Despite discouraging “Pride” ballcaps in a 2023 directive, Major League Baseball is now siding with one team that retained them against a quiet player protest. Soon after several players on the San Francisco Giants restored their team’s “Pride Night” rainbow hats to the rainbow’s original Genesis context, MLB chief communications officer Pat Courtney responded with a warning, “The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.”

The warning followed activist criticism, with New York Times sports writer Grant Brisbee complaining that the Christian players made “Pride” night “about ‘us versus them’” in a “tone-deaf response.”

Technically speaking, the league may have a point. The MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2022-2026 stipulates that “No alterations, writing or illustrations, other than as authorized herein, are to be made to any part of the uniform.” This line appears to apply the 2026 Official Baseball Rules, which require that “All players on a team shall wear uniforms identical in color, trim and style.”

The rules show zero tolerance for violations of this rule, declaring that “No player whose uniform does not conform to that of his teammates shall be permitted to participate in a game.”

In practice, however, the MLB has often given latitude — as even the past weekend demonstrates. Landen Roupp, J.T. Brubaker, and Nick Ahmed were all permitted to participate in the game, despite writing Bible verses on their caps. Sam Hentges wore the team’s usual cap instead of the rainbow version, and he was allowed to participate, too.

By permitting these players to compete, the league tacitly recognized their right to express themselves by writing on a part of the uniform that the league itself had turned into a public forum.

There are past examples of cap-writing as well. During the 2025 World Series, players from both teams wrote “#51” to support a player with a recent family tragedy. In 2025, Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen drew a tribute to Charlie Kirk on his cap, and Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw wrote the same Bible reference on his “Pride” night hat. All the way back in 2021, two players wrote “SOS CUBA” on their caps for the All-Star Game.

Thus, the public reprimand of Giants players who dared to reference the Bible seems to contradict the MLB’s past practice, raising suspicions that they singled Bible verses out for special punishment, after pro-LGBT complaints.

This special animus reserved for Christians sings the same tune as Sean Hudson, a former communications director for the Washington Nationals, who was fired earlier this month for intentionally discriminating against a player for his Christian beliefs and then admitting as much on camera. (In other words, he not only harbored animus against Christians, but he felt so secure in his animus that he didn’t mind broadcasting it to those around him — what a disturbing picture about the state of the league.)

The MLB did not have to respond this way. Giants team manager Tony Vitello modeled a much more mature (and American) response when he brushed off the controversy by saying that “individuals have the freedom to do what they think is best.” On Tuesday, comedian Rob Schneider announced that he would cover any fines the league issued against the three players. Both responses serve as foils to the league’s cowardly placation of the activist class.

On a deeper level, the real reason why activists demanded punishment for the protest was that it was so apt and effective. If the Scripture quotation had been Philippians 4:13 (taken out of context), or even John 3:16, they may not have minded. But, since it directly countered and redefined the LGBT appropriation of the rainbow, it was too infuriating and effective to be left unanswered.

Readers may have noticed thematic parallels with the narrative Luke sets forth in Acts 4-5. There, the custodians of a false religion insist that the church stop teaching in Jesus’s name (Acts 4:18, 5:28). Their motives are annoyance (Acts 4:2), jealousy (Acts 5:17), and a realization that the teaching they oppose directly implicates them as guilty (Acts 5:28). There also, cooler heads advised that these censorious leaders would do best to just let the Christians alone to live their lives (Acts 5:38).

Admittedly, the situations are different in many ways. The stakes in Acts are literally life and death, not to mention the very survival of the early church. A controversy over baseball caps is piddling by comparison. And the key figures in Acts are literally the men Jesus entrusted with spreading his church; the Giants players are just ordinary Christians.

But “whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction” (Romans 15:4), and the apostles’ response models the way Christians should respond to similar demands today. When ordered to abandon their public witness and stop living like Christians for all the world to see, the apostles answered, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20). Or, more succinctly, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

It takes a lot of courage to take such a stand when there are personal costs and consequences. But Christians know how to find courage, because the source of our courage is God, and his ear is always receptive to the pleas of his children. Here too, the apostles modeled a response that Christians should still follow. Between their first and second interrogations they prayed, “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29).

What these Christian players bearing witness to God’s word amid a hostile culture need right now is the prayers of other Christians, that they might find the courage to stand unwavering on the truth of God’s word. This is not ultimately to “win” a cultural skirmish, but to present a winsome witness to a skeptical culture, that many might be drawn to repent and believe, to the glory of God.