MLB Right to Move All Star Game from Atlanta, Braves Whiff on Response

by Julian Spivey
On Friday, April 2, Major League Baseball made the decision to strip the 2021 MLB All Star Game, to be held in mid-July, from the city of Atlanta, Ga. following new election laws passed by the state’s Republican-led politicians that make it harder to vote in the state’s urban areas. The league has not yet announced a new location for the game billed as “the Midsummer Classic.” 
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It’s at this point that I should come clean and say I’m a lifelong Atlanta Braves fan, whose home stadium Truist Park is where the 2021 All Star game was supposed to take place. However, I believe the decision by MLB to remove the game from Georgia to be the right decision, even if the game was to be a celebration of one of my heroes Henry Aaron, who died earlier this year and played many years for the Braves in Atlanta. 

We’ve seen this type of thing before from professional sports leagues. The 2017 NBA All Star game was supposed to be held in Charlotte, N.C., but after that state passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which was anti-transgender, the NBA moved the game from Charlotte to New Orleans, La. as a result. 

Some wonder if such decisions by sports leagues or other businesses have an impact at all on a city or state, other than costing them money in tourism and merchandising, but author and journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who lives in Charlotte, wrote a Twitter thread explaining how the NBA’s boycott of the Charlotte All Star game led to change in North Carolina. He stated the boycott, “kinda worked. At least indirectly.” It hurt the city and state economically when the NCAA followed suit and pulled March Madness games from the state, but the main effect was on Gov. Pat McCrory, who was popular in the state and Charlotte (where he had served as mayor for 14 years). In 2016, despite the state of North Carolina going for Republican candidate Donald Trump in the Presidential election, McCory lost his reelection bid to Democratic candidate Roy Cooper. Cooper signed a bill that repealed some of the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act and the NBA brought the All Star game back to the city in 2019. So, who’s to say what impact MLB boycotting Atlanta for the All Star Game will have on the future of Georgia? Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is digging his heels in and fellow Republicans within the state and outside of the state are calling for a boycott of Major League Baseball (who’s taking part in ‘Cancel Culture’ now?), but we’ll see if the voter suppression laws in Georgia leading to boycotts of the state will lead its voters to unseat those in charge within their state. 

Many are erroneously saying this entire thing is over forcing potential voters to show identification before being able to vote, but there’s much more to it as the New York Times explains HERE. 
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I hate that the All Star Game in Atlanta had to be used by the league in an attempt to do some good. As a Braves fan I wanted to see the game in my favorite team’s ballpark. I wanted to see some of my favorite players show off in their home ballpark on one of the game’s biggest and brightest stages and I especially wanted to see a tribute to Henry Aaron in a city he did so much for (MLB has said the Aaron tribute will still take place wherever the game lands). But, make no mistake, the league had to take a stand here. Voting rights are far more important than an exhibition baseball game and if the league can do something that may one day have a positive impact on voting rights in Georgia or the country in general, as this is certainly a warning to other states to watch what you do or you might be next. 

I understand fans are going to be upset by this, even if the league made the right moralistic decision, but the incredibly tone-deaf response from the Braves, again my favorite team, is what truly pissed me off the most on Friday. The Braves organization should’ve backed the league’s decision and been understanding the league was trying to do the right thing, but instead they played the woe is me, we’ve been wronged and this is going to have a terrible impact on us card. 

The Braves organization had a chance to stand up against Gov. Kemp and stand with the league and most importantly the disenfranchised voters (which are predominantly minorities) being affected by some of the most disgusting voting laws since the days of Jim Crow (seriously a misdemeanor offense for handing a bottle of water to someone standing in line to vote is beyond cruel), but they whiffed harder than the batters in the team’s lineup did against Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler the next day.