Tonight, the 2025 Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be played at Truist Park in metro Atlanta. It’s a celebratory event—four years overdue—but few in the media or the commissioner’s office want to talk about what happened last time.

In 2021, Commissioner Rob Manfred yanked this very event out of Georgia over a so-called voting rights controversy fueled by Stacey Abrams and her political machine.

The justification? Georgia’s election law, Senate Bill 202, was labeled “Jim Crow 2.0.” The damage? Nearly $100 million in lost revenue for local businesses. Yet, this story started long before SB 202.

The punchline? SB 202 is still the law—intact, enforced, and functional.

Abrams’s group, Fair Fight Action, launched its high-profile legal crusade after her 2018 loss to Brian Kemp, claiming Georgia’s voting laws were racist and suppressive.

Fair Fight selected Abrams’s campaign chair and close friend, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, to serve as lead counsel—paying her firm over $20.2 million in legal fees over five years, according to a bombshell RealClearInvestigations exposé.

In the end, U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, an Obama appointee, ruled in 2022 that Fair Fight had failed to produce direct evidence of a single disenfranchised voter—no constitutional violation, no breach of the Voting Rights Act, and no proof to back its sweeping claims. To top it off, the group was ordered to pay more than $200,000 in court costs and legal fees.

Yet, for Abrams and Lawrence-Hardy, it was a bonanza. It served as the foundation of a sweeping narrative: that Georgia’s election laws were not merely flawed, but racist by design.

Lawrence-Hardy still touts the case as a landmark achievement—boasting about defeating a summary judgment motion.

Abrams, for her part, never disavowed the lawsuit or corrected the record. She keeps recycling the same discredited voter suppression narrative time and time again.

And while the case dragged on through the courts, Abrams’s rhetoric escalated. In early 2021, she denounced Georgia’s Senate Bill 202 as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Her narrative of systemic voter suppression targeting Georgia’s black voters was shamelessly echoed by the national media, magnified by Fair Fight’s megaphone, and turbocharged by the celebrity left—igniting a firestorm that swept the country.

Every successful pressure campaign needs a chokepoint—an institution that can be isolated, vilified, and forced to capitulate. In 2021, that chokepoint was Major League Baseball.

President Biden fanned the flames, branding Georgia’s law “sick” and “un-American.” Manfred got the message. Civic courage was cut from the roster and designated for assignment.

Under pressure from activists and media allies echoing Abrams’s talking points, Commissioner Rob Manfred took his bat and went home. “I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game,” he announced.

Let’s be clear: MLB’s decision was driven by a narrative Abrams helped construct—anchored in a lawsuit that collapsed in court and a law that remains firmly on the books, still guiding Georgia elections.

And yet the cost to Atlanta was steep.

Estimates pegged the loss at upwards of $100 million in local economic impact—hitting hardest the Black-owned businesses and hospitality workers Abrams claims to represent.

The game was moved to Denver, Colorado—a state with fewer early voting days than Georgia—but it checked the right political boxes: a solidly progressive city in a deep-blue state.

In the days following MLB’s decision, Governor Brian Kemp and then-House Speaker David Ralston issued statements condemning the move and squarely blaming Abrams’s rhetoric for fueling the national backlash.

A political advocacy group even launched a campaign demanding Abrams repay Georgians for the economic damage she helped unleash.

In her public response, Abrams played both arsonist and arson investigator. While claiming to be “disappointed” about the relocation, she praised the league’s leadership, urged others to follow suit, and explicitly stated she “respected boycotts”—all while blaming Republican lawmakers for the economic fallout.

She even directed followers to her Fair Fight “StopJimCrow2” site, encouraging them to exert further political pressure.

Understanding cause and effect—and accepting responsibility—are not part of the playbook. Abrams isn’t Sgt. Schultz—she can’t claim to know nothing after the house burned down, especially when she was the one handing out the matches.

The Associated Press and other fact-checkers rushed to shield her, noting she never explicitly called for a boycott.

But why would she? A direct call would have been political cyanide for a gubernatorial hopeful. So yes, that may be technically true. But the reality is quite different from the sanitized version peddled by media allies.

Many are now pretending 2021 never happened. There’s been no apology, no acknowledgment, no instant replay—just the hope that the media, and the public, have memory holes deep enough to forget.

Only a few diehards on the left are grappling with the uncomfortable truth: nothing has changed since the boycott. And predictably, they’re not taking that reality well.

Nonetheless, in a recent op-ed published by The Center Square, Georgia State Rep. Todd Jones noted that voter turnout increased after SB 202—not decreased. In 2024, nearly 68% of eligible Georgians cast their votes, exceeding the national average.

Participation and registration rose, and election security improved—all while the false premise behind MLB’s boycott quietly collapsed.

As Jones aptly put it, Georgia got elections right. It was Major League Baseball that dropped the ball.

But the long-deserved reckoning for Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight shouldn’t end at first pitch of this year’s Midsummer Classic.

The RealClearInvestigations exposé uncovered deep ethical rot beneath the surface of Fair Fight’s operations—rot that squarely implicates Stacey Abrams and her political machine:

The Fair Fight case wasn’t merely a legal assault on Georgia’s election reforms and safeguards—it was a narrative campaign designed to cast Stacey Abrams as a resistance demigod, vilify Republican lawmakers, and mobilize a national donor class eager to bankroll any tale of voter suppression, no matter how unfounded.

Abrams says she’s aiming higher still. She reportedly harbors presidential ambitions—hoping to become the first black female president by 2040.

That’s a tall order for someone whose résumé includes two failed gubernatorial bids, a discredited lawsuit aimed at Georgia’s old election laws, and a federal judge who rejected her claims—even as she pivoted to vilify SB 202 with the same playbook.

But in today’s political landscape—especially on the left—failure isn’t always a flaw. It’s rebranded as moral courage, packaged for donors, and sold as proof of devotion to the cause. In this ecosystem, defeat doesn’t disqualify. It just makes the next crusade more urgent.

Abrams is neither a public servant nor a hero. She’s a grievance entrepreneur—someone who turned political strikeouts into media grand slams, a darling of the donor class with a flair for theatrics and a knack for dodging accountability.

If there were any justice in baseball or politics, she’d be remembered as Atlanta’s biggest baseball villain since Jim Leyritz.

But for now, Abrams Inc. is laughing all the way to the bank—batting .000, but still swinging like she’s headed to Cooperstown.

Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. A long-time Atlanta Braves fan, he still holds a grudge over the 1996 World Series. X: @CharltonAllenNC