Those homophobic Giants pitchers haven't gotten any more popular in the 10 days since that Pride Night hat controversy, and face of the team Buster Posey just had his first major fail when he blew an opportunity to deal with the fallout head on and offer a real apology.
The Giants' President of Baseball Operations Buster Posey addressed reporters on Tuesday, but he refused to answer any questions that weren't "about baseball," and gave a wishy-washy "I see both sides" statement on the Pride Night ballcap controversy which is only going to enrage LGBTQ fans further.
"I understand that there’s strong feelings on this topic. There’s differing perspectives and out of respect to everybody involved, it’s not something that I’m going to revisit," Posey said in a prepared statement Tuesday, clearly wishing this entire thing had blown over already. He went on to add that while "some fans are upset and frustrated," the team has "talked about [it] a lot internally and will continue to do so."
Well, what the hell does that mean?
In case you missed it, three Giants pitchers defaced their Pride-themed ballcaps on Pride Night, June 12, writing a Bible verse number referring to Noah's rainbow that some right-wing evangelicals have used argue that rainbows don't belong to the LGBTQ community. A fourth pitcher simply refused to wear his. The pitchers have tried to justify their actions as free speech on the part of Christians who don't want to show their support for LGBTQ Pride, but fans of the team, which has celebrated inclusivity and recognized Pride Night for decades, are infuriated by the lackluster response so far — a response that suggest that Posey and his organization are more on the side of Republicans and the Trump administration than they are on the side of their home city, and their queer fans.
As the Chronicle's Ann Killion writes, "It was a very inadequate response from a team that has been in the national crosshairs for 10 days." And, she adds, "It was a missed opportunity from an organization that used to be extremely concerned about its public image."
Many fans are pissed and have reportedly been flooding the team's email inboxes with letters of complaint. And some fans protested outside Oracle Park ahead of Tuesday night's game against the A's, as SFGate reports.
One fan from Mission Bay, Albert Cromedy, said that the team's response has been "weak and lackluster," adding, "when it comes to apologies, you don’t kind-of apologize."
SF native and lifelong Giants fan Matt Foley was among the protesters, holding a bright yellow sign with the words "Bad and Bigoted," per the Chronicle.
He told the paper, "An underdog team is fun to root for … but I can’t support a bigoted team."
The protest is likely to extend and continue into the ballpark, particularly when pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, Ryan Walker, and Sam Hentges take to the mound. They've now made themselves pariahs to many of their own fans, and they're hiding behind their "Christianity" and likely what they perceive to be the political environment of Trump's second term — which was summed up in a tweet about the controversy from Vice President JD Vance, who said, "Trump won we don't have to do this anymore."
Vance's off-the-cuff statement is reflective of a hubris and sense of strident righteousness under the leadership of a president with historically low approval ratings — and a president whom many voted for not because they don't like LGBTQ people, but because they thought he'd make their gas and groceries cheaper.
And the mistake of history that is Donald Trump is not going to erase forty years of progress on the front of LGBTQ rights and inclusion, no matter what a few 27-year-old ballplayers or JD Vance may want to think. We do, in fact, still have to do this.
The LGBTQ community was not the beast to poke in San Francisco, and the Giants had better change their tune or else this will go down as a turning point for a once beloved and popular home team.
Top image: Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants at Chase Field on May 18, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Andy Kuno/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images)
