A curveball has been thrown at the Major League Baseball 2021 All-Star Game in light of the new Georgia voting law enacting sweeping changes to the state’s election rules.
The MLB Players Association signaled openness to considering whether the game, which is scheduled to take place at Truist Park in Atlanta on July 13, should be relocated in response to the state’s new voting overhaul.
Last Friday, MLB Players Association director Tony Clark told the Boston Globe that the union body is “very much aware” of the new Georgia voting law the includes new ID requirements for mail voting, limits on dropbox use and banning the distribution of food and most beverages to voters waiting in line.
Clark said that although the MLBPA has not had a conversation with the league regarding the potential relocation of the All-Star Game, the union president added that the body “would look forward to having that conversation” if the opportunity to do so.
TPM reached out to the MLBPA for comment.
Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts, who was tapped to manage the National League Team, told the LA Times on Friday that he would consider opting out of managing the All-Star Game this year if the MLB refuses to relocate the event.
Roberts, who is Black and Asian American and serves as one of two Black managers in MLB, found the battleground state’s new voting law “alarming.”
“When you’re trying to restrict African American votes — American citizens — that’s alarming to me to hear,” Roberts told the LA Times.
Talk of the potential relocation of the All-Star game comes on the heels of President Biden describing Georgia’s new voting overhaul legislation as “pernicious” and “un-American,” and that it “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) slammed Georgia’s new overhaul of its election rules as a way for politicians to “cherry pick” their own voters, during an interview on CNN Sunday.
“You had legislators who are running scared. So rather than having the people select their politician, the politicians try to cherry pick their voters,” Warnock told CNN. “This is an assault on the covenant we have with one another as an American people and it is my job to protect it.”
The possibility of the MLB relocating the event would be comparable to the NBA’s relocation of its All-Star Game in 2017 from Charlotte, North Carolina in response to state law discriminating against the LGBTQIA+ community.
