On Thursday afternoon, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the league will be moving its annual All-Star Game and accompanying All-Star Week back to Atlanta in 2025. What baseball fans didn’t hear from Manfred, however, was an apology.
In 2021, the MLB and Manfred moved the league’s All-Star operations from Atlanta to Denver, Colorado, following pressure from high-profile Democrats to pull out of Georgia in protest of state Republicans’ voting law, SB 202. Despite containing commonsense provisions such as voter ID requirements for absentee voting, SB 202’s passage prompted Democrats to launch an unhinged smear campaign against the law. This included baseless accusations that the statute would “suppress” non-white voters and harm “voting rights.”
The most egregious attack, however, came from President Joe Biden, who grossly labeled SB 202 as “Jim Crow on steroids” and called on the MLB to pull its All-Star events out of Georgia.
Manfred acquiesced to the president’s demands not long after. In his statement announcing the move, the commissioner regurgitated Democrat talking points by falsely claiming SB 202 created “restrictions to the ballot box” hindering citizens’ ability to vote. He also asserted the company’s decision represented “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.”
That same year, Manfred said bringing the league’s All-Star events back to Atlanta would “certainly be an option at some point in the future,” but that he would first “need to see” change before that could happen.
The MLB did not respond to The Federalist’s request
