A minor league baseball team, the York Revolution, declined to play its Pride Night game on Thursday after players refused to wear uniforms that featured a rainbow design, team officials said. The team’s game against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs was going to mark the Pennsylvania team’s 11th Annual Pride Night, but players refused to don special jerseys that had rainbow sleeves.

Team Decision

Thursday night’s scheduled game will go down as a forfeit, the Revolution said. The team’s president and GM, Ben Shipley, said his manager told him on Tuesday that less than nine players — the minimum number needed to fill out a lineup card — on the 28-man roster were willing to play in Thursday night’s uniforms.

Shipley said he was unable to talk players into wearing the rainbow sleeves, and the team decided that hosting the event was more important than forcing players to wear jerseys they were not comfortable with and playing the game. Other Pride Night events are still set to go on as scheduled, free of charge, at the ballpark.

The team is set to return to action on Friday against Southern Maryland. Team officials criticized their own players for refusing to celebrate the LGBTQ community. The incident in York unfolded less than a week after four players with the MLB San Francisco Giants staged a silent protest against the team’s Pride Night celebration by writing Bible references on their hats.

Original reporting: NBC Connecticut — read the source article.