If there’s one word you’ve heard plenty of on talk radio the last week it’s probably: “Boycott”.
Ever since Major League Baseball cowardly moved its All-Star game out of Atlanta due to Georgia’s recently passed Voter ID laws, the word “boycott” has come up as an option for folks who disagree with the decision to move the game to Denver (which ironically has, in some aspects, tougher voting laws than Georgia).
First off, there’s no defending Major League Baseball’s move. They caved to a woke mob that would’ve moved onto its next victim within 48-72 hours had the league decided it wasn’t going to acquiesce to their demands. That’s how these mobs work. They prey on the vulnerable. Commissioner Rob Manfred proved he was weak and vulnerable and they got him. All it does is embolden the mob for their next victim. Oh, and if Manfred thinks he’s done dealing with them, fat chance. They’ll come back for him at some point (probably over his membership to Augusta National, where The Masters takes place this week… in Georgia).
But there has been a push from those of us who vehemently disagree with MLB’s move to “boycott” the sport. However one thing I’m noticing is that the loudest boycott voices aren’t coming from those who are baseball fans, they’re from those folks who if they catch a few games per season, they’re happy.
It’s incredibly easy to boycott something you barely consume and then demand purity from everyone else.
For me, what has been most important is that the teams and players have stayed out of this controversy. Should they be punished? The Kansas City Royals had a great display of Americana on Opening Day, handing out mini American flags for fans to wave. Do I believe their ownership group pushed for a move of the All-Star Game? There’s no reason to believe they did.
How about anyone else?
This is different from the NBA’s embracing of the entire Black Lives Matter movement last summer in the bubble, where the league, players and everyone in between embraced it hook, line and sinker. And they did this without seemingly any knowledge on the group and movement’s actual agenda (like when their website/mission statement disparaged the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”, which was eventually scrubbed off the site for no reason).
This situation with MLB was wrong, but it was not a league-wide decision down to the players.
So no, I won’t be boycotting the MLB season. In fact, I bought a single-team MLB.TV package for my New York Mets this week. I did go back and forth on this with myself, and turned this into a fun radio segment with my listeners as to whether or not I should buy it, and eventually I did.
Many hated that I did it. That’s fine, it actually made for better radio.
But that’s not why I did it. I did because we all have to find things that are our outlets. Sports, music, restaurants can be all of that and more. Taking a break from our crazy news cycle a few hours a week to hear the sounds of the bat hitting the ball is good for me, and I enjoy it.
Maybe that means I’m not playing the boycott game right or I’m not as “pure” as some may want me to be.
But what corporate America needs to learn is that the boycott game in general is a paper tiger from all sides. There’s little evidence that these boycotts, historically driven by the left, have worked overwhelmingly outside of a lot of noise over a short period of time.
So for me, if I boycott baseball, it’ll be because the Mets are 15 games out by Memorial Day. Not because the commissioner folded like a cheap suit to the woke mob.
Unfortunately, there will be plenty of more battles waged with them in the near future, but we all need to pick and choose which ones we sit out. And judging the purity of others? That’s woke left-ism type stuff, and you won’t find me participating in it.
Play ball!
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
