Despite one of the worst World Series performances in history, Daniel Murphy has been signed by the Washington Nationals this week to a lucrative three-year deal worth $37.5 million.
Murphy is a proudly anti-gay second baseman who, when commenting on the "lifestyle" of openly MLB Ambassador For Inclusion Billy Bean, said he disagrees with "the lifestyle, 100 percent." He, of course, hid behind his Christian religion as an excuse for his bigotry even claiming that his brand of bigotry is a form of love. Murphy has said he is ready for a gay teammate despite thinking that person isn't worthy of equality.
It's interesting that the Nationals would make the signing public on Christmas Eve, notoriously one of the "deadest" days for news consumption in the offseason.
Clearly, the Nationals didn't care that Murphy is so publicly bigoted. Plenty of people buy the "love the sinner, hate the sin" nonsense that anti-gay Christians repeatedly convey. Interestingly, the Nationals have had two members of the team — batboy Spenser Clark and human-resources executive Steve Reed — come out publicly on Outsports in the last couple of months. The Nationals publicly expressed pride in Clark after he came out.
Now Clark will be helping a man who has publicly said he "disagrees" with Clark's personal identity.
They also clearly didn’t care that on the sport’s biggest stage last year, Murphy had one of the worst performances in the history of the Fall Classic. Murphy committed two World Series errors – one in Game 4 and one in Game 5 – each of which led directly to a loss for his then-Mets. He was also a disaster on offense, hitting for .150.
Obviously, Murphy brings something to the team. He was one of the best players on the Mets over the course of last season. The Mets are in the NL East with the Nationals. He was top-10 in the League at his position in batting average, RBIs and home runs.
As we know, in pro sports, if you can score, you can say mean-spirited things against classes of people and still play pro sports.
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