MLB DROPPED THE BALL DURING THIS YEAR’S 2022 ALL STAR GAME
From The Press Box
Amaury Pi-González
The 2022 summer’s Major League Baseball Draft and the All-Star Game was not held in Atlanta, as it was originally scheduled. The withdrawal of the events that were to take place in July of this year was in response to Georgia’s enacted voting restrictions, which many in Washington, (including the President) called “Jim Crow in the 21st century. Because they say the legislation will disproportionately affect communities of color.
“I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft,” Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. said in a statement at the time. “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
However, today we know that Major League Baseball overreacted. As of today with roughly two weeks before the national mid-term elections close to one million people have voted on Georgia, during the early voting, in person or via email. All polls regarding this matter are predicting that this mid-term election, coming in November 8th, will break all the voting records in the history of the State of Georgia. Because it is already on the way to a record.
Now we know, that the leadership of Major League Baseball make a big error, by removing the 2022 All Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, Colorado. Atlanta, Georgia prepared for this event yearns in advance. For Georgia it represented great loss of revenues, estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars to the Georgia economy, specially to the city of Atlanta among their local businesses that were poised to celebrate the mid-summer classic with thousands of tourist and baseball fans during the celebration of the All Star Week, which would have culminated with the All Star Game this past July 19.
The Commissioner of Baseball made a decision, that was more political than about baseball and it backfired on him big time. He wanted to be ‘politically correct’, overreacted and it blew up in his face. If Mr.Manfred ever had aspirations, once his reign as Commissioner expires to go into the political arena, this “move” probably killed those possibilities and he will have to live with it the rest of his life.
