NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE P ride Month is off with a bang for the Toronto Blue Jays.
The team just cut one of its relief pitchers, Anthony Bass, for not being (to adopt the latest lingo from MLB.com) pro-LGBTQ2S+ enough.
Bass thus becomes the first player in major-league history to be DFA’ed for associating himself, vaguely and apologetically, with traditional biblical morality. His walking papers deserve to be sent to Cooperstown to mark the momentous occasion.
Granted, Bass wasn’t excelling this year. He’d pitched to an underwhelming 4.95 ERA so far. But he had a stellar 2022 when he appeared in 73 games with a 1.54 ERA, and last month, prior to the controversy that sank him, he gave up two runs and struck out twelve in ten innings of work.
Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said his performance was the major factor in his axing, but “the distraction” of his comments played a role. Translation: “Yeah, we cut the guy because he’s not with the LGBT program.”
On May 29, a day that will live in Blue Jays infamy, right up there with the collapse in the 1985 ALCS, Bass shared a video from a Bible-themed Instagram page supporting the boycotts of Bud Light and Target. In response to the resulting furor, he apologized and promised to do better, but that wasn’t close to being enough.
The last straw came when he tried to explain himself again late last week. Consider his latest bout of allegedly offensive remarks:
He denied that the video he shared was hateful, although he stipulated, “When I look back at it, I can see how people would view it that way, and that’s why I was apologetic.”
He added that he is “working hard” to educate himself.
He said, “I stand by my personal beliefs,” adding — very naïvely, as it turns out — that “everyone is entitled to their personal beliefs, right?”
“I view it as, like, love your neighbor, right?” Bass further explained. “You don’t necessarily have to agree with what everybody does, but you can still care and love people, and that hasn’t changed with me. So I don’t know how people view it, but, for me, I love and care about everybody.”
Egads! The man is a monster!
The demand on Bass wasn’t that he say bland and nice things, but that he repudiate part of his belief system as a Christian. And, remember, we aren’t talking about someone whose job was to be the assistant dean for equity at a liberal-arts college somewhere, where woke ideology is a professional requirement. Bass’s job was to trot out from the bullpen every other night or so and get three Major League batters out — velocity, accuracy, and movement are the necessities here, not diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Or, so one would have thought prior to last week. But things have changed, at least in Toronto, where the ethos of manufactured outrage and Maoist-era-style apologies, driven by the belief that unwelcome speech is threatening, has corrupted Major League Baseball.
Keegan Matheson, the Toronto Blue Jays beat reporter for MLB.com — with a specialty, apparently, in woke inquisitions — tweeted about Atkins getting asked if he thinks “Bass has changed his beliefs or only feels remorse for causing this situation.”
The latter was considered unacceptable.
According to Matheson, the controversy has been “wrongly referred to as ‘a distraction.’” Oh, no: “It’s something far more serious to the LGBTQ2S+ community, many of whom support this team or work for the organization.”
The Toronto Star talked to a bi/pansexual Blue Jays fan who also took exception to the notion of its being a mere distraction. “He took down the video because it was a distraction, not because it was a gateway to empowering homophobes to hate on queers?” she asked.
The Athletic huffed, “It was clear that Bass still did not grasp how harmful his actions and words were.”
According to the Athletic, the eleven days that Bass stayed on the roster after his Instagram post “disappointed and hurt the LGBTQ+ community.” The correct answer should have been to defenestrate him without delay.
Preposterously, as part of his forced rehabilitation, Bass was scheduled to catch the ceremonial first pitch to open up Pride Weekend on Friday, a decision made in a meeting Bass had — entirely voluntarily, of course — with Pride Toronto executive director Sherwin Modeste.
Next steps surely would have been to get Bass to request a personal meeting with Dylan Mulvaney, display his kids wearing LGBTQ+ apparel, or, as a last resort, join the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Bass was getting booed by the Toronto fans, who are apparently to players who transgress against woke orthodoxies what Philadelphia fans are to humanity in general.
Repeating ridiculous cant, picked up from academia and elsewhere, is now part of the job for the Blue Jays front office.
Atkins had said prior to Bass getting cut, “We feel like with his apology and being accountable and taking the steps to become more aware, that we’re one step closer to a more inclusive environment.”
Also: “I do get the sense that the awareness has increased, the enlightenment has occurred.”
At least Bass wasn’t around to mar the celebration of the High Holy Days of Pride Weekend at Rogers Centre.
The Blue Jays were pulling out all the stops with a rainbow-flag-jersey giveaway, a video feature on a bisexual college baseball player from Ontario, the presentation of an outsize Blue Jays Progress Pride flag on the field, and additional gender-neutral bathrooms.
Moreover, according to a press release on MLB.com, the Blue Jays planned “Pride-themed activities, photo opportunities, drag queen performances, and celebratory décor and atmosphere around the ballpark, including the exterior roof lit in rainbow colours.”
Not least, drag queen Jessie James was singing the national anthem.
No one can accuse the Blue Jays of not fully embracing the spirit of pride ideology, including the illiberalism.