Over the course of four days in April, Major League Baseball found itself at a political crossroads. In defiance of its 150-year history, the conservative league that governs a conservative sport chose the more progressive path. And, most surprising to scholars and students of the game, the famously traditionalist and nostalgic game acted swiftly in doing so.
The league – three months older than Colorado – has canceled its All-Star Game just twice, in 1945 and 2020, and moved it just once, from the Atlanta suburbs to Denver this year.
“This was a jarring move,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat and lifelong baseball fan. “It got attention and I think it was an important move.”
It was also a political move that brought on political actions. Politicians in Georgia denounced it and politicians in Colorado worked to gain from it. A politically motivated lawsuit cropped up and political attacks were born. A sport once downstream from politics is standing in its depths.
John Spink, Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Workers load an all-star sign onto a trailer after it was removed from Truist Park in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Major League Baseball relocated the All-Star Game to Coors Field in Denver over objections to sweeping changes to Georgia’s voting laws.
“Not the lone wolf”
In late March, Georgia’s legislature passed an election law that will give people less time to request ballots, eliminate most drop boxes and limit the use of mobile voting centers, among other changes. Republicans said the law will make elections more secure; Democrats said it will disenfranchise voters, especially those of color.
President Joe Biden compared it to Jim Crow laws and the Justice Department is suing to stop it. Protesters urged Georgia flagship corporations Coca-Cola and Delta to speak out (after some hesitation, they stated their opposition). And MLB started to field questions about its All-Star Game, which was slated to be played in Atlanta’s suburbs about 100 days later.
There was reason to believe MLB would do nothing. In 2010, a small group of liberals urged MLB to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona in response to a new immigration law they viewed as xenophobic and racist. But MLB refused.
This year was different.
Facing pressure from players and fans, MLB announced April 2 that the game would not be played in Georgia. It was met immediately by conservative outrage. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said the league “caved to fear, political opportunism and liberal lies.”
“When MLB saw that other corporations, like Coca-Cola, were also protesting, it created safer ground for a corporation to do this kind of thing,” said Robert Elias, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco who studies politics in baseball. “Corporations want to have a positive reputation in the community and if you’re not the lone wolf, that makes it easier.”
Denver’s city government had spent five years polishing and presenting a plan for an All-Star Game at Coors Field. It first tried for 2022, then 2024. But here was a more immediate option. State and city officials went to work.
Gov. Jared Polis, a baseball fan, called MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Rockies owner Dick Monfort and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. The opportunity was so unexpected that the city’s marketing arm, Visit Denver, didn’t have time to update its proposal. Instead, it began sending messages to MLB that Denver’s hotels and convention center were available in July.
“It was really about letting them know we had availability, that was the biggest criteria,” recalled Richard Scharf, president of Visit Denver.
Hancock’s first call was a courtesy to his friend Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, to let her know that Denver would try to lure the game here. Bottoms was understanding, according to Hancock.
“I think they (MLB) were looking for, in my mind’s eye, a city and state that had normalized a successful election process, so it would not be controversial when it was announced who they were choosing,” Hancock said.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock attends a news conference at Coors Field Rooftop in Denver for the upcoming MLB All-Star Game on July 7, 2021.
“The governor and I were asked to get on a conference call with the commissioner,” he recalled. “He said, ‘We’re going to come to Denver.’ The governor and I thanked him, said we’re excited and that we’re looking forward to it. I believe Dick Monfort may have already been tipped off.”
Three days after MLB’s first announcement came the second: The game would be played in Denver “because they were already in the bidding process to host a future All-Star Game” and “had supplied a detailed plan for hotel, event space and security.”
“This event usually takes two years — they let the host city know two years in advance,” Denver Director of Special Events Katy Strascina said. “Once we got the call, we had 13 weeks to put together an event that takes two years. So, that’s when the magic happened.”
City agencies held a flurry of masked and socially distanced meetings to tackle logistical concerns. In its earlier proposal, Denver hadn’t planned to host an MLB Draft, so it worked quickly to find a venue (this is the first year that the draft coincides with the All-Star Game). MLB’s advance teams arrived in town soon after the announcement and went to work.
“It was very important to MLB that this event didn’t look less (impressive) because it had been moved so quickly, or because we’re on the other side of COVID, or because it had a political cloud hanging over it,” Strascina said of her talks with the league.
That political cloud did not dissipate quickly. On April 14, 30 Republicans in the U.S. House introduced a bill to end MLB’s exemption to antitrust laws, as a penalty for moving the game. (The bill has not been considered in the Democratic-controlled Congress.)
“People watch sports to be entertained, not to be lectured about politics,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Silt Republican, said in a news release. “… I’ve lost trust in the MLB, the American people have lost trust in the MLB and now this organization must be subject to the same antitrust laws as everyone else. Let me be clear, if you go woke, you go broke.”
Next came a lawsuit by a conservative group, the Job Creators Network, that would have forced MLB to play the game in Georgia. Its lawyer was Howard Kleinhendler, who had tried and failed to overturn the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump. The lawsuit was criticized almost immediately by a judge who called it “weak and muddled.” It was later dropped entirely.
Hulton Archive, Getty Images
Jackie Robinson, pictured during his time playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, on Aug. 28, 1949.
Aaron and America
Baseball fans are disproportionately white, male and old, according to Nielsen television ratings, and the game’s history lacks many moments of political progressivism. The most famous exception was an act of defiance by one owner, rather than the league: Jackie Robinson, a Black man, breaking the league’s color barrier.
“The integration of Major League Baseball was obviously political,” Weiser said. “It happened at a time when integration was extremely controversial. (President Harry) Truman integrated the Army in 1948. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947. Those are not accidental dates.”
Thomas Bunting, a professor of political science at Shawnee State University in Michigan and author of the upcoming book “Democracy at the Ballpark,” says Robinson’s debut was political “but the day before that, when you had 18 white men playing baseball, that was political as well. It just wasn’t as obviously political to some spectators as it would be to others.”
Robinson’s first All-Star Game was in 1949 but there’s reason to believe it would have been sooner if not for the color of his skin. The Dodgers great was Rookie of the Year in 1947 and had an equally strong 1948. Don Newcombe, a Black teammate of Robinson and fellow All-Star in 1949, was asked in 2010 why Robinson was not chosen for the previous year’s game.
“You tell me, where was the game in 1948?” Newcombe asked a Los Angeles Times sportswriter, who supplied the answer. Newcombe replied, “Well, that could be your answer.”
The 1948 All-Star Game was played in St. Louis’ Sportsman’s Park, a notoriously racist ballpark. It was the last stadium in the majors to end its segregated seating (in 1941, after Negro Leagues legend Satchel Paige threatened to not play) and the stadium where Robinson said he faced the ugliest jeers.
Megan Varner, Getty Images
Tony Cocchi, wearing a Hank Aaron jersey, and Cason Zanardo stand at a memorial for Aaron outside of Turner Field on Jan. 23, 2021, in Atlanta. Aaron, who held the career home run record for several years, died in January and will be honored at the All-Star Game in Denver.
Several decades later, MLB will honor Hank Aaron, another Black pioneer who faced death threats as a player, at this week’s midsummer classic. It will not play that game in Georgia, the state where Aaron set MLB’s career home run record and where he died in January.
That is because this most American of games – this microcosm of a nation with high ideals and low attainment of them – discovered it could no longer sit in the dugouts of politics and society. It defied its past by choosing a progressive stance over a conservative status quo. It survived a lawsuit and legislation aiming to bankrupt it. It walked into politics rather than be dragged into it.
For better or worse, it didn’t stick to sports.
