This originally appeared in Thursday’s edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything going on in the sports media world.
The San Francisco Giants’ Pride Night controversy and all the subsequent fallout can be blamed on many things (and, quite frankly, have been). But if there is one throughline from the seeds of discontent that sparked it to the interactions among media members attempting to make sense of it, it’s that the entire episode can be traced back to a lack of direct communication.
From the jump, there was a miscommunication, or lack thereof, that led to three pitchers, Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, writing a Bible verse on their Pride Night hats, which featured rainbow versions of the Giants’ logo. The organization should have made it clear to the players that they are not required to wear the rainbow-themed hat, per league rules. And if the team did communicate that, the players decided to speak past them. An inciting incident based on a lack of communication.
Major League Baseball attempted to smooth things over with a statement too generic for its own good, and the lack of clarity gave politicians and pundits a chance to turn what was supposed to be a fun evening of celebration into the latest culture-war salvo. While many of those missives targeted the Giants and MLB, they were directed at others as political red meat rather than attempts at rational conversation.
The Giants’ lack of direct communication made things even worse. GM Buster Posey refused to answer questions about the event and controversy, and KNBR hosts were barred from asking Giants CEO Larry Baer any Pride Night questions during a team-sponsored radio show. It would have been so easy to just speak clearly about what happened, what the intentions were, and how the team would move forward. Instead, engaging in conversation was the last thing they wanted to do, which only fanned the flames.
Eventually, Baer was willing to talk, saying the team could have handled things better, adding that “we take pride in being industry leaders in that effort with the LGBTQ community” and that the team “received floods of complaints” after “failing to address the issue with more than a statement.” In other words, their inability to communicate directly with fans and others created a vacuum that they allowed to be filled, rather than filling it themselves.
Perhaps the most direct example of this breakdown in communication came last week when longtime Bay Area baseball beat reporter Susan Slusser appeared on KNBR and was asked directly by host Larry Krueger for her thoughts on the long-term impact of the controversy.
“Susan, you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve covered teams beyond the Giants, and you have a good sense for baseball and the players because you talk to them routinely,” said Krueger. “We were getting into the details of the Giants’ decisions, Pride Night, the communication, and all of that. But if we back away a little bit, has the Giants organization done real damage in the eyes of players?
“Are they going to have a hard time attracting players because other players are looking at these guys being called bigots and attacked in the media for either not wearing the hat or writing biblical verses? Do you think, long term, the Giants are going to have a hard time attracting free agents because of what happened this year?”
“I mean, bigoted free agents, maybe, I guess,” Slusser replied.
“… Certainly, it’s not a secret that San Francisco has a huge gay community, many gay fans. To me, this is a little bit on the players. If you don’t want to be a part of that, A, maybe don’t openly insult your paying customers after a game, but B, don’t sign here.
“Maybe that will happen. I don’t know. But that just seems honestly kinda crazy to me. You know where you’re coming. This is San Francisco. It’s not a secret.”
Whatever you think of Slusser’s answer, it was a direct response to the question she was asked. If Krueger didn’t like the answer, or wanted to dig deeper on her choice of words, he had the perfect opportunity right then and there. Sports talk radio is made for conversations like this. But Krueger did not offer a response.
A few days later, however, he did. Instead of responding to Slusser, he responded to a stranger on social media asking about it, saying that while he respects the Giants reporter, he couldn’t believe what she’d said and strongly inferred his disagreement with them.
Slusser, not one to shy away from direct communication, called Krueger out on the spot.
“It was in answer to YOUR QUESTION – and my response was ‘I guess maybe bigots.’ If you had a problem with the answer, say it then. On the air. This is utterly unprofessional,” she wrote on X, tagging KNBR.
Shortly thereafter, Krueger deleted his post.
Here we were, once again. Instead of two sides having a much-needed conversation, everyone was talking past each other, only further inflaming the situation.
There’s no time like the present, however, and Krueger did offer an apology and clarification earlier this week on X, saying “while I do not believe that exercising your 1st Amendment rights makes a player ‘a bigot,’ I should have challenged her in real time w/a pointed follow-up question. My error was taking it to social media, and thus I’ve deleted that tweet. It was unfair to Susan and brought X vitriol to both of us. I do appreciate Susan’s candor and intellect and that she is open to harsh disagreement or direct pushback. I pride myself on being right, and yet I can also admit when I’m wrong.”
Slusser reiterated that her choice of words there was directly related to the fact that Krueger had said it, attempting to drive home the point that she had used it because he had. It’s semantics, but her adamant concern about making that clear also speaks to the heart of how we all got here.
The communication tools of our time want breakdowns like this. Social media wants us to stop talking to each other and instead direct our conversations outward towards strangers. Political points and scorecards drive the language so many people use instead of talking to one another like humans. Fears over admonishment from authoritarian overreach or public lashings make it harder to feel like you can speak freely and honestly.
Hopefully, this whole drama is winding down, at least until next year’s Pride Night. When we look back on it, hopefully we can see how what happened didn’t occur because everyone was telling one another what to do. Rather, it all happened because no one really wanted to have a conversation in the first place.
