Decision to move All-Star Game from Atlanta has ramifications

Here was baseball Friday, leading the way rather than being dragged along. It was reasonable to react to the sport’s December decision to include records from the Negro Leagues in the official cannon with some skepticism, as in, “Why so long?”

But Friday’s move to snatch this summer’s AllStar Game from Atlanta because of the new Georgia laws designed to suppress voting in the state — and therefore suppress democracy in the state — was as swift as it was sure and sound. Make voting harder rather than easier, which is a thinly veiled attempt to limit voting in heavily Black areas? Fine. We’ll take our ball and go elsewhere.

“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

Read that sentence again. What American, regardless of political party or race or creed or religion — left or right, Black or white, Christian or Jew, vegan or carnivore, Yankees or Red Sox — can disagree with that? We are a democracy. Decisions in a democracy are made by the will of the people. Not some of the people. All of the people. This didn’t used to be a point of contention, and that’s not some woke mob point of view. It’s just American.

It’s healthy to evaluate the people who oversee sports and work for the owners of franchises who try to profit from them with a raised eyebrow. Yet if baseball is still somehow woven into the fabric of America — if it’s still uniquely of this country, even as it grows more diverse and global — then its leaders have an obligation to acknowledge that every eligible American citizen should have the easiest opportunity to cast a ballot, regardless of the level of election.

This fits, too, the sport’s rather rapid evolution with regards to race relations, a change not even a year in the making. Baseball has a generation-old problem of declining Black participation. Frankly, it too often feels like a White sport injected with Latin American flavor. The

NBA, with a largely Black labor force, finds it easier to lead on issues involving race and equality.

Then, last spring’s killing of George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin — an event that roiled the country and continues to remain in the moment because of Chauvin’s trial — emboldened baseball’s Black players to speak out and fostered conversations the sport had too seldom had.

Baseball clubhouses tend to lean right, often heavily. Yet the lasting images of a summer of unrest throughout the sport include the Mets and Marlins laying a No. 42 jersey — the number worn by Jackie Robinson — at home plate before the two teams walked off CitiField as a sign of unity and protest. They include veteran Black players Curtis Granderson, Dee Strange-Gordon and Cameron Maybin forming the Players Alliance, aimed at creating more opportunities in Black communities. They include the impassioned words of countless players — Tim Anderson of the White Sox, Dominic Smith of the Mets, on and on — talking frankly and jarringly about what it’s like to grow up Black in the United States.

That all mattered, and it had to be factored into MLB’s thinking on the Atlanta All-Star Game. It all helped strengthen the idea that athletes and leagues shouldn’t remove themselves from the discussion. They should help lead it. That those voices and images still resonate could be the lasting impact of 2020s covid-shortened baseball season. At least something good came of it.

“Proud to call myself part of the @mlb family today,” tweeted none other than LeBron James.

The move had reach. The move had relevance. It also had ramifications.

It’s important to note, contrary to the repeated claims of President Joe Biden — false claims — that the new Georgia rules do not shorten the hours that polls are open. Indeed, they even expand the opportunity to cast early ballots in some counties.