America’s National Pastime Just Betrayed America

The New York Yankees kneel prior to the game against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park, in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 2020. Rob Carr/Getty Images

Commentary

Major League Baseball (MLB)—America’s “national pastime” by affirmation of the U.S. Supreme Court—has turned itself completely backward. What do you get when you reverse the league’s initials? BLM for Black Lives Matter.

The hallowed New York Yankees literally got on their knees and groveled in coordination with an avowedly Marxist, anti-white, anti-family, pro-abortion-on-demand organization founded to destroy the American family, private education, law enforcement, the military, free enterprise, and private property. In short, the avowed goal of BLM is to destroy our American values and way of life. It was easily the most shameful moment in the club’s storied history. It horrified me to see the successors of my childhood heroes—Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford—pledge fealty to an organization that promulgates hatred of all things American.

The George Steinbrenner Yankees is the same organization that, after the Sept. 11th attacks, stood with me and the entire City of New York behind the heroes of the New York Police Department and Fire Department as we affirmed the strength, resilience, and indivisibility of this country.

My, how things have changed!

Nineteen years ago, at a time when the security of our nation was in question and it seemed like the viability of the American system was facing its greatest threat in a generation, the New York Yankees and MLB provided steadfast assurance that the American way of life was secure and would never yield to ideologies intent on dismantling it. Today, though, baseball has forgotten the sacrifices of the men and women who gave their lives to protect the citizens of New York and the United States that day and every day since.

It was Steinbrenner who initiated the practice of singing “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch. Now, the MLB parrots the propaganda of a movement intent not on shoring up America, but piling fuel on the fires that threaten to divide us by identity and destroy our strongest values

The Yankees and MLB might be forgiven for not knowing exactly what they were endorsing with these gestures and the dozens of official social media posts spreading the talking points of “Black Lives Matter.” After all, half of the country has been taken in by that clever, deceptive slogan.

In reality, BLM is still the same extremist group that most of the country rejected the first time they pulled this act in 2014 and 2015. Two of the three co-founders are “trained Marxists” with a convicted domestic terrorist as their mentor. In addition, one of the for-profit company’s highest-ranking fundraisers, in fact, is another convicted domestic terrorist imprisoned for 58 years for her role in bombing the U.S. Capitol and killing police officers. There’s a reason these people are involved with BLM: they hate America, they hate white people, they hate capitalism, and they see BLM as the best vehicle for burning all of it to the ground.

I cannot for the life of me understand how an organization as profitable and professionally staffed as MLB could not know any of this. It’s right there in black and white, in a 2017 manifesto called “A Vision for Black Lives,” put out by a coalition called the Movement for Black Lives, which counts BLM as part of its coalition. Here’s the plan:

1. End money bail
2. Defund and dismantle law enforcement, including in schools and campuses
3. End public jails
4. Guaranteed minimum income for blacks only
5. Reparations, to include claiming any private property
6. Retroactive decriminalization of all drug offenders (including major drug dealers and prostitutes)
7. Free abortions at any stage of pregnancy, maybe even after birth
8. Defund the military
9. End all private education
10. Release all black prisoners
11. Discontinue the use of fossil fuels
12. Financial destruction of the State of Israel
13. Rejection of the nuclear family and the role of fathers as critical

I would like to believe that the Yankees’ shameful display was based on a simple misunderstanding of what they were endorsing. The media in this country has pulled out all the stops to obfuscate what “BLM” stands for, and is responsible for the funneling of millions of dollars of corporate money into a group whose leaders openly call white people “subhumans” who must be “wiped out” and advocate for the American system to be “burned down.”

Ignorance may explain such actions, but it doesn’t excuse the MLB for betraying their fans, the police, and their own country to side with violent, racist communists. Major League Baseball has it completely backward.

It’s time for the MLB to rectify its participation in an attack on our basic values with ceremonies honoring the men and women in uniform who keep them safe so they can earn millions upon millions of dollars.

Rudy Giuliani is the former mayor of New York City.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.