New York Yankees Get Political, Make Run at World Series of Virtue Signaling
Love them or hate them, it’s impossible to deny that the New York Yankees are deeply woven into the overall fabric of North American professional sports.
That being said, it’s also undeniable that the Yankees are eminently unlikeable.
When they’re not outspending your favorite team to scoop up free agent talent left and right, their homegrown players are making superstar plays look easy.
Beyond that, there’s just something easily detestable about the superiority and smugness of the Bronx Bombers, from their upper management all the way to the very worst of their fans.
Some have the audacity to claim the team doesn’t spend enough money, for crying out loud.
Well, brace yourselves, sports fans. The Yankees have, against all odds, found a new way to be annoying.
The United Nations announced Wednesday that the Yankees have become the first North American sports team to join something called the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework.
The stated goal of the framework “is to bring greenhouse emissions in line with the Paris Climate Change Agreement and inspire others to take ambitious climate action.”
The Yankees are “committing to measure, reduce and offset their emissions and use sport as a unifying force to drive climate awareness and action,” the U.N. statement said.
Today, the Yankees became the 1st major North American sports team to sign on to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, the aim of which is to to bring greenhouse emissions in line with the Paris Climate Change Agreement & inspire others to take ambitious climate action. pic.twitter.com/KRFIwaQ31T
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) April 3, 2019
“For many years the Yankees have been implementing the type of climate action now enshrined in the Sports for Climate Action principles, and with this pledge the Yankees commit to continue to work collaboratively with our sponsors, fans and other relevant stakeholders to implement the UN’s climate action agenda in sports,” Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner, said in a statement.
Look, wanting to save the environment is one thing. In and of itself, the desire to leave the planet a better place than how you found it is a noble endeavor.
But the Yankees’ move sure looks like virtue signaling.
The role of human behavior in climate change is hardly definitive at this point. I don’t know nearly enough about the issue to make a statement one way or another.
What I do know, however, is that the Yankees are a sports team.
They should be in the business of trying to win the actual World Series, not the World Series of virtue signaling.
By claiming that their disputed science and costly solutions are, in fact, the only acceptable viewpoint spits in the face of many New York die-hards — the very same “passionate fans” that U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa described in the news release about the team joining the framework.
“I applaud the New York Yankees, this legendary club with its legions of passionate fans, for taking this important step, signing on to the Sports for Climate Action Framework,” Espinosa said. “We need leading organizations like the Yankees to stand up for ambitious action on climate change for the good of the planet and present and future generations.”
With 27 World Series wins on their resume, the Yankees and their fans had a certain level of credibility backing up their arrogance.
When it comes to climate change? The team doesn’t have nearly enough credibility to be virtue signaling this hard.
And considering it’s been almost a full decade since the Yankees even had a World Series appearance, perhaps they should be spending more time figuring out how to return to prominence than how to tell their fans what to think.
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