Pride and shame

[cosmolinguist]

I just listened to the Effectively Wild (a baseball podcast) episode about a handful of Giants players who refused to wear the rainbow version of their uniform cap for Pride Night, some of whom scrawled a Bible verse on their cap or gave inane comments to the press about how "this isn't about hating anyone, I'm just a Christian" (it says something about how very many queer Christians are in my circle now that despite not being one I was at first slightly baffled and then absolutely livid on their behalf -- when asked what he'd say to queer people about his gesture, this guy said they should read the Bible which...what?)

It does me some good to hear the Editor-in-Chief of FanGraphs, one of the go-to baseball sites, take a stand on this, saying that if these guys really feel that strongly they should just put themselves on the restricted list and lose a game's play, rather than making Pride Night all about them. (And that the league should just require this, rather than go through this same fuckery every year now.)

But rather than give them any more space in my brain (except to say that this read-the-Bible guy also said God has blessed him with many gifts, but one of them wasn't a good performance that night, or a win for his team!). Instead I'll talk about Spencer Strider, another pitcher for a different team.

Standing in front of a big screen with “PRIDE NIGHT” graphics and a script Braves sculpture, Strider enthusiastically represented both himself as a major league player and his organization as he reached out to our community. “We want everybody to feel included and a part of the community here,” he announced to the crowd of LGBTQ fans, “Baseball can be a part of that. That’s exciting and [we] definitely want to take this opportunity. So we appreciate you being here and go Braves!”

The writer of this article went on to say

Those are words that we expect to hear on Pride Night from someone wearing a Braves polo shirt with a title like “Vice President of Community Outreach.” And they would be perfectly fine coming from a source like that, albeit a tad perfunctory. When they come from a player in uniform who these same LGBTQ fans will be cheering during the game, they carry an extra sense of gravitas. Suddenly, the welcoming message becomes a moment that everyone in the building will remember from Pride Night 2026.

I was feeling pretty bleak as I walked to the gym and back listening to the podcast, feeling the weight of injustice pretty heavily in the wake of news that the DoJ would arrest the whole state of Minnesota if they could. And when I arrived at the gym I was immediately greeted by my old name, by someone I hadn't seen since I was in the WI, which felt a little weird -- she was nice, as she'd always been, but made no mention of me looking or sounding different which left me briefly wondering if I will ever feel like I have transitioned.

So it was nice to come home and read about Spencer Strider and think about his thighs (that article also includes the sentence with thighs that belong on a Planet Fitness poster reminding members to “never skip leg decade” and a mustache that makes it look like he’s about to call timeout and ask his catcher “Can anybody find me somebody to love,” Strider already had a certain appeal for gay Braves fans).

Comments

[otter]

I'm glad you found some joy in hearing about Strider. I'm a thigh man, myself. :)

That would have been a great opportunity for that person to say "Remind me of your name again?" I do that fairly often for a variety of circumstances, because it really feels bad to me if I misremember or mispronounce or, just haven't kept up.

I watched the press conference about DAMN (the acronym for the supposed group) and agent Mccarthy (any relation to the old days of Mccarthyism?) kept pursing his lips and that part of his face looks just like my ex. Yuck.

[cosmolinguist]

lol, I'd seen that it was called "Direct Action Minnesota" but I hadn't thought about how that would make its initials "DAMN." :D

Like I was telling V this morning: I'm concerned for bad things that might happen to those 15 people (or anyone similarly caught up in this) but the rest of it is so ludicrous all my MSP friends are laughing at it as well.

[otter]

It's nuts. The feds accuse the folk of the same things they are doing themselves, which is the ENTIRE reason people are out there protesting to begin with.