Oh no, ya don’t…Major League Baseball shouldn’t get off this easy, and neither should the major villains in this debacle that Ethics Alarms flagged from the very start (along with others): Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, good election denier Stacy Abrams (when Democrats reject election results, it’s OK), and the President.

Major League Baseball announced that it has awarded the 2025 All-Star Game to Atlanta, or as one conservative wag put it, “finally decreed that Georgia is no longer racist.” You will recall that the sport had removed the 2021 game from the city after Abrams lobbied the sport to do so on the grounds that Georgia’s newly passed voter integrity law disenfranchised black voters. This was done without anyone in the Commissioner’s office bothering to read the supposedly racist law, which we know because Manfred moved the game to Denver, and Colorado has a law essentially identical to Atlanta’s. Joe Biden encouraged the MLB boycott too— he hadn’t bothered to read the law, either, or he wouldn’t have said it was “Jim Crow on steroids.”

The best part, however, was when Abrams, having pushed for the move, calling Manfred to insist on it, learned that most of the small businesses and Atlanta residents who would suffer because of the boycott (Atlanta lost an estimated $100 million in All-Star Game-related business revenue), claimed that she opposed MLB taking the game away (Biden’s puppeteers also denied that he had said what he said), double-talking this deceitful word salad:

“I am disappointed that the MLB is relocating the All-Star game; however I commend the players, owners and League commissioner for speaking out. I urge others in positions of leadership to do so as well. As I have stated, I respect boycotts, although I don’t want to see Georgia families hurt by lost events and jobs. Georgians targeted by voter suppression will be hurt as opportunities go to other states. We should not abandon the victims of GOP malice and lies — we must stand together.

Biden screwed over Atlanta, and then denied it. Abrams did the same. Now Major League Baseball has reversed itself and will hold the All-Star Game in Atlanta despite the fact that the supposed “Jim Crow” law remains. That’s the equivalent of saying, “Oopsie!” and “Never mind,” but what MLB owes Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia Republicans and the nation is a straightforward apology.

Manfred was willing to declare that Georgia Republicans had passed a racist law. It was a hasty, irresponsible, partisan decision without a factual basis, and he ought to admit that. He couldn’t do better than quoting a predecessor, former Commissioner Fay Vincent, who wrote, in opposing the 2012 boycott,

…the American people view baseball as a public trust.They want the game to stand for the best and noblest of our national virtues. They see baseball as the repository of their dreams, even as they root for their favorite teams. They don’t want, and won’t accept, anything that separates them from the game’s history and leadership. Major League Baseball can’t become a weapon in the culture wars, a hostage for one political party or ideology. It can’t be only for the rich or the poor, nor can it only be for one race, as it was until 1947. Baseball must always stand above politics and its dark elements of corruption, greed and sordid selfishness. It can’t go wrong by standing for national greatness.

For the characterization of the law by Biden, Abrams and race-baiting progressives proved to be pure hooey, propaganda and public disinformation, just as objective analysts—like me—said when they were screaming. Minority turnout increased in Georgia as the GOP won most 2022 statewide contests by impressive margins. A University of Georgia poll showed that few black voters had issues while voting.

I would love to see the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia tell Manfred that they’ll let bygones be bygones and allow baseball to hold its All-Star Game there, but only after there has been a formal and public apology issued stating that its boycott in 2021 was wrong, unfair, devastating to Atlanta businesses, and based on political pressures that MLB’s leaders should have ignored.

That’s what I would do, and I suppose this is one reason that I’m not mayor of Atlanta.