Rob Schneider SLAMS MLB for targeting Christian players for expressing their faith, vows to pay fines

After Major League Baseball issued a warning to three San Francisco Giants pitchers after they added a Bible reference to their Pride Night hats, actor and comedian Rob Schneider pledged that he would pay for any fines for Christian MLB players who decided to wear Bible verses on their uniform and slammed the league as anti-Christian.

"I will pay the fines for any @MLB Christian player who wears a Bible verse on their uniform. @MLB is ANTI-CHRISTIAN,” Schneider wrote in a post.

Schneider later appeared on Fox News, saying that MLB "didn't fine anybody for taking a knee" for Black Lives Matter. "But for Christians standing up for their deeply held religious beliefs is not ok," he added.

"I'm tired of Christianity being the doormat for everybody else's beliefs to step on us," he added, saying that the MLB is in jeopardy, legally speaking.

Starting pitcher Landen Roupp and relief pitchers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker played in Friday’s matchup against the Chicago Cubs while wearing Pride-themed caps that also had "Gen 9:12-16" written by the rainbow-colored logo, referring to the biblical passage describing God's covenant with Noah and the rainbow as a symbol of that promise.

During the same game, left-handed pitcher Sam Hentges also wore the Giants’ traditional black cap featuring the orange “SF” logo rather than the Pride Night cap with the rainbow logo.

The MLB, however, said that the players breached the league’s uniform regulations, which forbid players from adding written messages or markings on their uniforms. “The writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB said in an initial statement.

The league later claimed that the warning was only a standard enforcement measure and did not have anything to do with the content of the messages written on the hats. “To be clear, this routine verbal warning not to wear the hat in future games is not disciplinary and had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message,” the MLB said on Tuesday. “We respect players’ right to free expression. However, writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited.”

The MLB claimed that comparable warnings have previously been issued for other personalized messages, including references to relatives and holidays such as “Dad” and “Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom.”

Following the game, Roupp explained that the Bible citation was an expression of his faith.

“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy,” Roupp told reporters when asked about the Bible passage. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.”