Friday BP: Giants and Yurok Tribe brewery make history

Good morning, baseball fans!

A quick programming note, today’s and Monday’s BPs have been pre-written, because I will be traveling this weekend. Brady will be here handling the breaking news, though, so you likely have a lot of information about the current state of baseball that I do not have at the moment.

Today, I wanted to talk about something that’s actually pretty cool. There’s not a lot of that in baseball lately. But the San Francisco Giants have partnered with Mad River Brewing, a tribal brewery owned and operated by the Yurok Tribe, to provide craft beer at Oracle Park starting in the 2022 season (whenever that actually starts).

This is the first partnership of its kind in major league sports. Which is an absolute shame, because so many major sports teams have profited on the likenesses and stereotypes of Native Americans over the years.

Linda Cooley, Yurok tribal member and CEO of Mad River Brewing, put it best in their press release, which can be found here on the Redheaded Blackbelt:

“It’s no secret that professional sports teams have been capitalizing off Natives for decades. That’s why this is so big; in this partnership the Giants put the message into our hands to tell our own story, eliminating the chance of tokenization.”

Mad River Brewing is one of the first Tribal Breweries in the country, and I look forward to seeing more of them get opportunities at ballparks and arenas everywhere.

How many days has it been since the owners locked out the players?

92, if the lockout is still going when this publishes. And based on the temperature of negotiations today (Tuesday) it looks like that will be the case.