Mark Canha talks Pride Night, feminism, the Tampa Bay Rays, and how to use our platform and privilege

It was late morning in the locker room, 90 minutes before a game, and Mets outfielder Mark Canha and I were wrestling with concepts that felt impossible. We had no answers, and few illusions that we were capable of finding any. Still, it seemed worth trying.

“The right way to do it?” Canha said, one arm resting against the wall of his locker. “In my own opinion, I think you just … gosh …”

He looked into the distance as he considered the question, then trailed off again.

Here’s what we were batting around: How should a person in our power position -- white, male, cisgender, straight, all the advantages one could list -- respond to a situation like the one that occurred with the Tampa Bay Rays earlier this month, when at least five players refused to wear rainbow-colored logos on their hats during the team’s Pride Night? And how, if at all, should we use our platforms?

Five years ago, it might have felt productive to tweet an objection to the Rays incident, or write a column calling out the players. But social media arguments now play out so predictably that they might as well be scripted. In a Twitter fight, each side plays its role and nothing changes.

I took these thoughts to Canha because he had been a vocal supporter of Pride Nights both in Oakland and New York. In 2015, he posted a tweet that was benign in tone but sneakily subversive in its content: “Really glad @Athletics did pride night 2nite. Acceptance &sensitivity towards all people is something that can be improved upon in our game.”

Anyone who has been in a locker room knows that Canha is right. But how to improve it? Discussion? Sharp criticism and shaming?

Is it naïve to think that improvement is even possible?

“I would like to sit here and say, ‘Oh we should have a discussion,'” Canha said. “‘The more we talk about it, the more we have open discussions about it, the faster that will lead to progress.’ But I think it’s going to be a slow burn in this case, because I think I’m probably in the minority here in saying I’m an ally to that community.”

I gestured around the Mets clubhouse. “In here?” I said. “Or in any -- ”

“In any clubhouse,” Canha said. “I think I would be in the minority in this regard. So I don’t know if talking about it would really help. You have to hope that this country moves towards a place of more acceptance and more forward thinking.”

“Think about that statement,” I said. “It’s pretty extraordinary that in any group in 2022 you’d be in the minority as an LGBTQ+ ally.”

Right? That means that at least 13 of 26 players on a given MLB roster would not consider themselves allies.

“Well, baseball is an extreme example of a sample group,” Canha said. “It’s a very different place from anywhere else. You have people from different places, geographically and culturally, but it’s also a similar age group, demographic and a similar education-level demographic. There are a lot of factors that make a baseball locker room what it is. It’s a pretty small sample of America, so I don’t know if you can gauge the temperature of the country based on what’s going on in a baseball clubhouse.

“Coming from where I came from in the Bay Area, and in particular Cal-Berkeley, where I went to school, the professional baseball locker room was a culture shock. It is so much different from what I was used to, and it was a wake-up call. [Where I came from], you would be in the minority if you weren’t an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. So I was working under the assumption that young people in their 20s and 30s are all on that side. And then you get here and you quickly realize, ‘Oh, okay, that’s not the case.’

“And it’s athletes, too. You have masculinity, testosterone, whatever. The Rays situation doesn’t really surprise me. It is what it is. The right way to approach it isn’t calling anybody out, because that’s where we are right now. That’s like the thing to do, calling everybody out. Twitter slamming is what’s fun for everybody to do, and easy for everybody to do, so I think that’s the wrong way to go about it.”

“That plays out very predictably,” I said.

“Yeah,” Canha said. “You’re going nowhere there.”

I asked Canha if he ever felt backlash from teammates about his views, like, “The woke guy is tweeting again.”

“You get these Twitter trolls, but within the workplace? No, not really,” he said. “In Oakland it was a different situation because I was established on the team a lot longer. Everyone knew who I was. I was kind of goofy about it, and over-the-top extreme. Everyone knew I was the goofy liberal but I wasn’t combative about it.”

Here, I think it hit us both that we shouldn’t be too dismissive about combative behavior, which is often necessary to force change. The avoidance of it is a common trap for those cushioned by privilege and not directly impacted by the violence of bigotry.

“I do think that if you want progress, you should be [combative],” Canha said.

“It’s hard to find where that line is,” I said.

“Yeah,” Canha said. “The best way to put it is, we’re not going to solve the problem in here. We’re just not. This group of people -- it’s like an Aziz Ansari joke: ‘Whenever I get in a political debate with my friends, it’s like, guys, we’re not going to solve it. I don’t think this group, at this table right now, is going to solve it.’ It’s not going to happen.”

“And this is not the industry that’s going to lead America on this issue,” I said.

“It is really hard for me to understand how you can not say you’re an LGBTQ+ ally, just in the same way that you can say you’re not a feminist if you know what the definition of a feminist is,” Canha said.

“How can you say you’re not a feminist? The way I was raised was to be nice to everybody. Be kind. Be respectful. Be a good person. There is no reason to make anybody feel like they’re less than, or that they’re marginalized -- especially the people who statistically are marginalized in this country.

“It kind of blows my mind that people think that way and think that they have to go out of their way to criticize someone for who they are. They think they’re being righteous, but they don’t realize that they’re being really disrespectful. The people that you’re affecting with your behavior don’t just want you to support them. They’re pissed. Like, Black Lives Matter activists are pissed off. These are their lives. It’s maddening for me that someone can’t just respect other people for who they are -- because of their religion. It doesn’t make sense to me.

“Well, me either,” I said. “But you look at --”

“It makes me angry,” Canha continued, faster now than when we began talking. “But I know there is only so much I can do about it. It’s something that I want to be militant and combative about, because I think it deserves that and it needs that, but at the same time it’s like, how far am I going to get? That’s where you draw the fine line. And that’s where we are as a country.

“I’m sure the other side of the spectrum is really frustrated. They’re going to read this and think, ‘God, this is so frustrating. It’s a back-and-forth, and you don’t get anywhere. You’re stonewalled. It’s a roadblock. Everyone is very passionate. I think my thing is more important, you think your thing is more important, and it sucks.”

“It’s interesting too that in a baseball clubhouse we’re still framing it as gay rights,” I said. “In some other areas of society, those are older terms. Now the country is talking about trans rights, and gender fluidity -- the debate has actually progressed further, but here’s it’s like, ‘No, we don’t agree with the gay lifestyle.’ It’s kind of an argument stuck from ten years ago, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Canha said. “And it’s, um - “

“Mark,” a teammate said. “Hitters meeting.”

“Andy,” a media relations staffer said, nodding at the clock.

Canha and I were out of time. A game against the Marlins was approaching. We hadn’t figured it out.