Blue Jays Pitcher Bends Knee, Still Loses Job
Major League Baseball pitcher Anthony Bass learned the hard way that if you are going to take a position based on principle, it is best that you firmly stand your ground.
After all, the left will try to make you backtrack on your beliefs and still may come after your livelihood, even when all dignity is lost.
Bass committed the sin of expressing support in a social media post for the widespread boycotts of LGBT strongholds Bud Light and Target. Considering the tens of billions of dollars of market value lost due to outraged customers, it’s easy to see that his opinions were hardly unique.
But then came the woke army, and Bass quickly found himself backpedaling in humiliating fashion. Not only did he issue a horrific apology to the “Pride community,” but the Toronto Blue Jays scheduled him to catch the ceremonial first pitch for the team’s LGBT events against Minnesota.
He was due to be on the receiving end of the pitch from LGBT advocate leZlie Lee Kam.
That travesty will not happen, however, as the team decided to cut Bass before the weekend series. Apparently, his unforgivable act of posting support for a boycott, even with a groveling apology, was not enough to right his wrong.
Toronto General Manager Ross Atkins described the decision to part ways with Bass “a myriad of variables. Performance is usually the driving one and performance was a large aspect of this decision.”
Atkins added that “distraction was a small part of it and something we had to factor in.”
In other words, in his private time on his own social media account, expressing a cultural and political stance shared by tens of millions of others was part of the decision to fire the player.
It is important to recognize that it is not the sharing of the opinion that caused Bass to lose his job. It was the expression of the wrong opinion, of a belief that apparently was not shared by the organization.
It also bears noting that the Los Angeles Dodgers did not part ways with pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Blake Treinen after far more forceful comments in May. The two Christians were upset over the team’s honoring of a drag group that regularly mocked their faith.
They are also far more valuable to their team as starting pitchers than journeyman middle reliever Anthony Bass was to Toronto. Does that make free speech reserved only for the wealthy and talented? In the case of Major League Baseball, it certainly appears so.
