Major League Baseball warned players not to write on their caps after multiple San Francisco Giants pitchers scribbled Bible verses on their Pride Night hats this past Friday. That warning has now led Missouri Senator Josh Hawley to send a letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred questioning the league’s message to the players.
During Friday’s game, “Gen 9:12-16” was inscribed next to the rainbow “SF” emblem on Giants pitcher Landen Roupp’s cap. Relief pitchers J.T. Brubaker and Ryan Walker also wrote Bible verses on their caps.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations,” Pat Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer, said in a statement on Monday.
According to the MLB Basic Agreement that all players sign, “No alterations, writing or illustrations, other than as authorized herein, are to be made to any part of the uniform.”
Major League Baseball also said in a statement that its warning “had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message. … However, writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited per Major League Baseball’s uniform regulations which provides in part that, ‘(a) player may not write, attach, affix, embroider or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment…’ We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad,’ ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
Pretty cut and dried, right? Not according to Senator Josh Hawley, who has often been in the news discussing his belief that the government possesses UFOs of “non-human origin” that can “turn us into a charcoal briquette.”
Senator Josh Hawley questions MLB’s warning about players writing on their caps
“I write with grave concern over your reported decision to issue a formal warning to three Major League Baseball (MLB) players for publicly expressing their Christian faith,” Senator Hawley wrote in an open letter to Rob Manfred. “This follows a high-profile undercover investigation that revealed at least one MLB team discriminated against a player based on his Catholic faith. You must answer for what appears to be a pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.”
Hawley continued, writing, “The league’s claim that it merely forbids ‘writing of any kind’ on its uniforms does not survive a cursory review of the league’s recent history. In 2020, MLB itself turned its uniforms and its fields into a billboard for political and social messages. It created jersey patches reading ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘United for Change.’ It authorized ‘BLM’ to be stenciled onto pitching mounds. And it suspended its own equipment rules so that players could display progressive political slogans on their cleats. The league went beyond tolerating speech—it designed speech, promoted speech, and shoehorned social and political messages into the game broadcast to millions of Americans. Yet when three players added a handful of characters citing the Book of Genesis to their caps, the league reached for its rulebook.”
He then made numerous requests of Major League Baseball to respond by no later than June 19, 2026, including information about regulations and club policies related to uniforms, and instances over the past five seasons in which the league warned, fined, or otherwise disciplined a player or club under those regulations.