Giants Pitchers Protested Pride Night and Got a Warning. Colin Kaepernick Knelt for Black Lives and Lost His Career.

San Francisco Giants players protested their team’s Pride Night and went unpunished. Throughout history, sports leagues have come down far harder on athletes who stood up for marginalized people.

Kahlil Greene
Jun 23, 2026
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On June 12, the San Francisco Giants held their annual Pride Night at Oracle Park, a tradition rooted in 1994, when the team became the first in professional sports to hold an HIV/AIDS benefit. Most players wore the rainbow-lettered SF caps without comment, but three pitchers did not. Starter Landen Roupp took the mound against the Chicago Cubs with “Gen 9:12-16” across his cap, a reference to the Bible passage where the rainbow becomes God’s promise to Noah after the Flood. Relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker also donned caps with added verses of their own. A fourth pitcher, Sam Hentges, opted not to wear the rainbow cap entirely and wore the standard black one.

Every one of them had that choice. The league had already told players on the Giants and Dodgers that anyone uncomfortable with the Pride cap could wear a regular hat instead, and Hentges did exactly that. Roupp, Brubaker, and Walker chose to write Bible references on a cap meant to welcome LGBTQ fans, reframing the rainbow as a biblical symbol.

For that, Major League Baseball gave them a verbal warning about writing on uniforms, with no fine and no suspension. Just 10 years ago, Colin Kaepernick knelt to protest police killings of Black Americans and never played another NFL down.

The Giants Pitchers Received a Warning

The MLB cited its uniform rule, which bars players from writing any message on their gear, and noted it had given an identical warning before for caps reading “Dad” or “Hi Mom.” Officials said the content of the verses had nothing to do with it. The players themselves later told the San Francisco Chronicle they did not feel discriminated against.

Powerful people insisted otherwise on their behalf. Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore.” Senator Josh Hawley wrote to Commissioner Rob Manfred accusing baseball of targeting Christians and threatening the sport’s antitrust exemption. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to examine religious discrimination, the Department of Justice opened an investigation, and Florida’s attorney general launched a probe.

In 2025, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw wrote a Bible verse on his Pride cap, but the league said nothing. Officials applied the rule only once the episode became a national controversy, and the pitchers lost nothing.

Kaepernick Knelt and Lost His Career

In 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem to protest police killings of Black Americans. A former Green Beret, Nate Boyer, told him kneeling would be seen as respectful, and Kaepernick agreed, kneeling before games for the rest of the season.

He did not write over anyone’s symbol or tell any groups of fans they were unwelcome; he asked the country to stop killing people who looked like him. He left the 49ers after that season, and no team has signed him since.

The First Amendment restrains the government, not private employers like the NFL, so it protected neither Kaepernick then nor the Giants pitchers a decade later. Each expressed a belief that his league would rather he kept to himself. Kaepernick’s protest defended people with little power, while the pitchers refused a group of fans a single night of welcome. Yet only Kaepernick lost his livelihood.

Earlier Athletes Also Lost Their Careers

Kaepernick joined a long line of athletes who lost something real for siding with the powerless. In 1967, Muhammad Ali refused induction into the Army during the Vietnam War, citing his Muslim faith. Boxing authorities stripped his heavyweight title and barred him from the ring. An all-white jury convicted him and sentenced him to five years in prison. He lost years of his prime before the Supreme Court reversed the conviction in 1971.

A year after Ali’s refusal, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to protest the treatment of Black Americans. Avery Brundage, the head of the International Olympic Committee, had them suspended and thrown out of the Olympic Village. They went home to boos and death threats.

In 1969, fourteen Black football players at the University of Wyoming asked their coach about wearing armbands before a game against Brigham Young to protest the Mormon church’s racial doctrines. Coach Lloyd Eaton cut all fourteen on the spot, and the university did not apologize until 2019. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a guard for the Denver Nuggets, stopped standing for the national anthem in 1996, calling the flag a symbol of oppression at odds with his faith. The NBA suspended and fined him, and Denver traded him after the season. He was out of the league by twenty-nine.

Some Leagues Backed Their Players

The people who ran these leagues had other options, and some used them. In 1961, after a Lexington, Kentucky restaurant refused to serve Bill Russell and his Black Boston Celtics teammates, the players sat out an exhibition game. Celtics owner Walter Brown backed them and said the team would no longer play in the South, telling a reporter he was not “so hungry for money” that he would put his players through situations that would embarrass them.

Before the 1965 AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans, Black All-Stars met taxis that would not stop for them and a bouncer who pulled a gun on tackle Ernie Ladd, and they refused to play. Commissioner Joe Foss did not blame them and instead moved the game to Houston. New Orleans business owners, worried about losing future events, began desegregating their establishments.

Billie Jean King boycotted a 1970 tournament that paid men more than eight times what it paid women. Rather than blackball her, organizers raised women’s purses, and the U.S. Open agreed to pay men and women equally by 1973. In 2020, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for a playoff game after police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Other NBA and MLB teams followed, and the league supported its players rather than fining them.

The Reaction Depends on the Audience

Set those responses next to San Francisco. The Giants pitchers directed their protest at a marginalized group rather than an injustice, and powerful people moved to protect them. The sitting vice president and the Department of Justice called a routine warning about a hat religious persecution. Many of them welcomed Kaepernick’s exit from the NFL after he asked police to stop killing Black men.

A few days after the Giants’ game, a Pennsylvania minor league team forfeited its own Pride Night when fewer than nine players agreed to wear rainbow sleeves. One Giants fan, a parent of two LGBTQ children, said his kids now had to wonder whether to root for players who would not root for them. The MLB once again issued a warning and moved on.

Americans tend to revise these judgments over time. A statue of Smith and Carlos raising their fists now stands at San Jose State. Wyoming apologized to the fourteen players it cut, fifty years too late. Ali lost his title and the best years of his career, but the country came to honor him. The officials defending the Giants pitchers today have placed themselves alongside Avery Brundage and the coaches who punished those earlier athletes. That company has rarely looked good with time.

References

Associated Press. “MLB Warns Players About Altering Uniforms After Giants Pitchers Add Bible Verses on Pride Night.” June 16, 2026.
Wood, Lilia, and David K. Li. “MLB Warns Players Not to Deface Uniforms in Wake of Silent Pride Night Protest.” NBC News, June 16, 2026.
Keyser, Hannah. “Why Is Baseball Having a Gay Meltdown?” CNN, June 19, 2026.
Shaikin, Bill. “Why MLB’s Pride Night Cap Condemnation Isn’t the Anti-Christian Crackdown Conservatives Claim.” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2026.
Lacques, Gabe. “Giants Players Respond to DOJ Pride Cap Investigation: ‘Not Discrimination.’” USA Today, June 20, 2026.
Li, David K. “Minor League Baseball Team Cancels Pride Night Game After Players Refuse to Wear Rainbows.” NBC News, June 18, 2026.
Horger, Marc. “Ten Protests in Sports History.” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. Ohio State University, October 2017.
Leadingham, Scott A. “10+ of the Most Prominent Sports Protests of All Time.” Freedom Forum, October 17, 2023.
Keane, Sean. “8 Memorable Protests by American Athletes.” History, A&E Television Networks, August 9, 2021.
“1968 Olympics Black Power Salute.” Wikipedia.