MLB warns Giants pitchers over Bible verses on Pride caps

MLB warning – Major League Baseball warned three San Francisco Giants pitchers after they wrote Bible verses on Pride Night caps, citing uniform rules. Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker wore rainbow caps with a Genesis passage, while another starter, Sam Hentges, d

A Pride Night cap can look like a celebration in the wrong hands—and on Friday, it turned into a league-wide uniform problem.

Major League Baseball warned three San Francisco Giants pitchers for writing Bible verses on their Pride Night caps. telling the players they had broken uniform rules. The warning came after starter Landen Roupp and relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker each took the mound on Friday. May 12 wearing the team’s rainbow Pride cap with a Passage from Genesis written next to the logo. A fourth pitcher, Sam Hentges, didn’t wear the Pride cap at all and instead chose the Giants’ regular hat.

MLB chief communications officer Pat Courtney said the writing violated league rules and that the players had been warned about doing it again. MLB uniform rules do not allow players to add writing or illustrations to any part of the uniform. no matter what it says. Under those rules, a first violation brings a warning, while a second offense leads to discipline.

Roupp’s cap included “Gen 9:12-16. ” the Bible verses describing God hanging a rainbow in the sky as the sign of a covenant after the flood. Those lines have also become a frequent choice for Christian athletes who want the rainbow used as a religious symbol rather than an LGBTQ one. Clayton Kershaw previously wrote the same lines on his Dodgers Pride cap last season. and Cleveland pitcher Mike Clevinger received a similar kind of warning in 2018 after wearing loud cleats.

After the game, Roupp didn’t shy away from what the verse meant to him. He told reporters the passage was about God’s covenant and his own faith. and he said there was no hate in it. When asked how he would respond to someone in the LGBTQ community who was hurt by the message. Roupp said he would tell them to read the Bible.

“There’s no hate at all,” Roupp said. “It’s just what I stand for.”

The Giants did not punish anyone. The club put out several sentences acknowledging that it knew the players’ choices had caused pain and anger among LGBTQ fans and that it was sorry. The club can still discipline a player for disrupting a team event if it chooses. but it did not take that step in this case.

Manager Tony Vitello said nobody had discussed the caps with the pitchers beforehand. He said the players were individuals free to do what they think is best, then praised how the organization embraces the communities it celebrates on theme nights.

What makes the moment cut deeper is how long the franchise has leaned into Pride themes. San Francisco threw the first HIV/AIDS awareness game in major pro sports in 1994, called “Until There’s a Cure.” The team later became the first to stitch the rainbow into its on-field caps in 2021.

On Friday. the pitchers—now warned by MLB—became part of a wider stream of MLB players who have sat out Pride in some form or another on faith grounds. The Giants played the Cubs that day and lost, but the aftershock didn’t come from the score. It came from a verse written where a league says there should be none.

MLB San Francisco Giants Pride Night uniform rules Bible verses Genesis Landen Roupp JT Brubaker Ryan Walker Sam Hentges Pat Courtney LGBTQ theme nights