[How the Nationals’ star reliever became the conscience of
baseball. ]
[[link removed]]

SEAN DOOLITTLE, BASEBALL’S LEFT-WING LEFTY, RETIRES  
[[link removed]]


 

Peter Dreier
October 6, 2023
The Nation
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ How the Nationals’ star reliever became the conscience of
baseball. _

Sean Doolittle, by Ian D'Andrea on Flickr

 

Sean Doolittle may lack the notoriety of Colin Kaepernick, Megan
Rapinoe, or LeBron James, but he’s the most outspoken progressive
professional athlete of the 21st century.  

Doolittle will never make the Hall of Fame as a ballplayer, but he’s
a Hall of Fame activist and humanitarian. _Sports
Illustrated_ called Doolittle “the conscience of baseball.” He
spoke out for the rights of workers, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people,
and military veterans, as well as racism, gun violence, and DC
statehood. He stood up to Donald Trump and sat down reading to
children at bookstores. His joined the Democratic Socialists of
America, which in 2022 hosted him discussing baseball and socialism
[[link removed]].

“When I was a kid, I remember my parents would say, ‘Baseball is
what you do, but that’s not who you are’—like that might be my
job, but that’s not the end-all, be-all,” he told
[[link removed].] _The
New York Times_. “I feel like I might even be able to use it to help
other people.”

In 11 years
[[link removed]] in the
majors, Doolittle was the ace left-handed reliever for the Oakland
A’s and Washington Nationals. A two-time All-Star, he helped lead
the Nationals to the 2019 World Series championship. But his career
was hampered by constant injuries.

Doolittle never fully recovered from his July 2022 elbow surgery. He
spent this season in the minors, but made only 11 appearances, his
elbow problems compounded by a knee injury.

Last month the 36-year old Doolittle announced on Instagram that he
was retiring “with gratitude and a full heart” from “the sport I
love.”

Doolittle was among the most popular players among fans in Oakland and
Washington. A huge Star Wars fan, Doolittle calls himself “Obi-Sean
Kenobi Doolittle.” His Twitter handle—@whatwouldDOOdo
[[link removed]]—was filled with his enthusiasm
for sports, books, music, movies, and politics. He and his
wife, Eireann Dolan, whom he met while she was a reporter covering
the A’s and married in 2017, approach life with a sense of humor,
often poking fun at each other and themselves in their constant
tweets.

At the University of Virginia, he was a slugging first baseman as well
as an outstanding pitcher. Drafted by the A’s in 2007 as a first
baseman, Doolittle left college after his junior year and spent three
years in the minors. He missed the next three seasons to injuries and
surgery. The 6-foot-2 Doolittle began his comeback in 2012 as a relief
pitcher for the A’s. By 2014, he made the All-Star team.

Traded to the Nationals in 2017, he had another All-Star season in
2018 and the following year had 29 saves, 66 strikeouts, and only 25
walks in 60 innings, despite frequent injuries. In three World Series
appearances that season, he didn’t allow a run. He and Dolan made
Washington, D.C., their home, were active in the community, and
embraced the cause of D.C. statehood
[[link removed]].

Doolittle has always been clear about his priorities: “Sports are
like the reward of a functioning society.”

In 2015, the couple organized a Thanksgiving dinner for 17 Syrian
refugee families in Chicago, Dolan’s hometown. “We just felt it
was a way we could welcome them to America, to let them know there are
people who are glad they’re here,” Doolittle recalled.

That year, the A’s hosted their first Pride Night. Some social media
trolls threatened to boycott the event. In response, Doolittle and
Dolan hatched a plan to buy tickets from season ticket holders. They
raised almost $40,000 from over 1,000 contributors through
a GoFundMe campaign, which provided tickets and buses for 900 LGBTQ
youth to attend the game.

“There should be no discrimination or hate in the game or a
stadium,” Doolittle said.

In 2018, when the media exposed antigay slurs tweeted by several
ballplayers, Doolittle tweeted:

It can be tough for athletes to understand why these words are so
hurtful. Most of us have been at the top of the food chain since HS,
immune to insults. When all you’ve known is success and triumph it
can be difficult to empathize with feeling vulnerable or marginalized.
Homophobic slurs are still used to make people feel soft or weak or
otherwise inferior—which is bullshit. Some of the strongest people I
know are from the LGBTQIA community. It takes courage to be your true
self when your identity has been used as an insult or a pejorative.

At the Nationals’ 2019 Pride Day, Doolittle wore a trans flag on his
right baseball shoe, a rainbow flag on his left shoe, and a
Nationals-branded rainbow shirt under his uniform.

“Everyone deserves to feel safe and free to be who they are and to
love who they love. Love is love,” said Doolittle.

In October 2019, after fellow Nationals pitcher Daniel Hudson faced
criticism for missing a game to be with his wife for the birth of
their child. Doolittle defended his friend on Twitter: “If your
reaction to someone having a baby is anything other than,
‘Congratulations, I hope everybody is healthy,’ you’re an
asshole.”

In 2016, after then-candidate Trump dismissed his vulgar “grab their
pussy” comment as just “locker room talk,” Doolittle retorted:
“As an athlete, I’ve been in locker rooms my entire adult life
and, uh, that’s not locker room talk.”

In January 2017, Trump signed a travel ban against Muslims, sparking
nationwide protests. Doolittle commented:

These refugees are fleeing civil wars, terrorism, religious
persecution, and are thoroughly vetted for 2yrs. A refugee ban is a
bad idea…. It feels un-American. And also immoral.

Refugees aren’t stealing a slice of the pie from Americans. But if
we include them, we can make the pie that much bigger, thus ensuring
more opportunities for everyone.

When white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in 2017,
Doolittle tweeted: “The C’ville I knew from my time @UVA is a
diverse and accepting community. It’s no place for Nazis.”

When the Nationals won the 2019 World Series, Doolittle and several
teammates boycotted the White House celebration with Trump. He
criticized Trump’s “divisive rhetoric and the enabling of
conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country.” He
told _The Washington Post_, “I don’t want to hang out with
somebody who talks like that.
[[link removed]]’”

In 2019, the New Era Cap Company, which makes caps for all major
league teams, announced it was closing its unionized factory in
Derby, N.Y., to move to nonunion facilities in Florida. In
a _Washington Post _op-ed column, Doolittle wrote that ballplayers
“will be wearing caps made by people who don’t enjoy the same
labor protections and safeguards that we do.” He
told _ThinkProgress_, “It’s basically union-busting, plain and
simple,” adding that major leaguers should be “wearing caps made
by people earning a union wage.”

When MLB put its season on indefinite hold in response to the Covid-19
pandemic in March 2020, Doolittle and Dolan hunkered down in a Florida
house, where he could exercise and stay in shape. They hosted a
podcast about their daily lives, discussing the books they were
reading during the lockdown. No player was more eager to return to
play than Doolittle, but he was the first to publicly oppose MLB’s
plans to restore play without adequate public health protections and
guarantees that players and other workers would be compensated during
the long layoff.

Dolan, his alter ego, tweeted:

What about the non-millionaire hotel workers, security staff, grounds
crews, media members, team traveling staffs, clubhouse attendants,
janitorial workers, food service workers, and the billion other people
required to make that 3.5-hour game happen every night?

Doolittle urged his fellow major league players to demonstrate
“solidarity with those workers who are in those supporting roles.”
He added: “Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. Stay safe.
Keep washing your hands and wearing your masks. I hope we get to play
baseball for you again soon.”

When MLB proposed shaving $100 from every minor leaguer’s $400
weekly paycheck during the pandemic, Doolittle and several Nationals
teammates pledged to cover the lost income of players on the
Nationals’ farm teams.

“Minor leaguers are an essential part of our organization and they
are bearing the heaviest burden of this situation as their season is
likely to be cancelled,” Doolittle explained. “We recognize that
and want to stand with them in support.”

Players on other teams did the same. Embarrassed, the owners withdrew
the plan.

In response to the mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Tex., in 2022,
Doolittle posted a series of tweets that began: “The issue of gun
violence is too important and too urgent to stay silent. We have to
use our voices because if we don’t, the people who profit from gun
violence will continue to obfuscate and change the subject.”

After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in 2020, triggering
nationwide protests, Doolittle tweeted:

Race is America’s original sin…passed down from generation to
generation. And we struggle to acknowledge that it even exists, much
less to atone for it…. Racism and violence are killing black men and
women before our eyes. We are told it is done in the name of “law
and order,” but there is nothing lawful nor orderly about these
murders. We must take action and call it for what it is. We must
recognize our shared humanity and atone for our Original Sin or else
we will continue to curse future generations with it. RIP George
Floyd.

Doolittle—who in 2017 had stood by his former A’s teammate Bruce
Maxwell, who refused to stand for the national anthem—talked to his
teammates about protesting during the song. He concluded that the
decision should be made by Black players.

“The goal should be to amplify the voices, not to be louder than
them and steal the spotlight away from what the movement is trying to
accomplish—trying to end police brutality and end racism and
injustice,” Doolittle explained.

Doolittle’s father served in the Air Force for 26 years and taught
aerospace science to ROTC high school students in New Jersey. His
stepmother served in the Air National Guard. A distant cousin,
aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle, led the first attack against Japan
after it bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

“I came from a military family, so there are a lot of things I think
about when the anthem is playing,” he told ESPN. “One thing that
bothers me is the way people use veterans and troops almost as a
shield. But where is that outrage in taking better care of veterans?
The most recent statistics say that we still lose 20 veterans to
suicide every day.”

In D.C. and during road trips, Doolittle regularly visited locally
owned independent bookstores, promoting them on Twitter. The big
online chains like Amazon, he said, “might be a little bit cheaper,
but they’re not furthering anything as far as authors’ careers or
supporting their workers.”

Doolittle often participated in a reading program for the children of
soldiers. After reading _Where the Wild Things Are_ to children from
D.C. area military bases, Doolittle observed, “I hope they came and
saw a professional athlete that reads books. It shows that maybe
reading is not something that’s just a part of their homework. It
can be something that you enjoy as much as being outside and playing
sports.”

Doolittle and Dolan support Swords to Ploughshares and Operation
Finally Home, which help veterans find jobs and homes. The couple
worked with Human Rights Watch and wrote a _Sports
Illustrated_ column urging the Veterans Administration to provide
adequate mental health services to military vets with less than
honorable discharges, or “bad paper.”

Doolittle criticized ostentatious displays of patriotism at ballparks.
He claimed it wasn’t enough to “just capitalize on people’s
patriotism, and sell hats and shirts with your team’s logo and
camouflage on it.” He observed that “as long as we have an
all-volunteer military, it’s on us—the civilians at home—to
advocate for our military families. To make sure they are deployed
responsibly and that they get the care they were promised when they
signed up.”

“There’s teenagers leaving the country with M-16s and I get to
play baseball every day. You really appreciate the opportunities you
have and some of these things other people do for you getting little
or no recognition for it.”

_Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is author of
several books including Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and
Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America, published
in April, 2022._

_Copyright c 2023 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
[[link removed]].
Distributed by PARS International Corp
[[link removed]]._

_Please support progressive journalism.Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]]
to The Nation for just $24.95!_

* Sports Activism
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]