Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2494: Culture WAR

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the backlash to MLB’s initial statement about the Giants’ objectors to Pride Night, the league’s subsequent expanded statement, and the facts about the policies and punishments (or the lack thereof) pertaining to uniform alterations. Then (37:10) they banter about the Blue Jays’ ballot dominance in early All-Star voting, the history of teams being overrepresented on All-Star rosters, the Mariners’ piggyback pitching plan, and Curtis Washington Jr. as the ultimate phantom ballplayer, answer emails (1:19:28) about where the next two-way player might come from and whether Pete Crow-Armstrong’s defensive value is underrated, and Stat Blast (1:31:56) about where franchise scoring records tend to be set, the biggest run differentials in games with equivalent times on base, days when one team outscored many other teams combined, Boston’s lack of late comebacks, and teams whose win totals did or didn’t match their WAR totals. Audio intro: Austin Klewan, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to wisdom teeth etymology Link to Domínguez tooth news Link to Ohtani gamer Link to MLB’s initial statement Link to assorted bad tweets Link to MLB’s second statement Link to story about statements Link to Hawley letter story Link to story about backlash Link to CBA Link to Josh Hawley fleeing footage Link to Noah Hawley wiki Link to Vesia tribute story Link to California Post story Link to All-Star vote totals Link to AL 2B WAR leaders Link to Blue Jays voting story 1 Link to Blue Jays voting story 2 Link to Blue Jays WAR leaders Link to team All-Star records Link to 2015 Royals voting story Link to 2015 Royals All-Stars Link to 2026 YoY attendance Link to 2015 YoY attendance Link to 2023 Braves All-Stars story Link to Mariners piggyback plan Link to Ben on the ’93 A’s Link to Washington call-up story 1 Link to Washington call-up story 2 Link to Washington call-up story 3 Link to Washington scouting report Link to Washington demotion story Link to Rob Mains on roster limits Link to Ben on Padres Rule 5 guys Link to phantom ballplayers wiki Link to Ben on Ohtani’s origin story Link to Las Vegas stats Link to Rockies record score Link to scoring differentials data Link to 9/2/01 scoreboard Link to ninth-inning scoring splits Link to FG mailbag answer Link to team WAR/wins data Link to listener emails database Link to HRD format report Link to HRD format history  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Effectively Wild, where we can talk about a time. Oh, and welcome to episode 2494 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Megrelly FanGraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well, but how are you, more importantly, because much like Jason Dominguez of the Yankees,

you had a tooth pulled, and thus were not in the lineup on Tuesday, not in the Effectively Wild lineup, at least. And he, I think, had an infected tooth. Whereas you were hoping to avoid one, as I understand it. It was a preemptive move. Yes, that's correct. My last wisdom tooth was pulled. It was not impacted.

Thank goodness. But it was grown at a real weird angle. And it was all bunched up against a molar. And my dentist was like, hey, that's going to be bad at some point. Let's take care of it now. Because it was irritating my gums. It was introducing the possibility of cavity. It was, well, it just, it hurt, Ben, you know, at times was uncomfy.

And so got yanked out, clean pull, as it were. How nice. And yesterday I sounded very swollen and I was in pain. And today I'm already much better. So isn't that, yeah, only, I only had to take one of the. Tylenol with codeins. They didn't have to put me all the way under, so I didn't have like

anesthesia fog, but I sure sounded ridiculous. And yesterday I was in a good bit of discomfort. And I have like a, I have like a bruise on my cheek from from where he had to like

kind of brace against my face to like pull that sucker out of there. So I look like I got in a very tiny fight. a little bit and in an odd spot but we're on the mend thank goodness well you missed you i'm sorry our listeners missed out on hearing you with the Tylenol plus codeine but it's probably for the best and i wasn't that loopy you know i really i wasn't that loopy it doesn't make you yeah you can get harder drugs with dental procedures sometimes so you can get the good stuff i guess and i wasn't in need of it thankfully so isn't that nice yeah well i have yet to have a wisdom tooth removed

which you might think would make me more wise, but no, I think the idea is that you have gained your full maturity. You have come into your full wisdom now that you have had those removed because they emerge later. That's the idea. That's why they're called wisdom teeth. It's a signifier of, you know, you've got your mature prefrontal cortex now

because you have all your wisdom teeth. And you had the wisdom to have it removed before it caused a problem. Yeah. And now you are back in the lineup. Hopefully Jason Dominguez will be as well. And we are front-loading our recording this week, as people have noticed, due to reasons of unavailability later in the week. And so the baseball scheduling gods and the podcast scheduling gods,

who in this case are us, have conspired to make it so that we are recording on Wednesday afternoon during a Dodgers-Rays day game. And so I'm second-screening a Shoh-Hoh-Tani start as we record, which doesn't happen so much anymore because he's... He's been on this midweek rotation and usually you're not getting day games. And so I will do my best to pay close attention to this podcast and just give some side eye to the Dodgers game here. Shout out to Adrian Childs because you know he's watching a raised day game. I mean, midweek, that's a treat.

It's still evening in England. Yeah. How leisurely he must feel, you know. Can have a little like evening time tipple and enjoy his race. That sounds lovely. Yes, I would think so. All right. Well, we have some emails.

We have some stat blasts. We have some baseball banter. I do have a follow-up. And I'm loath to devote even more mental energy to the Pride Night objectors because we've all talked too much about them probably. But, and perhaps you napped through part of this, but the situation metastasized since we discussed it. So we talked about this on Monday. And then after we recorded, as I noted on the outro before the podcast was posted, MLB put out a brief statement about this, gave a statement to Outsports and it circulated elsewhere. And it was about as milk toast a statement as one could come up with, but not the most milk toast statement because that would come the next day.

And MLB probably wishes it had been even more milk toast to begin with. So the initial statement, which came from Pat Courtney, MLB's chief communications officer, was, the writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations. So pretty innocuous, you know, and trying to make it clear that it's just against the rules. It's not MLB coming down on the stance here. It's just, hey, you can't deface, you can't alter the cap, the uniform. And it was not received that way. So there was a Republican chorus summoned by this statement in the day after that.

And it was blood in the water. It was the usual suspects. It was people just getting one whiff of this. People who normally pay no attention to baseball. Sure. Which I could tell based on the number of the MLBs I saw. It's such a reliable indicator, man. Horrifying, yes.

That was not the worst part of this, but it was up there. Sure. And so it was just, ooh, did someone declare a culture were? Here we are. And we will opportunistically use this statement to pile on and try to make some hay here. And it was, again, your usual suspects, your cultural commentators, your Clay Travis's, your Ann Coulters. Okay, the Babylon B, Tomi Laron, wife of J.P. Aaron, Sibia, you sort of expect that from them. It was also, though, a lot of people in important positions who really should have better things to do.

But unfortunately, exploiting this grievance stuff is often the number one thing they do. It's how they attain and retain said positions. And so we had statements, we had tweets. Jady Vance, Noah Holly, Greg Abbott, sitting state attorneys general. Do you mean Josh Hawley? Yes. Not Noah. Noah is innocent as far as I know.

Noah just makes good TV shows. Yeah, I was going to say. Josh Holly. Let us not besmirch. No, don't want to besmirch the maker of Fargo and Alien Earth and other excellent shows. But the other Holly, the worst holly, sent a letter to Rob Manfred at the about this, you know, your usual kind of congressional grandstanding. And just all of these statements were basically accusing MLB of religious discrimination, you know,

which is if you know anything about MLB and the player pool in Major League Baseball, the idea that Christians are being discriminated against in professional baseball, pretty far-fetched, right? Yeah. Just a lot of looking to fundraise or clout chase or stoke resentment. Right. And in the wake of this, MLB released an expanded statement to try to stanch the bleeding a little bit here. Just try to dial down the rhetoric.

So the follow-up statement from MLB was, to be clear, 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 respect players' right to free expression. However, writing of any kind with any message is prohibited per Major League Baseball's uniform regulations, which provides in part that a player may not write, attach a fix, embroider, or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment. 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.

So they're going way out of their way here to equate this with any other just completely benign message. And that was pretty predictable, I guess. Now, the initial statement on Monday, I was sort of pleasantly surprised. Right. Surprised if only because you knew that making any kind of comment would court this kind of controversy. Sure. You know, and suddenly you'd have, you know, the marquee names in entertainment, such as Rob Schneider and Kevin Sorbo offering to pay the fines of the players involved.

As if they... The non-existent fines of the players. Yeah, as if they need the assistance there. I don't know how Rob Schneider's net worth is doing these days. I was going to say, I think even Landon Rup is probably feeding him from an annual salary perspective. Yeah, but even if you're making Major League minimum, I think you can handle it. But really, that initial statement, now I don't know whether MLB issued that initial statement because there was such a backlash to those giant's objectors.

And so they were trying to throw a bone to the people who were offended by what they did. And then just even by saying it, though, and they made it clear that it wasn't about the content of the message and that this is just sort of standard practice. However, it's not really standard practice to say something about it. Correct. We don't hear about I love mom. No, we don't hear about I love mom. And I don't think we had even heard about the previous Pride Night messages. Correct.

I don't think there was an MLB statement saying that Clayton Kershaw was warned or any of the previous guys who had done that. And so you could interpret that as a special kind of case in that they actually. chose to comment on it. And so just by choosing to comment on it, it seemed like a bit of a rebuke. And I don't know whether they even intended it that way or they were just explaining to outsports. This is our policy. And that's all it is. And it was taken as more than that. Obviously, there was very rapid backpedaling after the backlash to do away with the interpretation that MLB was specifically targeting Christians or even this specific message. And so that was, again, not surprising.

But if you had interpreted the initial statement as, oh, they said something, and that's a little bit of a break with the past. And I guess that's why some of these people were piling on and saying, oh, MLB is specifically calling out these players because they did actually release a statement, whereas they hadn't in the past. Yeah. Anyway, if there was any intent to that statement, it was quickly wiped away, you know, in the face of this big capitalization on this situation.

And it's pretty ridiculous, not just because, obviously, Christians are kind of the dominant group in baseball, in Major League Baseball. It's hardly a, I think, a minority group, hardly of discriminated against. group. And also, this is a consistent policy, if not the policy of commenting on it, at least the policy itself. I don't know for sure whether the raise in the past or Kershaw got the same private warning. I would guess that they did. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but it just wasn't publicized. But also, this is a completely toothless policy. So if we're trying to turn these guys into religious martyrs or something. They're not paying any significant price here.

So I emailed MLB to ask whether there was or is any enforcement mechanism or any punishment or anything. And the league referred me to the CBA, which anyone can read. It's on page 234 is where the section starts about discipline pertaining to uniform. alterations. And technically there is some, but it is extremely lightweight. And for a first violation, so I'll just summarize here. The first violation, it says, the senior vice president on-field operations or comparable title slash position will issue a uniform regulations violation warning, setting forth the provision of the uniform regulations that the player has violated and specifying that the player will be subject to further discipline if he does not immediately least he's violating the regulations. So as you said, there's no penalty. There's nothing,

there's nothing for Rob Schneider to pony up here, which will probably be a relief to him and his accountant. Probably an exhale on that one for him. Yeah. So all you get is a warning on the first violation. If there is a second violation within the same section of the uniform regulations or regarding the same product on the uniform and equipment logo slash ID specification, so it has to be the same violation. I guess you could, if you wanted to be cute about it, just kind of get them playing whack-a-mole by doing different uniform violations

every time. You could claim that it was the first time a violation. But the second violation, after you've been warned, brace yourself, there's a $1,000 fine. Right. Yeah. So it's not going to bankrupt any big leaguers here. Right. No one's given up a game

check even. No. This is couch cushion coins for them, basically. Yes. Third violation, the penalty rises to a $5,000 fine. Oh, my God. Yep. And fourth violation, we're up to a $10,000 fine.

And beyond that fourth time, it says if the player violates for a fourth time, it directs that the player will not be permitted to play in championship season games, including spring training and postseason games, if applicable, until the player's uniform is in compliance with the regulations and official playing rules. So in theory, you get one warning, no cost, then escalating fines, and then after the fourth time you do this, then you are supposed to be prevented from playing until you conform. So I don't know whether this has always been handled consistently. And there's some guys, maybe they lose a loved one or something, and they have a message on the cap. And some of those guys, I think, have had that message on there for a while.

And so I don't know whether MLB has always held them to the letter of the law. I don't know if guys, if they're putting dad because their dad died or something. I don't know whether, you know, are they actually getting fined? Are they saying you're not going to be able to play? I don't know. Obviously, there's not nearly as much scrutiny of that publicly because no one particularly cares. it's not super controversial. So, you know, but if you wanted to be consistent about it, which you probably should,

because when these sort of politically inflected cases come up, then you want to be able to say, this is how we always handle it. Then I guess you probably should hold them to that in every case, no matter the lettering or the cause. And there are some provisions in here also that if there's a flagrant violation of this policy, So it says, notwithstanding the foregoing, just all the usually laid out schedule of fines and everything, it says that the following will apply to a violation after a warning and to repeated or a single, flagrant, or provocative breach of the uniform regulations involving an intentional impermissible alteration, writing, or illustration or other marking made by a player to any part of his uniform, blah, blah, blah. in that case, the senior vice president on field operations or comparable title position may impose fines at levels different from the levels reflected in paragraph one above. So in theory, if there's something especially provocative, which this was, but this is probably not exactly what they mean by provocative,

then the bigwigs can say, no, you get an even bigger fine because this was even worse. and then there is also a provision the senior vice president, blah, blah, may direct prior to the fourth such violation that the player will not be permitted. So you could imagine maybe there's something extremely unfamily friendly, maybe, you know, something super flagrant and explicit or whatever.

Can't draw a dick on your cap, you know? Yeah, you draw a dick on the cap. Or you can't have a slur on your cap, right? That too, yeah. They're probably not going to just give you the warning and then the few slaps on the wrist and then let you get away with that for four games. Probably they're going to take quicker action. So the point is this was a nothing burger, basically. There was no actual penalty because this is a one-time thing. There's one pride night for the team

and they did this on that pride night, not by coincidence. And then I'm sure they got their warning. And regardless, they wouldn't have done it again because there wasn't going to be another pride night. and they didn't pay a penny, and it's not as if MLB singled them out or triggered this. Ooh, this was especially provocative, so we're finding you ahead of schedule or we're going to prevent you from playing. None of that happened. So this is as lightweight a policy as possible. If MLB really wanted to take this seriously, they would have done something proactively because this has come up before, and they could have sent a memo around. could have said, hey, this is not going to fly anymore.

All the stuff we talked about last time where it could be a real ironclad policy that you could hold people to and anticipate you're going to have some players who do this and try to take swift action to head that off. They didn't do any of that. So this was as close to nothing as MLB could have done. And so this seizing on this opportunity to act as if MLB has something out for Christians or something is completely preposterous. So just want to establish that.

Not that any of the people who are making political hay over this are listening to effectively wild in all likelihood. But that's the actual policy. That's the punishment or lack thereof. And the only deviation from the norm here really is that MLB gave a single sentence statement about this, just reiterating its policy, which may or may not be meaningful, but probably MLP will not make that mistake again from their perspective of giving people any ammunition to try to twist this into something it wasn't.

There's a reason I'm not in charge of MLB's comms, because if it had been me, I would have just tweeted at Josh Hawley with the video of him running away on January 6 being like, this you? This you, King? Yeah. I'm sure that would have got over well. I mean, it would have gone over well with me. I would have enjoyed that, but I understand that I am not their target audience.

Yeah, you would have been a hero on blue sky, but perhaps not on Twitter. Yeah, there would have been a lot of glass kid. Yeah, I made the mistake of waiting into the 4U tab, which is, it was top to bottom, just nothing but these grievance, grifting kind of tweets. They were not for me, so the algorithm was off on that. but that's my fault, I guess, for thinking I was going to get something better. Okay. I'm going to say something that might be surprising to people, given the force of my

argumentation, our last episode. Don't worry, I'm going to come back around to it. But I am mindful of the reality that Major League Baseball as a business entity has a certain amount of bobbing and weaving that they probably think is necessary, given the always ever-present, quiet but looming threat that maybe exists to their antitrust exemption. And I'm also mindful of the fact that as a league, they employ a great many people, not just on the field, though certainly the players are the most high-profile examples of this, but across their entire operation who might say need to renew visas every year. Right. So I'm not

such a blue sky user, right, that I don't appreciate the corporate reality that they operate in. Having said that, I think that this is a good example of how you might as well just stand on your convictions a little bit, because even when you take what is viewed to be like the safest possible route, right? We have reminded these players of our existing uniform policy, which does not differentiate, right? It is a content neutral policy. Right. If you love your mom, you're not supposed to put that on your cap. Yeah. Right. And having simply acknowledged that they reminded these players of the policy and their violation of it and then handed to them no further disciplinary action, right? They weren't suspended. They didn't have to pay a fine, as we noted.

they were just being reminded of the policy and that in and of itself did not satisfy any of the Josh Hollies of the world. It did not satisfy any conservative commentators. They are going to make hay on this stuff regardless unless you say, well, we're very sorry and we have canceled all other Pride Nights, right?

And so if there isn't going to be satisfaction to be had here, you may as well stand on principle. Now, they have to decide what their principles are, right? And we have seen that this is a roller coaster of an exploration, right? And that it is one that is often dictated by kind of cynical factors, the appetite of advertisers to be a participant in your event if you hold it in a state that is rightly perceived. as trying to restrict the franchise, for example. But you may as well kind of stand on principle. Now, I am of the belief, and I am not a lawyer, okay, one of the many professions I'm not, although I got talked out of this one by my lawyer mom, unlike being a doctor where I was

like, that's not for me. People have heard me listen to you describe MRIs and are not surprised by that. But I think that, you know, if it were me, if I were. the god emperor of baseball and could determine these sorts of policies, I would try to craft something that actually wasn't content neutral. If you want to acknowledge the death of a loved one, if you want to show empathy and solidarity for your fellow player like the Blue Jays did when Alex Fescia and his wife lost their daughter, I don't have any issue with that. I understand why they write it as a content neutral policy because it's a lot easier to enforce, even if it puts

them in the rather ridiculous position of having to issue uniform warnings to their players who say that they love their moms, right? But I could imagine saying, we do not allow for the alteration of caps and uniforms, except in these very specific circumstances, and you lay those out. And again, I get why they don't do that. And I understand that even as a private business entity and not the U.S. government, right? Not curtailing speech. And as an aside, Josh, hey, Josh Hawley doesn't believe in worker protections. Get the hell out of here, man.

You don't, you're not working to bolster the working person and their ability to express themselves at work. You don't care about any of that. People being willfully obtuse to try to just drum up this sort of sentiment. You know, like trying to point out the hypocrisy of guys like Josh Holly is a direct pathway to madness because there are simply too many examples to keep track. So I understand why they make it a content neutral policy, but it's like, hey, guys, you're doing that. You're doing this thing where you're trying to signal to the parts of your fan base who are supportive

of the queer community that you don't approve of this behavior. You're still going to get whacked from the right. So just support them. Do it actually, right? And I want to also be clear, because I, you know, was very feisty in the direction of Major League Baseball. I think that there are great many people who work for the league or work for its affiliated clubs who work for the Giants who are supportive in an enthusiastic and unequivocal way of Pride Nights as a celebration of the gay community more broadly. But as an institution, the institution that is Major League Baseball, has some decisions to make.

And I am just genuinely curious, like, what will their takeaways from this interaction be? And what are the factors that they are thinking of when they're trying to formulate their communication strategy? If I saw the league, you know, doing what it needs to from an actual policy perspective and then trying to sort of have it both ways from a comms perspective, you know, I wouldn't love it, but I'd have sympathy for it, right?

It would be one thing if they were like, well, all 30 of our clubs have to do a Pride night, but we're going to be sort of mealy-mouthed when we talk about it to Republicans in Congress. They're not doing that, right? They're kind of letting things sit in an unsettled way. So I will just be curious what direction they go here. But I find it funny in an unfunny sort of way.

Like, I think it is instructive to look to how folks who are ideologically, aligned with the message behind, say, Landon Roop's Bible verse understood this moment, right? Because the players themselves, at least so far, are trying to have this, like, sort of have it both ways posture that we described last time where, like, they don't want to be seen as bigoted or hateful, but they also want to make sure that the people in the know know what they mean, and they do. We saw that.

That's why you get Josh Hawley running, as he so often does, to the defense. If I were that man, I would have retired from public life because I would have been so thoroughly humiliated by that. But sure, Josh, write your books about masculinity. And I would guess that if anything, M.LB, will crack down on these messages in all cases now, just in order to maintain. It's the most straightforward approach, right? To just say, like, look, guys, no more for everyone. And I don't love it as it pertains to, like, telling your mom you love her or showing compassion. toward the loss of a teammate or even an opponent.

But if the alternative is the Pride Night nonsense, I unfortunately do think that that is a sacrifice worth making because you have other modes of expressing. There are other ways that you can express that care and love for your family, for your fellow teammates. And so I don't think that it tamps down on it in a way that really causes you to lose something. I don't know.

Yeah. And the Dodgers and Blue Jays, Last year you mentioned Alex Vesia, they did kind of a group tribute where they all, at least all the relievers had 51 written on their caps. And that may have been something where they got approval to do it. Often, obviously, if like a team legend dies or something, you'll have an armband or you'll have a patch or something on the hat or something. And then it's part of the uniform. So it's a sanctioned alteration. So in those cases, when there is some real loss that everyone on the team is feeling,

then you can standardize it and then it's not an issue. So it's really just when one person is freelancing and probably no one's offended by that if someone does it as a tribute to a loved one for a day or something. But yes, it is probably for the best that they curtail that just in the interest of curtailing everything. I guess you could say it's it's sort of sad that just the wholesome tribute gets swept up in all of this. But if you have a policy. Yeah, then it's got to be consistent. And the other thing about this, the whole idea that these players were persecuted, they didn't have to write something on the pride caps.

They could have not worn the pride caps, as one of them did. Sam Henthes just didn't wear it, just wore the regular cap. And Blake Trinan and Alex Call wore the regular cap this year. I actually confirmed with the league that if they had done that, because there's no league-wide pride night, it was just a team initiative. they don't even get the toothless warning, unless the team chose to penalize them in some way, which certainly doesn't seem to have been the case.

There's no league-level consequence for that. They could just opt out and wear the regular cap with no message on it, and some of them did. So they weren't even nominally forced to do or promote anything. So it's the fact that they wore the pride cap, but then wrote on it. They could have easily taken the lower profile way out. I'm not saying that we all would have approved of them doing that either.

but I don't think it would have become such a firestorm. So they really went above and beyond to call attention to it and to try to court this warning, essentially. So there was a path available to them to just sort of opt out of this, you know, less attention getting way. But they didn't do that. And the way that, you know, we touched on this last time too, but in our Facebook group, we have moderators who've been working hard this week. and policing lots of comments. I'm still technically a moderator there. I don't do that much moderation anymore,

but I was dipping in this week to help out a little bit. And I just, you know, a lot of the comments and you see this all over the place. I was seeing this in some of the tweets and also in some of the comments that people were trying to leave in the Facebook group and everything and emails and whatever else. It's always, oh, it's not directed toward the queer people. It's not about hating them or not. liking them, it's about the lifestyle they've chosen. And I just cannot understand this perspective,

because as we said, we don't know what these guys are thinking and feeling, and it is entirely possible that they don't see themselves as hateful. But it doesn't matter, ultimately, because it's about your actions and how your beliefs impact others. And I just, just turn it around, just reverse it, just golden rule it. If someone was coming to you and telling you, a straight person in this case that they don't dislike you. They just think it's wrong and sinful for you to have sex with a member of the opposite sex. And I don't just say so, but also enact laws and regulations in many cases to that effect. So it's not just personal opinion, but it has the weights of law behind it or has historically.

To say nothing of you feel like you're this gender, well, too bad. We feel like you're that gender. And so it's not just perfectly civil and reasonable to just expect people to stay celibate for life, I guess. Like as long as they just did that, then you wouldn't have a problem with them. Would you like to be held to that standard? It's just, it seems so myopic to me not to understand that that is what you're doing there, even if you're not driven by some sort of hatred or don't see yourself as being driven by some sort of hatred. It's just inherently intolerant to hold that position, I think.

to your point, like, how would you feel if that were turned around on you? You know, the idea of, like, hate the sin, love the sinner, was a line of thought that kept a great many people in the closet for many, many years and has obvious, measurable deleterious effects on people's lives. It is tied heavily to increased rates of depression to suicidal ideation. Like, it is a devastating thing to ask of people. And it is just fundamentally, I think, inseparable from who you are as a person. Like, yeah, I don't hate you. I just think that your relationship with your wife is icky and that you're both going to help for it. So, you know, no, no hate, all love. It's like, and I understand that if you are a believer in that perspective, that perhaps you feel some sort of obligation or urgency

around the question because, hey, your immortal soul is at stake. But that just doesn't have to be my problem in a public space. You know, it just doesn't. So I hope everyone is having a good pride. That's what I hope. Let's end on that note. I hope everyone's having a good pride. And thank you to our moderators for making sure that our community looks and

feels the way that we hope it does for all of our members, because we want everyone to feel included. Yeah. It wouldn't hurt if some. Christian ballplayers would speak up and say, hey, this is not all Christians. This is not inherently a Christian position. This is a subset of Christians. This is a minority position. This is not a position you have to hold to be compatible with our other religious beliefs. And so I understand the awkwardness of a teammate rebuking a fellow teammate, but there are a lot of Christian ballplayers

out there who don't feel this way and were not moved to do this to their caps. And so, you know, we have seen the occasional statement of support, but it would be nice if more would speak up. That would help perhaps. I wonder whether Trinin opted not to write something on his cap because he was warned previously. And so he just decided to opt out and wear the regular cap because he didn't want to have to hit up Rob Schneider for that thousand bucks. I don't know. But anyway, even the players involved gave an interview to the California Post where they talked about basically how they got more blowback than they had bargained for. J.T. Brewbaker said, we felt there wasn't going to be as much kickback on it. Players have done it in the

past and it didn't seem like it was blown up that big. He confirmed, by the way, that they haven't even heard from the league, that this was just a verbal warning. They didn't even get a message in writing. That brief initial statement was the extent of it. Anyway, Brubaker said, at the end of the day, I just want this to be done and over with. We're here to play baseball. This is going on almost a week now. Just play ball. That's I want to do. We're all trying to find the guys who did this. So we can transition here to a lower stakes controversy and scandal, which is all-star voting. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you.

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