal.”
In 2021, Giants pitcher Kevin Gausman started the first MLB game in which players wore Pride colors and embraced the opportunity.
“Obviously, it was really exciting,” Gausman said after his start. “The anthem before the game. The palm trees out front. Really, everything. It was pretty cool. Obviously, this is a city that’s very inclusive, so it was fun to be a part of. I’ve never worn a hat like that before, so that was cool.”
Friday’s game had a different tone, thanks to actions of the four Giants pitchers. Longtime Giants fan Kate Freudenberger was among those writing letters of protest to the team. She has been a Giants fan for 36 years, and her family has owned season-tickets for 30 years.
Freudenberger explained in the letter that when driving over the Bay Bridge for the game, she noticed the Willie Mays Highway sign for the first time and the massive Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks that signifies the start of Pride Month and thought “how amazing it was to live in a city that celebrates all people. I thought I rooted for a team that reflected those same values.”
She added, “Now my team is tarnished by a decision of some selfish players who thought it was more important for them to express displeasure at another human being’s existence rather than welcome them to the ballpark. … I am tired of watching the Giants lose ballgames, but tonight we deserved it.”
Matt Sieger, who published the book “The God Squad” in 2023 that analyzed the 1978 Giants featuring many born-again Christians including Gary Lavelle and Bob Knepper, said Saturday the “God Squadders” he wrote about likely would have done the same thing Roupp and the others did Friday.
“The clubhouse is still a microcosm of society today, just as it was in 1978,” Sieger said.
Perhaps the question now is how much of a distraction the pitchers caused to the team and its momentum. After all, the lethargic Giants lost consecutive games in the wake of Wednesday’s dramatic walk-off grand slam by Bryce Eldridge that capped a historic comeback.
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