Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred all but admitted this week that his decision to yank the All-Star Game from Georgia earlier this year was nothing more than a virtue-signal to keep the leftist activists at bay.
The MLB moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver after leftists claimed Georgia’s Legislature was suppressing voting rights by implementing election security measures. Even President Joe Biden joined the frenzy, calling on the MLB to “respond” to Georgia’s election integrity bill by leaving the state.
Everyone, even Manfred, knew the outrage against Georgia’s bill was dishonest and misplaced, especially since the state to which the MLB moved the All-Star Game, Colorado, had stricter voting regulations than the ones proposed by Georgia. But Manfred gave in to the mob.
He probably wouldn’t have had to think twice about it if Georgia’s MLB team, the Atlanta Braves, hadn’t made it to the World Series. But they did, which means Atlanta gets to host several of the World Series games. So now, Manfred is facing an appropriate question: Why is the MLB suddenly OK with Atlanta hosting the World Series if it was not OK with the city hosting the All-Star Game? The voting bill the MLB supposedly opposed is still in place — what has changed?
There’s only one thing that has changed, according to Manfred: political pressure.
“We always have tried to be apolitical,” he said on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Obviously there was a notable exception this year. I think our desire is to try to avoid another exception to that general rule.”
In other words, if the mob hadn’t demanded that the MLB act, it would not have done a damn thing. Its decision to relocate the All-Star Game was not based on any conviction or principle: This was a decision driven by self-interest, pure and simple. If Manfred had any principles, he wouldn’t have pulled the game from Atlanta in the first place.
Manfred knows his standards are hypocritical, but he doesn’t care. This was never about Georgia’s voting bill. In fact, it was never even about politics. This was about publicity. And as soon as the public moved on from the Georgia fiasco, Manfred did too, but not before sacrificing the apolitical nature of his league that he claims to value so much.
