The San Francisco Giants will be organizing a reunion of their 2010 World Series Championship team in August, without Aubrey Huff. Huff, who played a large role in the championship win, was unanimously left off the invite list due to bigoted and misogynistic comments he’s made on social media.
First reported by The Athletic, the Giants confirmed that Huff would not be invited to the team’s reunion, saying, “Aubrey has made multiple comments on social media that are unacceptable and run counter to the values of our organization.”
For reference, there was the time Huff tweeted about kidnapping Iranian women and the time he seemed to be advocating for a violent uprising in the event Donald Trump didn’t win the 2020 election. Huff has also criticized the Giants first female coach Alyssa Nakken, saying, “I don’t believe a woman should be in men’s pro sports … There’s so many more people, especially men, who grind it out who deserve that spot more than she does.”
It’s not a huge surprise that the club, when celebrating one of their brightest moments in franchise history, would not want a guy like that around.
Huff, who initially said he was “quite frankly, shocked. Disappointed” about the decision posted a longer statement on Twitter on Monday night, alleging that the Giants were in fact attacking his First Amendment rights, persecuting him for his political beliefs, and, by association, doing nothing less than tearing at the fabric of our democratic process.
My response to @SFGiants
@mlb @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/tDs8L8kGNi
— Aubrey Huff (@aubrey_huff) February 18, 2020
“We live in a country that is under attack” Huff, a vocal Trump supporter, wrote in his statement. “Society is desperatly trying to take away our 1st amendment, our freedom of speech and our freedom of political association…While I’m disappointed the Giants are so opposed to President Trump, and our constitutional rights that they’d uninvite me to my team’s reunion, it shows me now more than ever we have to stand up for our 1st amendment rights. Otherwise the America we know and love is already dead.”
To be clear, the Giants iterated via the Athletic that Huff’s exclusion from the event was based purely on his vile social media behavior, and had nothing to do with his political beliefs.
Gonna say this once and log off: Giants officials have made it clear to me they are not banning Aubrey Huff because they dislike or disagree with his political views. They believe he has crossed the line when it comes to misogyny, vulgarity and common decency. Words matter.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) February 18, 2020
What’s also clear from Huff’s statement, aside from casting himself here as the victim, is that he has no idea what the First Amendment actually promises. For clarity’s sake, the amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It’s right there in the first word. Congress.
The first amendment says the government can make no law abridging free speech. It doesn’t mean that people who say dumb, hurtful, crude things on Twitter won’t suffer personal consequences. Huff’s been able to say whatever he wants for some time now, a right that he exercises all the time. The government has never stepped in and deprived him of his ability to be awful online, and so far, neither has a platform like Twitter. All Huff is suffering from is the consequences of his own actions. Being vocal on social media and having a large platform also means there will be plenty of people who don’t agree with your views, especially when those views are highly derogatory towards women.
It’s laughable that being excluded from a private event by his former employer would be equal to a violation of Huff’s constitutional rights. Those rights guarantee a whole host of freedoms that Huff readily enjoys. Huff seems to think that his political beliefs are why he’s being uninvited to the celebration, when the truth is frankly far simpler, though probably harder for him to swallow. It’s not his politics that his former teammates can’t stand, it’s him.