This year, 23 of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams will have held an LGBT Pride night, and historically 28 of the 30 have. A report says one of the holdouts will hold such a night in 2019.
Baseball writer Maury Brown, writing in Forbes, says the Angels will finally have an LGBT Pride game next season.
The Angels will host a Pride night in June of next season. This is not something being discussed, a date has been selected, and the only reason not yet announced is that this far out, scheduling can shift. No matter what, the date will fall within the month of June. Sources with the Angels indicate that there has never been some underlying reason why they have not yet done so; there’s no hidden anti-LBGT sentiment within the front office.
His report makes sense and dovetails with what I have heard, basically that there is no underlying reason for the Angels to never have held one. I wonder if the wild success the Dodgers have had with their Pride night in Los Angeles shows there’s money to be made with the pink dollar.
If the Angels do hold a night, there is still one holdout — the New York Yankees. Yes, the team located in the city where Stonewall helped spark the modern gay rights movement and where hundreds of thousands watch the city’s annual pride march.
Like the Angels, the Yankees refusal to hold such an event does not appear to be rooted in anything anti-LGBT. As best I can tell, it’s simply because they’re the Yankees, they’re arrogant and they do things differently.
In 2019, New York will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and the march and festivities will be bigger than ever. It would be a perfect time for the Yankees to show they welcome their LGBT fans and finally hold a Pride night.
