ROB MANFRED’S WEAK LEADERSHIP ON DISPLAY AGAIN WITH DODGERS’ PRIDE NIGHT DEBACLE

If a Law of Averages exists, Rob Manfred is due to get one right. Long overdue.

Following the Commissioner of Baseball is like watching .208 batters swing as hard as they can at 0-2 pitches. It defies logic — and helps explain why they’re batting .208 — but persists as a modern, sense-defying standard.

Our sports leagues are suddenly in the business of virtue signaling by conducting Pride Day/Night games to demonstrate support for the LGBTQ+ community.

What do such designated games have to do with baseball, football, basketball, hockey? Why has “live and let live” been replaced with shove it down our senses?

Unless a team refuses to sell a fan a ticket based on his or her sexuality — and I’m unaware that such is the case in any sport — the need to so conspicuously demonstrate such support strikes me as unnecessary cases of social showboating.

The backfires from such unsolicited and often malformed schemes are, as a matter of foresight, both inevitable and self-defeating.

Rob Manfred, as usual, butchered the handling of the Dodgers’ plan to honor the controversial Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. AP

Recently, the Dodgers’ sense of an inclusive LGBTQ+ Pride Night was set for later this month to include a group, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, designated by the team to be honored with its “Heroes of the Community” award.

If the Dodgers spent even 10 seconds examining who they were about to honor, they’re as twisted as these Sisters.

see also Former Mets pitcher Trevor Williams ‘deeply troubled’ by Dodgers’ Pride Night reversal

The “Sisters” are fringe lunatics, cross-dressers who paint their faces, wear nuns’ frocks and raise hell by ridiculing Catholics and Catholicism in the most public, provocative and obnoxious manner.

They don’t like the Catholic church’s positions on homosexuality, although those positions have become more embracing as church doctrine increasingly recognizes that no one owns the exclusive on being gay, thus, as it is said, we’re all God’s children.

And so it seemed incumbent on Commissioner Manfred that the Dodgers’ Pride Night, the “Sisters” chosen to be honored and eager to exploit the inclusive intent of the game with their attention-thirsty act, be canceled … on MLB’s orders.

And if Manfred became the target of radicals, condemned as a homophobe by those who don’t get it and don’t want to get it — it’s a mere baseball game — then so be it. That’s why he’s paid Commissioners’ dough and carries the title.

He could’ve issued a brief and firm not-on-my-watch statement: “As Commissioner I will not allow MLB to be in the business of allowing our games to serve as venues to bash anyone’s religion, let alone honor those who do so.”

MLB commissioner Rob ManfredAP

Then walked off a winner.

But such leadership is based on a firm, confident grasp of matters as opposed to gimmickry such as “ghost runners” to artificially determine extra-inning games.

But we already know Manfred to be weak and inclined toward neglect, then flight. He’s another who prefers to insult the right-minded than offend the most offensive.

see also Dodgers upset Clayton Kershaw with Pride Night fiasco as Christian faith event is announced

So the Dodgers, likely blithely unaware of the “Sisters’ ” act, pulled the plug on their plan to honor them. When, LGBTQ+ activists objected, they reversed their reversal.

And now, as the Dodgers, with MLB’s blessings, volunteered their schedule to serve as an unwanted and unneeded sociopolitical rally venue for the abusively intolerant, the Dodgers have scheduled an antidote: “Christian Faith and Family Day.” Perhaps it will include “Holy Ghost runners.”

Is everybody happy? Or is everyone fed up with the pandering, illogical and unwanted lunacy lately attached to our sports?

Last year, Manfred hopped on a train to punish Atlanta for Georgia’s new voting legislation, condemned by the wishful as racist. MLB, using the All-Star Game as a political cudgel, removed the game from half-black Atlanta depositing it in mostly white Denver.

Not only did that brilliant decision deprive black businesses of All-Star Game revenues, that dubious claim of “racist legislation,” led to the highest number of black voters in Georgia’s history — a fact Manfred has ignored.

Not that anyone will again care about the All-Star Game. A can’t-miss attraction since 1933, the escalation of interleague games under Manfred has rendered the “Midseason Classic” a Who Cares?

Sister Tootie Toot is a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.AP

Then there was Manfred’s blind, money-talks cross-promotional deal with the scandalized, crypto currency, smoke-in-a-bucket sellers, FTX.

How many baseball fans fell into that hole based on MLB’s conspicuous promotion of FTX’s legitimacy as MLB’s umpires were outfitted in FTX-logo uniforms as public certification and endorsement?

Due diligence? Nah, sign here. The checks are in the mail.

“We we will proceed with caution in the future,” Manfred explained after it was too late.

But why didn’t he have MLB proceed with caution before it first proceeded?

So on “Christian Faith and Family Day” at Dodger Stadium, Manfred will be on hand to throw out the first heretic.

Deserving honor awaits remarkable gambling counselor

After penicillin, the greatest life-saver to my knowledge is Arnie Wexler, over 50 years in the thankless business of rescuing anonymous souls and their families from the addiction of gambling.

And gambling is often a twin-addiction as it pairs with drugs, alcohol and even obesity in the downward spiral.

Wexler, 86, made his last best on April 10, 1968. You can look it up: He had the Mets on Opening Day when they blew a lead in the ninth to the Giants. He has spent the rest of his life as the go-to-guy for the gambling addicted.

see also equal time Craig Carton offers truth that doesn’t fit WFAN’s gambling narrative

That he has fought against insurmountable odds — with the help of vice-reliant legislators, America is now deeply invested in the business of bad-odds gambling aimed at vulnerable young adults — has made Wexler no less determined.

He taught me to know there’s nothing romantic about the media’s sell of gambling as something out of “Guys and Dolls,” nor is the human condition such that anyone and their loved ones are immune from the disease.

Wexler and his magnificent wife, Sheila, are Certified Compulsive Gambling Counselors who have successfully treated, in person and by extension, thousands of addicted, many, if it wasn’t too late, from the precipice of suicide.

As the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of NJ, Wexler took personal care of several candidates I sent him for his compassionate, yet no-nonsense, streetwise counseling that led to successful recovery. And Arnie, having quit gambling 55 years ago, never quit on those who lapsed.

While not a man of letters — his spelling is comically rotten — Wexler has been blessed with the ability to read humans better than any scholar I’ve known.

Even when he allowed me covert entry into G.A. meetings, he’d later tell me whose testimonies were legit versus those who were just conning themselves — and explain how he knew.

For a man who lost so many bets on horses, ballgames and turns of cards, he was never wrong about humans, starting with himself. He remains an extraordinarily accurate tout of souls, the most remarkable unremarkable man I’ve known.

On June 9 at the Law Center in New Brunswick, N.J., Arnie will be honored by the Council on Compulsive Gambling for a life of saving lives.

The featured speaker will be WFAN’s Craig Carton, a criminally addicted gambler now presumably in recovery and host of the Saturday morning show on gambling disorders. For details: [email protected].

2023-06-02T01:34:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd