The Sweetest Revenge: Braves Win World Series

Seven months ago, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred declared that the Georgia soil was not good enough to host the league’s All-Star Game and moved it out of state. Tuesday night, the Atlanta Braves won baseball’s premier event, not on their home field but with Manfred in attendance. It was the metaphorical tomahawk chop he and all those who supported the decision richly deserved.

On April 2, the day after the 2021 season began, Manfred caved in to the woke destroy-it-all mob, announcing “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” because Georgia lawmakers had passed, and the governor signed, a law that was written to make it harder to rig elections. The league, Manfred explained, “fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”

The game was moved to Denver, a city with a much smaller percentage of non-white residents than Atlanta, in a state with voting laws no less restrictive than Georgia’s.

Of course the decision was applauded by all the “right people.”

“Congratulations to @MLB for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens,” tweeted former President Barack Obama.

Stacey Abrams, who lost the state’s last gubernatorial election to Brian Kemp but continues to push her own Big Lie that she’s the true winner – and has been transformed into a celebrity because of it by the media – said she was disappointed to lose the All-Star game but “​​proud of” the league’s “stance on voting rights.”

“For those who believe that the right to vote should be protected in Georgia and around the country, please join our fight,” she said.

Even Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, naturally a Democrat, supported the decision. She called it “likely the first of many dominoes to fall until the unnecessary barriers put in place to restrict access to the ballot box are removed.”

A fair reading of the law shows that it’s not “Jim Crow on steroids,” which was Biden’s childish description of the legislation, or anything close to it. Many of its provisions make it easier to vote in future Georgia elections than those in the past. But the left opposes any law that doesn’t make it easier to rig elections to ensure a permanent Democratic majority, and screeches “racism” at every effort to try to clean up voting.

Almost as rewarding as witnessing the Braves make Manfred and the self-righteous wokesters eat another sort of crow in Houston was seeing Truist Park in Atlanta full of fans enjoying the tomahawk chop and Indian war chant, both borrowed from Florida State Seminoles football, over the weekend. And then again Tuesday night at a watch party at the park that the baseball suits in essence smeared as a Klan meeting ground. (There was also a certain satisfaction in hearing “Let’s go, Brandon” during the Series as a pushback to the left’s attempts to politicize everything.)

Only a humorless scold, or a desperate virtue-signaler, and we have far too many of both in this country, believes the chop and the chant (and the Braves name) are manifestations of racism. There is something deeply wrong with today’s political-social puritans. They can’t bear to see anyone having fun unless the enjoyment is being derived from smearing Donald Trump, conservatives, Republicans, southerners, country folk, and Americans of a faith that isn’t Islam.

Which means the evening of Nov. 2, 2021, and the days of celebration to follow, will be especially hard on them. Hard enough, we hope, to open some eyes that have refused to see and ears that have refused to hear.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board