OPINION:
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was settled in unprecedented fashion this week in Atlanta. The American and National Leagues battled to a 6-6 tie after nine innings, and the winner was decided using a method never before employed: the swing-off.
Each manager chose three players who got three swings apiece in a home run derby setting, and the side hitting the most home runs won. Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber went 3-for-3 on homers to give the NL the win, taking home the Most Valuable Player award as the final score went down as 7-6.
Some baseball purists might hate the new tiebreaking system, but many fans seemed to like it, and the players sure looked like they did.
The thing is, this game should have been played in this city four years ago, but the 2021 edition of the MLB Midsummer Classic was abruptly revoked from Atlanta, as the baseball season opened, and moved to Denver after the political left erupted in a prolonged tantrum over Georgia’s new election integrity law.
Passed with only Republican votes in the state legislature and signed into law earlier that year, the 2021 Georgia election law expanded early voting, formalized the use of drop boxes in state law for the first time and increased identification requirements for absentee ballots, among other improvements.
Democrats and their media allies immediately went bonkers and declared the new law to be the greatest abomination to afflict humanity since the last time they labeled something an abomination. They always do this whenever functional election integrity measures are discussed because they don’t want elections to be secure and protected from fraud, and they fell back on their default setting of fanning racial unrest and division.
President Biden called it “Jim Crow of the 21st Century” — and that was the tame stuff.
“Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” Mr. Biden demanded. “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
MSNBC ran a headline claiming, “GOP advances new voting restrictions, worst ‘since the Jim Crow era.’”
NPR said the Georgia law “imposes a series of new restrictions on elections” and specifically characterized it as “leading to less access for some groups.”
CBS carried water in a headline that read, “Democrats sue over Georgia rules they say could block election certifications.”
David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote that Republicans in Georgia were “trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe that lower voter turnout helps their party win elections.”
Back then, the MLB fell in line, as the left intended.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said as he yanked the All-Star Game from Atlanta in April 2021, instantly depriving that metro area of $100 million in revenue, according to state tourism officials.
However, all the opposition was quickly proved to be based on lies because Georgia set a record for voter turnout under the new law in the next election in May 2022.
In practice, voter turnout increased dramatically for both parties compared with previous elections under the old laws. The Associated Press reported a “record number of ballots” cast in the early voting period. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that “voters encountered short lines and limited problems.”
Obviously, nothing was wrong with the law in 2021. It’s still on the books. The MLB All-Star Game returned to Atlanta this week, with virtually everyone simply moving on and pretending the whole 2021 thing never happened.
That’s not acceptable.
People must be reminded of how cynical and wrong Democrats and the media were about the Georgia law, how they lied and tried to gain political advantage by inflaming racial animosity.
People also should remember because they will inevitably try it again.
There will always be those who roll out the same arguments over and over, even after they have been proved wrong, like the reporter who asked Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts about the fiasco and referred to “a voter suppression law” in her question.
Mr. Roberts smartly sidestepped it this time despite embracing the left’s position in 2021. Pittsburgh Pirates pitching phenomenon Paul Skenes and ESPN personality Pat McAfee were also present but wanted no part in responding.
In the end, the biggest controversy about this year’s All-Star Game was the home run derby finish, largely because baseball officials declined to take the bait when asked dishonest, misleading and loaded questions about political topics.
It would be great if they had done that the last time.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign. He is the grandson of former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh, who twice managed the National League in the MLB All-Star Game.
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