OPINION: MLB Levies Consequences, Not ‘Cancellation’

There will not be a MLB All-Star Game in the Atlanta area in 2021, but the game and state in which it previously was scheduled are not cancelled.

The show will go on in Colorado this year, and as for Atlanta, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did not mince words in a statement shortly after the passage of Georgia’s Republican-led voter suppression bill was signed into law.

“I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft,” Manfred said. “Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”

While some labeled Georgia as the latest victim of “cancel culture,” it is in fact a greater representation of consequences for deliberate and unapologetic actions. Georgia Republicans unleashed a 98-page laser-guided missile on voting rights in their state just a couple days prior to this announcement, some of the highlights of which included:

• Cutting the number of days residents can request an absentee ballot from 180 days prior to Election Day to 78.

• Making it potentially chargeable as a misdemeanor to offer food or water to anyone standing in line to vote.

• Imposing stringent photo ID requirements on both the request and submission of absentee ballots.

• Imposing limits on ballot drop boxes based on population that will reduce the number of drop boxes in the four-county metropolitan area of Atlanta from 94 in the 2020 election to, at most, 23 based on a New York Times analysis of voter registration data.

• Drop boxes will now also be placed indoors in government buildings or early-voting sites with access limited to normal business hours rather than 24-hour outdoor access.

These and more redundancies in verification to cause confusion, threats to legal voting participation and targeted aggressions on voting in populous cities are a transparent voter suppression effort by the Georgia GOP.

Bemoan the cancel mob all they please, these economic wounds over the loss of the All-Star Game are self-inflicted. Also, for what it is worth, MLB did reaffirm in their statement that their “planned investments to support local communities in Atlanta as part of our All-Star Legacy Project will move forward.”

The move also honors the late Henry “Hank” Aaron in perhaps a far greater way than persisting through public backlash to host in Atlanta would have. Aaron was with the Milwaukee Braves during their 1966 move to Atlanta, and was resistant to the relocation.

“I have lived in the South, and I don’t want to live there again,” the Mobile, Alabama native who grew up in the height of Jim Crow told a reporter in 1964. “We can go anywhere in Milwaukee. I don’t know what would happen in Atlanta.”

To illustrate the climate Aaron was referring to, a biography of the slugger entitled “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” by Howard Bryant said a condition of the Braves’ move to Atlanta was that seating, restrooms, concessions and all other public facilities would not be segregated. With denouncements of this latest Georgia voting bill including President Joe Biden calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” it is obvious that the parallel thinking is not lost on astute observers of history.

The league of America’s pastime made a choice to stand with all Americans who possess the legal right and willingness to invest in their future by participating in our electoral process. The Georgia GOP chose a different path, and will now be subject to not cancellation, but consequences.

Special Sections

Comment Here