Buster Posey would not say a word about the San Francisco Giants' Pride night fallout on Tuesday, shutting down questions in the dugout hours before first pitch against the Athletics. A Giants PR person then stepped in and warned that the availability would end if the questions did not stop.
The silence came after a June 12 Pride Night game in which players wore rainbow hats and four players wrote Bible verses on the front of their caps. MLB later reprimanded the players, and the dispute widened after Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley sent a letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred accusing the league of a pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith. Hawley also said the DOJ was opening an investigation.
Manfred responded to Hawley by calling the initial warning a routine oral warning caused by a communication lapse with the Giants organization, and he said the players faced no penalties. He also put blame on the Giants for failing to communicate clearly what was and was not acceptable on Pride night, which only sharpened the awkward gap between MLB's private handling of the matter and the public criticism that followed.
That gap is now the story. Posey, the team's top baseball executive, chose not to engage at all before a game that had already become a backdrop for the controversy, leaving the broader question centered on what the Giants told players before June 12 and why that guidance was not enough to prevent a dispute that spilled from the field into politics.
