In as close to apology as Major League Baseball is likely to offer Atlanta, Commissioner Rob Manfred last week said the city will host the 2025 All-Star Game.
That’s a tacit admission that MLB was wrong to yank the 2021 classic from the Big Peach — since Manfred justified that decision as based on Georgia’s then-new voting law, which remains in effect.
Back then, the law was the target of a massive liberal smear campaign, with no less than President Biden raging at “Jim Crow 2.0” and urging MLB to make Atlanta suffer for it.
The accusation was always utterly unhinged: The law simply rolled back some extreme easy-voting rules imposed during the pandemic.
Adding to the injustice, MLB moved the game to Denver — though Colorado’s voting laws were more restrictive than Georgia’s after the reform.
By the way, Georgia’s next elections proved the critics wrong, with record turnout and zero sign that of black disenfranchisement.
But back in 2021, corporate America (including MLB) was deep in its Black Lives Matter cringe, indulging all manner of nonsense in the wake of the George Floyd riots.
And Democrats from Biden on down were trying to exploit these issues to pass a national voting law; the prez (and our own Sen. Chuck Schumer) felt no compunction about smearing Georgia to benefit the Democratic Party.
So (largely black) Atlanta businesses and workers lost out on the All-Star largesse.
Manfred’s decision now is at least a quasi make-good for his 2021 insult: Consider it MLB eating some crow.
Biden, Schumer and Democrats generally still owe Atlanta — indeed, all of Georgia — some fulsome apologies.
Then again, Georgia is a swing state that Biden can ill-afford to lose next November: He just might find himself paying the ultimate political price for his smear.
