Major League Baseball just picked a fight it probably didn’t want.
Three San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote a Bible verse on their caps during the team’s Pride Night game, and the league formally warned them to never do it again.
Now a pro-Trump comic is stepping up to cover any fines they face — and the backlash against MLB is growing fast.
What the Players Did
Starting pitcher Landen Roupp and relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote a Bible verse reference on their caps during the Giants’ Pride Night game against the Chicago Cubs. Each player wrote “Gen 9:12-16” on their caps. The passage is about God’s covenant with Noah following the worldwide flood described in the first book of the Bible. It marks the first recorded instance of a rainbow, which is also an LGBT symbol.
Roupp told reporters, “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.”
The verse was about God’s covenant and his own faith, Roupp told reporters, and there was no hate in it. When a reporter asked how he’d answer someone in the LGBTQ community who was hurt by it, he said he would tell them to read the Bible. “There’s no hate at all,” Roupp said.
Reliever Sam Hentges did not etch in Bible verses but instead wore the team’s standard colors, black and orange, instead of the pride-themed cap.
That game, by the way, was no ordinary night at the ballpark. The Giants held their obligatory Pride Night on Friday by having 10 gay couples renew their vows in a pregame ceremony that included having a drag queen along the first base line. The league had no objection to any of that.
MLB’s Response
MLB’s chief communications officer Pat Courtney said in a statement: “The writing on the cap violates our rules and, consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.”
And the Giants’ front office piled on. The next day, the Giants issued a statement apologizing to the LGBTQ+ community: “We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that.”
So the organization apologized for its own players expressing their Christian faith. Let that sink in.
Schneider Steps Up
After the news of the controversy broke, former Saturday Night Live star Rob Schneider jumped to his X account and wrote: “I will pay the fines for any @MLB Christian player who wears a Bible verse on their uniform. @MLB is ANTI-CHRISTIAN.” On Friday, three Giants pitchers, Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker, were all warned by the league for the Bible verses when they took the field during the team’s Gay Pride night game, Sports Illustrated reported.
Actor Kevin Sorbo agreed with Schneider and similarly volunteered to help pay fines. “Happy to chip in with you on this,” he messaged Schneider. And with that, Sorbo reached his 2.6 million followers on X and Schneider reached his 2.2 million followers on the platform.
That’s a lot of people now paying attention to how MLB treats Christians.
The Double Standard Nobody Can Ignore
Here’s where the story gets harder for the league to spin. The Giants’ pitchers are not the first MLB players to add Bible passage numbers to Pride-themed caps. Most notably, former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw inscribed the same verse as Roupp on his cap for his organization’s Pride Night last season.
Commentator Jon Root noted that former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw also wrote “Gen 9: 12-16” on a Pride Night-themed cap last year. The league never made a public statement, and to his knowledge, never gave Kershaw a warning for writing the verse. Kershaw wrote “Gen 9: 12-16” on a Pride Night-themed cap last year and was met with praise for his decision. He did not receive any official warnings from MLB.
Same verse. Same cap. Different outcome. The only thing that changed was which players did it.
And it gets worse. The league’s claim that it merely forbids “writing of any kind” on its uniforms does not survive a cursory review of the league’s recent history. In 2020, MLB itself turned its uniforms and its fields into a billboard for political and social messages. It created jersey patches reading “Black Lives Matter” and “United for Change.” It authorized “BLM” to be stenciled onto pitching mounds. And it suspended its own equipment rules so that players could display progressive political slogans on their cleats. The league went beyond tolerating speech — it designed speech, promoted speech, and shoehorned social and political messages into the game broadcast to millions of Americans.
But three words from Genesis? That’s apparently where the line gets drawn.
Hawley Demands Answers
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred: “I write with grave concern over your reported decision to issue a formal warning to three Major League Baseball (MLB) players for publicly expressing their Christian faith. This follows a high-profile undercover investigation that revealed at least one MLB team discriminated against a player based on his Catholic faith. You must answer for what appears to be a pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.”
Hawley also told Fox News Digital: “MLB has a sweetheart deal from the federal government. They play by different rules than any other business in America. But now MLB is using its power to target Christians and trample free speech. It’s anti-American. And MLB needs to course correct immediately.”
Hawley demanded that Manfred provide records to his office including a “complete copy of the uniform regulation under which the Giants pitchers were warned,” a compiled list of every time the league warned or fined a player or club under the rule over the past five seasons, policies or directives governing “pride night” team apparel, and authorizations for the display of BLM “or comparable messaging” on team apparel and equipment.
That last request is the one that should make the league sweat. The MLB has until this week to respond.
What This Is Really About
The players weren’t protesting anything. They weren’t disrupting the game. They wrote a few characters from the Book of Genesis on a hat — a hat they were already being asked to wear as part of a league-mandated Pride Night event. That’s the full scope of the alleged offense.
And the league’s own history makes the enforcement indefensible. MLB spent 2020 turning ballparks into platforms for left-wing political messaging, suspended its uniform rules to let players wear BLM slogans on their cleats, and stenciled political language onto pitching mounds. None of that produced a single warning letter. None of it required an apology from any team’s front office.
But Landen Roupp writes “Gen 9:12-16” on his cap, and suddenly the rulebook comes out.
Christians in this country have watched this pattern play out in Hollywood, in corporate boardrooms, in government schools, and now apparently on the baseball diamond. The message from institutions like MLB is consistent: every identity gets celebrated, every belief system gets a platform — except one. The faith that built this country, that most of these players were raised in, gets a warning letter and an apology from the front office.
Rob Schneider isn’t just offering to write a check. He’s putting a spotlight on something millions of Americans already know is true but rarely see called out this plainly. And U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is making sure the league can’t quietly make this go away with a boilerplate statement about uniform rules.
MLB enjoys a federal antitrust exemption that no other professional sports league has. It operates under a special arrangement with the United States government. It might want to think carefully about how it treats the faith of the Americans whose tax dollars underwrite that arrangement.
Sources: Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Daily Signal, The Federalist, OutKick, Washington Times, Josh Hawley Senate website, Daily Caller, NBC Bay Area, Christian Post