The Texas Rangers is the only Major League ball team that has refused to hold a “Pride Night” game, and some inside the organization are attacking their employer for that.
As Breitbart Sports reported at the onset of “Pride Month,” despite the league’s 100 percent support for displays and pandering to the radical gay and transgender movement, the Texas Rangers remain the lone holdout for scheduling any demonstrations for gay pride. And this is nothing new for the Arlington, Texas, team.
But since Breitbart’s report, nearly every conservative website and news aggregator has also commented on the Rangers’ particular status as the only team to avoid outward expressions of gay pride. And with that widening focus, now team insiders are speaking up.
Sports website The Athletic recently gave space to some Rangers insiders so they could publicly complain that the team won’t hold a “Pride Night” like all the other teams.
A detailed view of a bat with the Texas Rangers logo on it during the game between the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins at Target Field on Friday, July 5, 2019, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Adam Glanzman/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
One complained that the Rangers played an away game at the Tampa Bay Rays during the Floridians’ “Pride Night” game. The unnamed insider carped, “the whole message was ‘Baseball is for Everyone.’ But not if you’re a Texas Rangers fan.”
The site added, without providing any evidence of employees fired over their sexual proclivities or support for the same, that gay team and office members “feared for their jobs and livelihoods in speaking out.”
“I grew up here, I’m a diehard Rangers fan,” another current employee reportedly told the site. “When I started working here, it was a dream job. But it’s pretty s—– that it’s an organization over the last few years that has done or said things, or not done or said things, that not only do I not agree with or not reflect who I want to be as a person, but it’s bordering on being disgusting.”
“(The silence) is deafening,” a former employee exclaimed. “The fact of the matter is it’s a free marketing opportunity, it doesn’t cost them anything personally and they can boost revenue by looking inclusive. The fact that there hasn’t been one (for Texas), is the biggest ‘actions speak louder than words’ I’ve ever seen.”
That same former employee claimed ignoring Pride events is a “huge point of contention for everyone.” Clearly not, though, since most fans aren’t complaining, and the team has not gotten enough pushback to make it reverse its stance.
“It’s the bare minimum thing,” the former employee said. “The fact that there’s so much resistance is a huge point of contention, not just for the gay folks, but for everyone. It was always something that bothered me greatly about the organization. They do a lot of things well, where they have all these other nights for different fans and cultures. The fact that they omit one group very clearly is just ridiculous.”
For its part, the team told The Athletic that it “welcomes everyone.”
A young Texas Rangers fan gets a baseball from a staff member at Globe Life Field on August 26, 2022, in Arlington, Texas. (Emil Lippe/Getty Images)
“Our commitment is to make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball. That means in our ballpark, at every game, and in all we do – for both our fans and our employees. We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community,” the team said in a statement.
In another example of tarring with a broad brush, The Athletic quotes sports writer Alex Plinck, who came out as gay three years ago. Plinck blasted the team for being homophobic because “There’s no other reason why you wouldn’t have a Pride Night,” and claims he was “worried” that Rangers press team members would mistreat him after he came out. But then he admits no one at the team has ever mistreated him, and the team has never made any sort of overtly homophobic statements.
Ultimately, that former employee quoted above seems more like the intolerant one.
“It’s the lowest freaking bar,” he said. “If someone has a problem with it, they have 80 other home games. Have a section and a special ticket. Just stop making people feel like they aren’t welcome.”
How is simply not having a “Pride Night” game “making people feel like they aren’t welcome”? There was never any such bowing and scraping to the gay lobby in the 90s, 80s, or any other year of baseball history until recently. Were gays never “welcome” simply because MLB never had some spectacle to specifically point to them, pat them on the back, and say, “Here’s yer night”? Indeed, having a pride game sure makes Christians “feel like they aren’t welcome.” We saw that with the mess the L.A. Dodgers got themselves into last week.
Regardless, despite this whisper campaign to shame them into changing, the team seems to be sticking to its guns thus far. But, likely, this is just the beginning of the left’s effort to force the Rangers to back down and schedule a “Pride Night” game.
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