MLB pitchers make Pride Night about their homophobic bigotry

A veritable who’s that? of San Francisco Giants pitchers made homophobic bigots of themselves in the 5-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Friday night, on Pride Night at Oracle Park, which, and this is important, we’re talking about this particular Pride Night being in San Francisco here.

Landen Roupp, a native of Rocky Mount, N.C., where he played at Faith Christian School, before a four-year stint at UNC-Wilmington, got the start on the mound for the Giants, and before he took the mound, he had defaced the front of his Pride Night Giants cap with the message: “Gen 9:11-16.”

This is the now common effort of the homophobes among us to reclaim the rainbow from “the gays,” by citing a biblical verse handed down to us from goat herders that we’ve since translated into English to the effect that the presence of a rainbow in the sky is symbolic that the god guy will never again try to flood us all into oblivion.

“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us,” said Roupp, who took the L for the Giants, surrendering four runs on four hits and two walks in 4.2 innings, needing 105 pitches to get 14 outs.

Not the best of nights on the mound for ol’ Landen Roupp, who pitched in 2022 and 2023 at Double-A Richmond on his way to the bigs.

“It’s just something I believe in, and I stand firm in that. Thankfully we live in a country where we have the freedom to believe what we want,” Roupp explained himself to reporters after the game, seemingly unaware that others have the same freedom to believe that his head is full of mush.

Roupp, unfortunately, wasn’t the only Giants pitcher to take the mound with a message about rainbows on his cap.

JT Brubaker, and his career 9-28, 4.71 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, actually did his job as a player, giving his team two scoreless innings, so, credit due.

Brubaker narrowed the verse from Genesis to “9:13-15” on the front of his cap, then offered gibberish about “belief” in defense of his piggishness.

“I follow God. I answer to God. He’s the one who gives me the strength, gives me the ability to go out and be able to do what I can do,” Brubaker told reporters after the game. “I know God calls us to love everybody. To me, by spreading the word a little bit, I love everybody, just spread love, respect. My biggest thing is respect, so just at the end of the day, it’s my belief and I stand by it.”

Respect, except for the community that the franchise literally built the theme of the night around.

These guys could have pulled a Sandy Koufax – the Hall of Famer famously skipped his scheduled start in Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because the date fell on Yom Kippur – and just not pitched on Friday night.

No doubt, first-year manager Tony Vitello, GM Buster Posey, would have had no problem putting Roupp out there a day later, to accommodate their firmly held religious objections.

But that would have taken away the opportunity to make Pride Night about them.

And ditto for the other guys who were used to finish out the Giants loss – Sam Hentges, who pitched in 2018 at High-A Lynchburg, and Ryan Walker, who pitched in Richmond in 2021 and 2022.

Hentges didn’t wear a Pride cap, instead doffing the standard-issue Giants hat for his appearance; Walker half-assed his Genesis reference, trying to hide it on the side of his Pride cap.

“It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support when I don’t morally support it,” Hentges said, in his defense. “There wasn’t hatred behind it. I think that’s kind of something that’s misinterpreted. I don’t hate the LGBTQ community. It’s just something I believed and talked with teammates and family, and they supported it.”

“At the end of the day, God calls us to love everybody, right?” Walker said, missing the point that defacing a Pride hat on Pride Night is this generation’s version of burning a cross on a Black family’s front lawn, which, I probably shouldn’t be giving him any ideas.

“I have no hatred towards anything that was going on. I’m a believer in God. I feel like I’m going to stand firm on that ground. None of it was for hatred towards anybody. If anything, I would love for them to look up the verse and get into the Bible,” Walker said.

He should take his own advice there, and stop using a book with stories dating back thousands of years to sow hate.