Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding answers from Major League Baseball after the league issued warnings to several San Francisco Giants pitchers who wrote Bible verse references on their caps during the team’s Pride Night celebration.
In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Hawley questioned what he described as an “apparent pattern of discriminating against Christians while promoting left-wing ideologies.”
The Missouri senator specifically cited warnings given to Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker after they wrote references to Genesis 9 on rainbow-themed Pride Night caps during last week’s game at Oracle Park.
“The league went beyond tolerating speech—it designed speech, promoted speech, and shoehorned social and political messages into the game,” Hawley wrote, referencing MLB’s support of social justice messaging during the 2020 season. “Yet when three players added a handful of characters citing the Book of Genesis to their caps, the league reached for its rulebook.”
MLB has maintained that the warnings were unrelated to the content of the players’ messages. In a statement, the league said the warning was a routine enforcement of its uniform policy, which prohibits players from adding any writing or messages to uniforms or equipment.
“To be clear, this routine verbal warning … had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message,” MLB said. The league added that players have received similar warnings in the past for messages such as “Dad,” “Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom,” and family names.
The controversy has drawn reactions from several prominent conservatives. Vice President JD Vance criticized the league on social media. “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore,” Vance posted on X.
While comedian Rob Schneider offered to pay any future fines for players who wear Bible verses on their uniforms, calling MLB “anti-Christian.”
Hawley has requested documents related to MLB’s uniform policies, disciplinary history and guidelines regarding religious expression, asking the league to respond by June 19.
The warnings stem from the Giants’ annual Pride Night, which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and has been a fixture of the franchise’s outreach efforts for years.
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