ARLINGTON — Rafael McDonnell has bigger things to worry about.
It’s hard to make a push for recognizing his community and identity at a baseball game when the tenor of the state Legislature seemed, to him and other advocates, determined to push the LGBTQ community back into a closet.
According to Equality Texas, an LGBTQ advocacy group, the just-completed legislative session included more than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills. A dozen of them were passed.
So about the crusade for a Pride Day or any kind of outward recognition of the community at a Texas Rangers game, the one team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t participate, well, it’s that old baseball cliché with which lifelong Rangers fans like McDonnell are all too familiar: Wait ‘til next year.
In other words, June — and Pride Month — will soon end while the Rangers are at home against Seattle and Baltimore. There will be no recognition for another year.
“Based on things happening in the world, there’s a lot of triage in the community as a whole,” said McDonnell, the advocacy, policy and communications director for the Dallas-based Resource Center, which supports the North Texas LGBTQ community. “You have to pick and choose where you put your energy. Right now, it’s hard to raise the level of outrage about a baseball game.”
Don’t misunderstand McDonnell, who will turn 60 this year, still has a promotional Ted Williams bat from the first Rangers game he attended at Arlington Stadium and has been to 31 major league stadiums. It’s not that he no longer cares. It’s that other issues have taken precedence.
Where the Rangers are concerned, he’ll make his case the only way he can: If the Rangers won’t recognize him, he’ll spend “what few dollars I have,” elsewhere. He and his longtime partner instead plan to go see the A’s this summer in Sacramento, Calif. It’s almost fitting. The Rangers, he feels, have kind of left him without a home, so he’ll go watch the baseball team without one.
The Rangers and the New York Yankees are the only MLB teams not to have officially named “Pride Nights,” though in the Yankees’ case it’s more semantics. The Yankees have in the past honored scholarship winners from the LGBTQ-focused Stonewall Initiative. This year, they went further, promoting a “Legacy of Pride” celebration before their June 16 game against the Los Angeles Angels.
The Rangers haven’t gone that far. Not outwardly. Oh, in the background they’ve offered some support and resources. Most recently, they were a sponsor of the NAGAAA Gay Softball World Series in 2022. Even hosted a large group of participants at a game, though there was no official recognition.
They’ve worked with local groups such as the Pegasus Slow-Pitch Softball Association. They’ve donated to auctions to benefit Resource Center initiatives. They worked directly with McDonnell to create a still-functioning internal inclusion and community impact council. And, through their foundation, they’ve spent a lot of time on anti-bullying messaging through the club’s MLB Youth Academy in West Dallas.
But when it comes to specifically addressing the LGBTQ community or the decision to not join the rest of MLB in some type of public-facing recognition, the club is mum. Principal owner Ray Davis declined to comment on the matter.
The Rangers’ lone statement on the matter, similar to previous years, well, it’s kind of got “don’t say gay,” messaging.
“Our longstanding commitment remains the same: To make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball – That means in our ballpark, at every game, and in all we do – for both our fans and our employees,” said the club’s statement. “We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community.”
It leaves a lot open to interpretation and theorizing. The LGBTQ community sees it as uncaring at its best, discriminatory at its worst. From the Rangers’ side, it appears to be more about being consistent.
If the Rangers’ brand could be summed up in a word, it would probably be “backyard,” a word that conjures up relaxation and an escape from the real world. Which, right or wrong, leads to an entirely different debate.
To that point, in the summer of 2020, the Rangers’ reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement was more muted than many other clubs. What is one person’s view of something as “societal” is to another “political.” The Rangers would probably prefer debates in their backyard to focus on whether manager Bruce Bochy left his starter in too long or not.
And if social media can be believed, the Rangers’ stance has been met publicly with at least as much support as derision. There has not been a groundswell of outrage against the stance. There were no protests ahead of last year’s All-Star Game.
McDonnell doesn’t buy that a Pride Night or other-named recognition night is divisive. He sees local teams like the Stars and Mavs host Pride Nights without any significant issues.
He’s also a realist. Last summer, when the All-Star Game came to Arlington, he heard what MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said about the lack of a Pride Night factoring or not factoring into the Rangers’ getting the All-Star Game. It came three years after Atlanta lost an All-Star Game, at least temporarily, because of the enactment of more restrictive voting rights laws. The game will be played in Atlanta next month. And Manfred has walked back any desire to get involved in what he sees as political debates.
“There are a whole host of factors that go into deciding who’s going to get an All-Star Game, and I don’t view whether you have a Pride Night or not as an outcome-determinative issue,” Manfred said last year. “It’s an issue. We look at all those issues and make the best decision and try to give it to the place that we think is going to kind of be the best in terms of marketing of the game.”
So, McDonnell feels left without a baseball home. He did attend some All-Star Game events last year as a guest of MLB through his relationship with Senior Vice President for Inclusion Billy Bean. Bean died of cancer less than a month later and, McDonnell notes, he’s had scant correspondence with MLB since.
He did not attend a Rangers regular-season game in 2024 as they celebrated their first World Series title from 2023. He won’t be going this year, though he did go to a spring training game in Surprise, Ariz.
“This has split my fandom,” he said. “I was thrilled to be able to go to some of the All-Star events because of my love of the game. I’m still a supporter of the sport, but in terms of the Rangers themselves, I haven’t been to a regular-season game since they won it all. There is still that level of fandom for the support, even if my feelings toward the Rangers have ebbed. I was pleased for the players, the manager and the fans. I hoped it would help make for a new beginning.”
It has not. He’s not giving up, though. He will continue to hope for some level of outward recognition of the LGBTQ community, whether it’s called a Pride Night or not. He’s not giving up hope.
And he’ll use another baseball cliché to explain it.
“There is a part of me that thinks this will change at some point,” he said. “I’m not sure how rooted in reality that is. But I’ve got that hope. I’ve also got a community in crisis. I’m having to play a lot more defense than in the past.
“That’s where my focus and energy have to be. But I’m not taking my eye off the ball.”
For now, he’ll wait ‘til next year.
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