When Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (pictured above) hasn’t been busy presiding over the ruination of America’s former National Pastime, he has — like other major sports league overseers — engaged in his share of virtue-signaling.
With the MLB All-Star Game scheduled tonight in Atlanta, it dredges up the reminder that he took the extreme step to relocate the 2021 edition of the event out of the city and placed it in Denver. The reason? Because the Georgia legislature was in the process of advancing an election integrity law that Gov. Brian Kemp at the time explained “expands access to voting, secures ballot drop boxes around the clock in every county, expands weekend voting, protects no-excuse absentee voting. It levels the playing field on voter I.D. requirements as well as streamlining election procedures.” However, left-wing activists and then-President Biden demonized the bill — which is now law in the state — by calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”
For his part, Manfred said at the time:
Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box. In 2020, MLB became the first professional sports league to join the non-partisan Civic Alliance to help build a future in which everyone participates in shaping the United States. We proudly used our platform to encourage baseball fans and communities throughout our country to perform their civic duty and actively participate in the voting process. Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.
Manfred also said the decision to move the All-Star Game was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.” To illustrate how stupid the move was, the league ended up honoring Hank Aaron — who died earlier that year — in Denver, instead of the city where he was a legend, breaking the all-time home run record of Babe Ruth in 1974.
“Fair access to voting” and equal treatment of all voters’ ballots, without dilution via activities like mail-in ballots, inclusion of ballots by ineligible or phantom “voters,” etc., is exactly what the Georgia law sought to protect. And as NLPC pointed out at the annual shareholder meeting of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola in 2023, the Peach State has seen high numbers of election participation ever since the law was enacted — with the 5.3 million turnout in November 2024 setting an all-time record. We called out the beverage company’s Chairman/CEO, James Quincey, for saying in 2021 about the pending enactment of the law: “The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.”
As for Manfred, what led him to relent (not repent, as he has never apologized) and allow the All-Star Game back to Atlanta? After all, the election law is still on the books and we assume the sport’s “values” haven’t changed.
Maybe this, from the Wall Street Journal today, has something to do with it:
In the standings, the Atlanta Braves have been one of the most disappointing teams in baseball this season. Once expected to contend for a championship, they instead find themselves 11 games under .500. They would need a miraculous second half to even sniff the playoffs.
But in the eyes of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and other power players in the industry, the Braves aren’t just a bunch of underperforming no-hopers. In fact, they’re a shining example for the rest of the sport.
The reason has nothing to do with their success on the field. Rather, it’s because they have become an economic juggernaut off it—and have turbocharged perhaps the most profound change to the professional sports business in a generation.
“Everybody,” Manfred said at a Braves investor event last month, “looks at this model, frankly, with envy.”…
When the Braves set out to build a replacement for Turner Field, their former home just south of downtown Atlanta, they knew they were designing more than a sports venue. They were looking to create an entire neighborhood that would be a popular destination all year-round—with a baseball stadium serving as its anchor.
The result is the Battery Atlanta, a mixed-use development that has grown into a model that organizations across the sports landscape are now racing to copy…
And the Braves control it all, making them far more than a baseball team. They have become a real-estate developer.
“If you’re coming here and there’s no baseball game that day, there are still fun things that are going to be destination-oriented driving you to this experience,” Braves chief executive Derek Schiller says. “And, you know, making the cash register ring.”
Ah. The ka-ching is always the highest and greatest “value.” And Manfred’s leadership has been such a failure, that teams now need to also be in the real estate business just to survive.
