Manfred won’t say how MLB would react to Texas election law

By: Ronald Blum, The Associated Press Posted: 2:53 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2021

DENVER (AP) — Hours before baseball's All-Star Game at Denver's Coors Field, commissioner Rob Manfred wouldn't say whether he would rule out any events in Texas if a law is adopted changing election laws there.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/07/2021 (1590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DENVER (AP) — Hours before baseball’s All-Star Game at Denver’s Coors Field, commissioner Rob Manfred wouldn’t say whether he would rule out any events in Texas if a law is adopted changing election laws there.

The game on Tuesday night was awarded to Atlanta and what then was called SunTrust Park on May 2019. Manfred moved it in April from the renamed Truist Park because of a Georgia voting law that critics say will negatively affect communities of color. His decision generally was denounced by conservatives and praised by liberals.

“I think the decision with respect to Atlanta was probably the hardest thing I’ve been asked to do so far,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I’m kind of hoping it’s going to be the hardest thing I get asked to do, period.”

FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2019, file photo, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred speaks to the media at the owners meeting in Arlington, Texas. Pitchers will be ejected and suspended for 10 games for using illegal foreign substances to doctor baseballs in a crackdown by Major League Baseball that will start June 21. The commissioner’s office, responding to record strikeouts and a league batting average at a more than half-century low, said Tuesday, June 15, 2021, that major and minor league umpires will start regular checks of all pitchers, even if opposing managers don’t request inspections.(AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

Republicans in Texas have proposed legislation that would outlaw 24-hour polling places, ban drop boxes for mail ballots and empower partisan poll watchers. Republicans say the measures are needed to fight fraud. Democrats counter fraud is very rare and the bills target their supporters.

MLB already has awarded the 2022 All-Star Game to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which was to have hosted the 2020 game that was canceled because of the pandemic, and the 2026 game to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia as part of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

“I’m not going to speculate about who’s going to pass what law and where we might take jewel events,” Manfred said. “It’s hard enough to deal with it in the concrete real time. I just don’t think it’s productive for me.”

Manfred also would not say what would have to happen for Atlanta to be awarded an All-Star Game.

“I’m not going to get into what I would need to see changed,” he said. “Atlanta’s an important market to us, and it certainly will be an option at some point in the future.”