Tracing Partisanship In Baseball’s Politics

Baseball, insofar as anyone thinks about it all, is perceived as fairly nonpartisan, which is as it should be. You could argue that baseball is institutionally liberal — the commissioner’s office, for instance, is slightly to the left of reparations advocates on affirmative action, and the game’s commitment to large-scale subsidies for public construction projects is positively Lindsay-esque — but that’s balanced out by the inherent conservatism of the game itself, and by the fact that almost any time you hear a player speak up about politics he’s proclaiming himself a Republican. Basically, and rightfully so, baseball is just baseball.