I did not know that there was such a thing as The Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball PAC. It’s a horrible idea. Politicizing baseball is foolish, and it’s especially dumb to donate to individual candidates. It looks like some baseball lobbyists were asked/invited to attend an event for Cindy Hyde-Smith and got shaken down for the maximum allowable $5,000 contribution.
They’re returning the money because Hyde-Smith has been exposed as a neo-confederate proto-fascist and that’s a bad look for an organization that prides itself on integration and has retired Jackie Robinson’s number ’42’ league wide.
But, let’s be honest here. Hyde-Smith isn’t out of the mainstream for her party on racial issues. In fact, she’s a moderate compared the president. If baseball’s money can’t be associated with Hyde-Smith then it can’t be associated with most Republican office seekers.
Truthfully, though, the national pastime shouldn’t be alienating fans of any political stripe, and it should just refrain from giving out checks to politicians irrespective of what party they represent.
Individual owners are free to do what they want, but the Office of the Commissioner should show more common sense.
.
One of the owners of the SF Giants, plus his wife, recently gave the max to Hyde-Smith. Given you’re a sports fan I’m sure you know why they do this. Doesn’t baseball, like the NFL, have that sweet, sweet anti-trust exemption? That’s the most near and dear thing to the Commissioner, plus owners, of any pro sports league in this country.
Defending their anti-trust exemption might be a Federal issue MLB lobbyists are working on with Hyde-Smith. I don’t know that a repeal of the exemption is being discussed by Congress, however, so I suspect there’s something else going on.
There are a century-long list of Supreme Court decisions which defend, against all human logic, MLB’s anti-trust exemption. A legal challenge to the exemption was sent on appeal to the Court this year, in fact, and the Court declined to review the case. So maybe that’s it: Hyde-Smith will certainly vote for judicial nominees who would continue this exemption which damages the public in many ways.
One of the SCOTUS cases Big Baseball has won included a statement from the majority that MLB is not engaged in interstate commerce. That might be my “favorite” among the many asinine statements made by Supreme Court judges in these cases.
I believe that’s right. CA’s three teams only play against each other, IL’s two Chicago teams only play against each other and all the states with only 1 baseball team just don’t play ball at all.
Why must this country suffer from hundreds of deeply stupid and ignorant conservative judges?
Defending their anti-trust exemption might be a Federal issue MLB lobbyists are working on with Hyde-Smith.
I don’t know that they’re working with her on it as much as they certainly don’t want to alienate any Senators of Representatives. Better to grease their palms, or buy them off, so the issue never comes up.
The only morality that most big money exhibits is entirely situational. Expect no more. If something will earn big money even more money, then that’s what will happen. People on that level of greed are not usually very smart…just viciously acquisitive. They hire other people to advise them on “public relations.” (Read “Which public actions will earn them the most money.”)
You write:
Yup.
It would be “common sense” to hire…and listen to…better advisors.
That’s the best that we can expect from a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. today.
Sigh…
AG
P.S. More on a similar subject:
The NFL…another multi-billion dollar sports industry.
Has Colin Kaepernick got a job yet?
In football?
I mean…only a few years ago he was being touted as the newest, hottest, brightest thing ever quarterback, right?
Now?
A football untouchable.
But another…much brighter…big money corp has latched onto him as a frontman and they’re making money hand over foot with him.
The NFL is even dumber…as is its sport, really…than MLB.
Instead of supporting the publicly anti-racist movement among the players, it has instead souped up the game by basically telling defenders that they can no longer play effective defense. This results in fiascos like that recent KC/LA 54-51 “record setting” game. I don’t watch much football, but I was curious to see what the anti-defense hoopla is all about.
I found out. It’s MLB’s juiced-up baseballs/OK with the steroids (wink wink, nudge nudge), v.2. Two talented young quarterbacks…both kinda slim-looking, if y’know what I mean…and a few good receivers were basically undisturbed by the respective defenses. If Mahomes was playing when defensive football was strong, they would have needed to wrap him in medieval armor to get him through a game. Now? He’s home free.
Not arguing with that…I don’t want to see anyone injured. But the NFL was losing market share…for pretty much the first time in the last 50+ years…and a lot of that was due to the whole “take a knee” brouhaha that Kaepernick started. They could have defused it by simply agreeing that players…black players especially…have a right to protest the National Anthem during a time of almost epidemic police killings of black men. But they didn’t.
Why?
Because they were afraid that they might…would , actually…lose their cherished “deplorable” type fans, that’s why.
And they might have been right. I dunno.
But the NBA has gone exactly the opposite of that tack, and damned if it isn’t thriving!!!
HMMMmmmm…
What’s the official projected date of white people in the U.S. becoming a minority? 2044? I’d bet that’s about 10-15 years off. Maybe more. 2030-2035 or thereabouts unless Trump or others of his ilk succeed in deporting/killing/imprisoning/denying admission to the U.S./otherwise effectively neutering literally millions of people of color in this country.
The NFL had better wise up…and soon…if they don’t want to end up a white minority sport!!!
Could happen…
I can see it now:
Could happen…
I tried to tell ya…
No action until donation was reported. Wait until the day before the election to ask for the donation back.
Stinks to high heaven…
Not only do they have a government-mandated monopoly of their markets, but their billionaire owners frequently get taxpayer dollars for their fields and stadiums.