San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie calls out Giants players who defaced Pride Night caps
'Two weeks ago, Pride Night at the ballpark became something it never should have been,' San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said.
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The San Francisco Giants Pride cap fiasco finally seems to be dying down two weeks later, but leaders around the Bay Area are still sticking up for LGBTQ fans of the baseball team as Pride Month comes to an end this week.
Mayor Daniel Lurie is the latest person to give an opinion on the four players who protested Pride Night at Oracle Park earlier this month, and he was more than disappointed in how the pitchers tarnished the reputation of the city and the franchise.
“I know for this community, progress has never been a straight line,” the mayor said while speaking at a fundraiser for the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club. “Two weeks ago, Pride Night at the ballpark became something it never should have been.”
Related
Sister Roma helped build the Giants’ Pride legacy. Now she says they don’t deserve it.
Sister Roma, the legendary San Francisco drag queen and activist, says the Giants organization failed after three players defaced Pride Night caps. She has long been involved with the team to build its Pride Night tradition.
Lurie made sure to clarify that everyone has a right to practice whatever religion they choose, “but when you put the uniform on of one of our teams, you represent something bigger than yourself. You represent San Francisco. And there is no San Francisco without the LGBTQ+ community.”
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San Francisco has perhaps the richest LGBTQ history of any city in the country. The sports franchises in the city had a pretty strong track record of representing that history properly up until this infamous blunder.
The team has done a poor job of managing the PR battle since the protesting pitchers wrote Bible verses on their Pride hats earlier in June. Team President Buster Posey shunned questions about the controversy when asked about it last week, stating that he wanted to keep the conversation focused on baseball.
The team has no right to decide when people should stop talking about this. One of the pitchers who wrote on his hat, Landen Roupp, was booed by home fans this past weekend when he started on the mound for the first time in San Francisco since the incident.
Lurie participated in the San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday, saying, “We are showing the world how you do Pride. Our LGBTQ+ community is what makes San Francisco so special and so unique.”
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