I'm Glad Some Crazy Journalist Scolded Baseball Over Atlanta Getting its All-Star Game Back

Every now and again we should revisit 2020-2021

When looking back on the Twitter Era (2012-2022), I’ll always struggle with the degree to which prominent people loudly acted as passionate true believers in causes they quickly forgot about forever. I’m not patting myself on the back when saying “I can’t relate.” I literally can’t. I might be wrong about an issue, but my public statements aren’t an act, designed to emotionally mirror social media intensity. Nothing makes sense to me wholly on the basis of enough people shrieking it in unison. I suspect a lot of you feel similarly, which is why you subscribe. You might not agree with what I say, but you more or less trust that I mean it, and you place a value on that after a long stretch of so many media members floridly faking it.

Back in the Twitter Era, it was one cause after another, Current Thing replaced by Current Thing. In 2020-2021, we reached a crescendo of constant memetic madness unlike anything I’d ever seen. The intensity of those pandemic era moments can’t be conveyed unless you lived through them. Increasingly, I suspect a lot of us who lived through such events have, as a self protective measure, forgotten.

I sometimes find myself forgetting, not intentionally, but just out of reflex. When my mind wanders to the ugliness of those days, specifically how unhinged respected people and institutions got, it quickly redirects to something current. It’s why I occasionally hesitate on revisiting. Do I want to go back? Do any of my readers want to remember?

It’s a shame because there’s a lot of content there. The past may be a foreign country, but that past, the one that exists within a half decade of living memory, is like another planet. And so I’m thankful to Jen Ramos Eisen, the masked Defector journalist at 2025 Atlanta All Star Weekend, who seems pretty insane. She’s still in that 2020-2021 moment and and demanding answers from MLB representatives as to why they’re not. I like that someone has to explain a departure from positions they once fervently held. I don’t share this person’s set of concerns, but I appreciate watching people walk through why they’re no longer so hyperbolic.

The Awful Announcing headline for the situation was, “Pat McAfee, Dave Roberts sidestep question about MLB’s Atlanta return following 2021 All-Star Game relocation.” The Outkick the Coverage headline for the situation was “Mask-Wearing Liberal 'Reporter' Asks MLB All-Star Manager Dave Roberts About Georgia Voting Laws.”

I thought Pat McAfee, there for some ESPN reason, did a pretty good job handling the hot potato. He wasn’t specific, but he was polite and respectful. It was a mess of a scenario. Ramos was rubbing Dave Roberts’ face in quotes about “Asian Hate” that were falsely framed as pertaining to the voting laws. Ramos’ quote selection was rather odd because Roberts, like so many other institutional actors, had been supportive of Major League Baseball’s 2021 decision to relocate the All-Star game out of Atlanta over voting legislation. There were pertinent quotes that could have fit Ramos’ case, but whatever.

I gotta say, just calling balls and strikes, the Outkick article by Dan Zaksheske was better than the Awful Announcing piece by Sean Keeley. Sure the former was on the side of one political perspective, but it actually provided evidence that voter participation increased after the laws. The Awful Announcing piece was acting as fake arbiter, complimenting Ramos without noting the quote error. Of McAfee, the writer said:

The oft-outspoken host who often rails against “suits” and corporate entities then towed the company line with a word salad defense of Atlanta.

Hey I commit typos too, probably including within this article, but I’d suggest not saying “towed the company line” before accusing someone else of “word salad.” I do think there’s something to this paragraph from Keeley, though:

MLB has been accused on several occasions of acquiescing to President Donald Trump and right-wing agendas recently. Considering that nothing changed in Georgia between 2021 and 2025, it stands to reason that the game’s return to the state, Monday’s “stick to sports” responses, and the “please don’t be mean to Atlanta” sentiment in their answers to a genuinely fair question also speak to this.

Ya, what changed? The obvious answer is that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election but Atlanta was re-awarded its All-Star game back in 2023. What changed, to beat a long battered HoS dead horse, was that Elon Musk bought Twitter. When that happened, mainstream institutions stopped getting scared into action by a dominant progressive frame.

I did a search for 2021 sports media opinions on this voter law topic, and what I discovered was less sports media craziness than mass institutional hysteria on Georgia’s voter ID laws. Then president Joe Biden called the rules, “Jim Crow on steroids,” and a lot of major actors accepted that bonkers framing.

Coca-Cola and Delta Air condemned the law. Even golfers at the Masters spoke out against it. Barack Obama praised Major League Baseball for punishing Atlanta, claiming it as a tribute to the late great Hank Aaron.

Looking back, this represented a significant cultural victory for one side’s perspective, if not its peak. The Democrats had claimed such a degree of rhetorical power, with Donald Trump cast to post-January 6th wilderness. The Dem view on matters of racial controversy was as institutionally accepted as the early 2000’s Republican view on war. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said of baseball’s move:

Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.

That sounds nice, but the obvious problem is that of course there are restrictions to the ballot box. I can’t just show up on election day and drop a crumpled up napkin with my preference written in crayon. Even in my home state of California there are rules.

I’m not defending the specifics of the bill but making the point that a lot of “powerful” arguments for “change” back then were fairly specious. If Manfred meant what he said, then does he not support voting rights now? Does he have a big problem with Georgia’s laws? The implication drawn from events is that he was simply repeating whatever catechism caught in those days, just hoping to not get yelled at. And the “yelled at” machine has since changed ownership.

The ultimate upshot of “Jim Crow on steroids,” was that Georgia set a midterm turnout record in 2022 and then a presidential election turnout record in 2024. The state bucked national trends in 2024 with an increase of participation, one of only five states to accomplish that. I’m sure the 2021 law could be argued with, and has flaws, but can we admit that the 2021 framing of this legislation was an absolutely insane crying of wolf? “Jim Crow on steroids”? “Jim Crow 2.0”? Such an insult of what people went through in the past. This was all accepted at major outlets as completely normal rhetoric, not worthy of being pushed back on if you wished to remain respectable. Indeed, it was just accurate outrage, highlighting why the city of Atlanta must be punished.

Now we’re out of those days, in another era that’s uncanny for its own reasons. Rob Manfred and other corporations won’t go so far as to admit they went nuts, in response to pressure. They’re mostly back to an attempt at neutrality versus taking up with one side. To some journalists still somewhat stuck in 2020-2021, neutral feels like betrayal. Also, there’s no one in their midst to mention that, in their heyday, they kind of went too far.