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2025-07-15 -Short Attention Span Theater-
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Atlanta got its MLB All-Star Game back. But controversial laws 'haven't changed'
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[USAtoday] The 2021 All-Star Game was yanked after Georgia passed controversial voting laws. Why did MLB give it back?
ATLANTA — The All-Star Game is back on in Georgia. But the conditions that caused its removal in 2021 have not changed.
In fact, voting rights experts say, conditions have only worsened for potentially disenfranchised voters.
Stacey Abrams hardest hit. She was a big fat mouf pushing the removal of the ASG
The eyes of the baseball world will be on Truist Park in suburban Cobb County July 15, when Major League Baseball’s 95th All-Star Game is played, four years after the league moved the game in the wake of Georgia passing the Election Integrity Act. State Bill 202 rolled back voting by mail and other absentee ballot options and prohibited distribution of food and water to those standing in line to vote — actions that historically would have greatest impact on Black voters.
"I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft," commissioner Rob Manfred said then. "Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box."
Manfred’s action came three days after President Joe Biden said he’d support moving the game out of Atlanta. Given MLB’s actions to remove the term "diversity" from a careers page earlier this year in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order against such efforts, a charitable interpretation would suggest Manfred, as he’s stated, is most concerned with complying with federal law and the whims of the current chief executive.
Yet the game was returned to Atlanta in November 2023, two years after the Braves — who’d go on to win the 2021 World Series — and Georgia politicians blistered MLB’s decision, with Gov. Brian Kemp declaring that "cancel culture and woke political activists are coming for every aspect of your life, sports included."
Kemp struck a tone of appeasement when the game was returned, noting in a statement that "Georgia’s voting laws haven’t changed, but it’s good to see the MLB’s misguided understanding of them has."
In returning the game to Georgia, Manfred leaned into the host team’s chops, if you will, while striking an apolitical tone.
"I've said it before, we wanted to bring an All-Star Game back to Atlanta," Manfred said at the owners’ meetings in Arlington, Texas. "I made a decision in 2021 to move the event and I understand, believe me, that people had then and probably still have different views as to the merits of that decision.
"What's most important is that the Atlanta Braves are a great organization. Truist Park and The Battery are gems in terms of the facilities, and Atlanta and Georgia have been great markets for us for a very, very long time. Atlanta deserves an All-Star Game, and we're really looking forward to being there in 2025."
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Posted by Beavis 2025-07-15 00:00||
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