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Sports in Society

MLB Teams Educating Players On Potential Pitfalls Of Discussing Politics In Media

Political discussion was "prominent among the topics" in the Yankees' annual media training for players this year, and several other clubs have "made a point this spring of giving their players the same sort of 'advice,'" according to Jayson Stark of ESPN.com. Yankees Senior VP & GM Brian Cashman said, "There's a quote. The higher on the tree the monkey climbs, the more you see of his ass. So if you're going to choose to climb that tree, you're putting your ass out there. So I think you just educate everyone on dealing with the media." One high-ranking Yankees official “told his players that if they choose to take a stand on anything political, 50 percent of the people who used to cheer them would not just stop cheering,” as those cheers “would turn to hate.” Not every team "has been quite so upfront about its message to players." Many have "avoided this subject entirely this spring." MLB has “no official policy" that orders players not to talk politics. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred: “I would never presume to give players advice as to what they should be comfortable doing. … We have never been an impediment to players expressing whatever political point of view they wanted to express. And that will continue to be the policy of baseball." NBC’s Chuck Todd sees baseball as the "most diverse sport in America, where every clubhouse is a complicated mix of human beings from a unique array of cultures.” Todd: “I'm not surprised it's been quiet on the political front. I could see how this could divide a locker room very quickly, more so in baseball than the other sports." Rays P Chris Archer: “You put yourself at a lot of risk, even if it's just being attacked verbally, just for expressing your opinions and your viewpoints" (ESPN.com, 2/28).

LOOKING TO BE OFFENDED: Rory McIlroy has faced heat for playing a round of golf with President Trump last month, and ESPN's Scott Van Pelt said, "It was supposed to be a few holes and it turned into an afternoon. I don't know what Rory was supposed to do. If he said no, people would say, ‘Why don't you want to play golf with the President?’ If he said yes, the other side said, ‘You shouldn’t have done this and that.’ This is a classic case of the world we occupy where people sit and are waiting to be offended by things that don’t have a damn thing to do with them. There’s a long list of things that we can concern ourselves with in our world at the moment, or in our country specifically. This isn’t one of them” (“SportsCenter,” ESPN, 2/28).

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