Giants and Pride Night: it's just getting worse

San Jose Mercury News

So let’s check in with the this-will-all-blow-over-in-a-couple-of-days crowd.

How’s that working out folks?

When three Giants’ pitchers staged their Bible verse protest on Pride Night a little less than two weeks ago, it caught everyone flat-footed.

There was definitely surprise — it seemed like hardly anyone, including apparently clueless manager Tony Vitello, knew the pitchers were going to make a public statement.

Some people were — and still are — shocked and offended.

And some people said it was a blip on the season that would pass as soon as the next video of a leaping catch to swipe a home run is posted.

It appears those people included the Giants.

That was, and continues to be, a huge miscalculation.

The issue has been nationally debated on The View. Vice President J.D. Vance, always on the alert for a hot button to push, criticised the players, saying on X "Trump won we don't have to do this anymore."

The Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the Giants. Major League Commissioner Rob Manfred stepped up manfully to say (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Hey, don’t look at me. The Giants are the ones who screwed this up.”

And the Giants? With over a week to noodle on this, and their “we understand” statement not holding up against the onslaught of dissatisfaction, they had to come up with something.

And they settled on a strategy that has never worked in the history of institutional missteps.

We don’t want to talk about it.

Send Buster Posey out there and have him say we don’t want to talk about it.

It was awful. Far more insightful writers than me have described it in cringy detail.

Not helpful.

Let’s do this in two parts. First, what the Giants should have done. And can maybe still do. (Although the current track record isn’t great.)

And two, what this really is, and why it matters.

About the Pride controversy: First, let’s take a step back. Pride Night isn’t a weekly event. It’s once a year. The next one presumably will be June 2027.

Who knows if those sanctimonious jerks will be on the roster then? They certainly won’t be missed. (There’s actually four in the group. Reliever Sam Hentges refused to wear the Pride hat and also said he did not approve of “it” presumably meaning Pride Night.)

In response, Buster, and the Giants should come out and say:

“This organization is 100 percent committed to Pride Night and Pride in San Francisco. We started Pride Night in 2021 and we’ve publicly supported the LBGTQ community all the way back to 2015.

“This year’s Pride Night wasn’t handled very well and we apologize. Players come and go, but the Giants’ commitment will not change. I promise you Pride Night will be back next year, better than ever.”

And just keep saying variations of that. No changes. Just that. Move on.

But there’s something bigger here. The part that started all this in the first place.

As we said, the Bible verse caper came out of nowhere. And at this point it seems like everyone involved has had the same reaction . . . .

Whoa, this is a bigger deal than I thought.

Beginning with, I’m going to guess, the Pride ad-verse pitchers.

Asked about becoming national news, they seemed a shocked.

“We felt there wasn’t going to be as much kickback on it,” said JT Brubaker “. … Players have done it in the past and it didn’t seem like it was blown up that big.”

“I expected some of those [negative] comments,” Ryan Walker said. “but did I expect it to get this big? Not necessarily.”

Congratulations. You’re starting to get the point.

This is a big deal. To a lot of people. It means something to them.

And when you say, as Brubaker did, “We’ve seen other baseball players do it, so we went along with it,” it sounds flip, like you didn’t put much thought into it.

There are millions of LGBTQ people in this country. (A 2023 UCLA Williams Institute study calculated that 13.9 million Americans identify as LGBT.)

The last Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, is gay, and he’s married with two children. He’s probably going to run for president. There are several other openly gay politicians and media figures.

It is no longer unusual to have a gay co-worker, or neighbor. Gay characters are all over TV and film.

And yet, I can promise you that every one of those LGBTQ individuals faced some taunts, insults and likely some violence.

It wasn’t that long ago that people lived a secret life in the closet, afraid to let people know who they are.

Rick Welts, the former team president of the Warriors (now at Dallas) told me when his partner died of AIDS in 1977, he made himself come to work the next day so no one would suspect he had been in a relationship with a man.

Nineteen-seventy-seven was not that long ago. And you can bet it is very fresh in the memory of those who went through that and those who are still being bullied and intimidated right now.

So, a night — or a Pride Parade — is a big public statement. It says we recognize who you are and we’re fine with it.

That’s the real message for those Rainbow Warriors who wrote Bible verses on their caps and said they didn’t approve of “it” on Pride Night.

You don’t have to sign a pledge. You don’t have to attend a same sex wedding. You can hold your own (backward) opinions about gay people.

All you have to do is support the idea that people shouldn’t be insulted or attacked simply for who they are.

I’ve seen several comments by the Bible verse gang saying they were disappointed that people were calling them “bigots.”

Unfortunately, saying you “don’t approve” of someone simply because they belong to a group or race or nationality is the definition of a bigot. That IS what people think of you.

Writing on the cap may have seemed like a innocent gesture. But the consequences go far beyond the pitchers mound.

Now you’re in a national controversy. You may be booed in your home ballpark. You have lost untold numbers of Giants fans who were willing to cheer and support you because you were wearing the orange and black.

It is possible this could affect your career. It’s one thing to grandstand when you are an established star like Clayton Kershaw. Middle relievers and journeyman starters have a short shelf life in the Big Leagues.

And for the Giants, it’s another distraction in a season gone horribly wrong. The team is not only losing, they are hard to watch. They look unhappy, and worse inept.

Vitello isn’t inspiring confidence. I’ll say it again, this team is not that much different from last years, when Bob Melvin was the manager. It might even be a better roster with Luis Arraez a revelation at 2nd, Bryce Eldridge playing regularly and Casey Schmitt and Jung Hoo Lee having career years.

Last year’s team finished .500, but they were in the playoff hunt throughout the season. This year’s team couldn’t see the playoffs with a telescope.

There’s really only one major difference, Vitello for Melvin.

Managers make a difference and Vitello has used up his grace period. He rambles on in interviews, but says little. His substitutions are a mystery and after being called out by Shawn Estes for over-using Keaton Winn, Vitello had to explain why Winn had to go on the injured list with a sore arm.

The bizarre Rafael Devers incident over the weekend was another example of a team in disarray. Devers refused to come out the game for a pinch runner with the weird explanation that he thought Vitello was worried about his sore hamstring.

Whatever. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Devers, a talented but sensitive guy, is clearly not happy. And the fact that he’s not producing and getting the blame for not carrying the team only makes it more fraught.

Meanwhile, Vitello gives long, rambling answers in interviews, but his moves are often equally hard to follow.

After upsetting Dever by taking him out of the game so the speedy Jonah Cox could (presumably) steal second base. But Cox DIDN’T steal and was the first out in a game-ending double play. Explain that.

And now we get word that Saturday night is bobblehead night. And guess whose head is being bobbled?

Rafael Devers.

It’s that kind of year.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter and Threads: @cwnevius