Trump derangement syndrome: San Francisco can’t let baseball be baseball

San Francisco is having a civic nervous breakdown because the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law is buying a minority stake in the Giants. Steven Hirsch

One Giants employee posted a video from Oracle Park turning in their uniform and quitting because Kushner was buying into the team. Getty Images

There is just one problem. Joshua Kushner is not exactly Steve Bannon in a Giants cap.

He has historically donated heavily to Democrats and has occupied a very different political lane than his brother Jared and the Trump orbit. But nuance never stood a chance here.

For some in San Francisco, the name “Kushner” was enough. That is the story.

The Giants are not some random expansion franchise nobody cares about. They are one of the oldest and most storied franchises in Major League Baseball history — with eight World Series titles and a lineage that includes Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and Bruce Bochy.

There is just one problem. Joshua Kushner is not exactly Steve Bannon in a Giants cap. Getty Images

Oracle Park is one of the great settings in American sports. Giants-Dodgers is still one of baseball’s defining rivalries. Generations of Northern Californians are emotionally attached to this team.

Which is precisely why the reaction has been so revealing.

Nobody was arguing about payroll. Nobody was debating the farm system. Nobody was asking whether this helps the Giants close the gap with the Dodgers in the NL West.

The panic was political from the first pitch.

That tells you where we are now.

Sports ownership used to be judged mostly by whether owners were competent, stable, and willing to spend money to win. Now it is an ideological background check.

So even indirect association becomes contamination. Joshua Kushner does not have to be Trump. He does not even have to be conservative. He just has to be Kushner. AFP via Getty Images

Who donated to whom? Who attended what fundraiser? Whose brother married whose daughter? Who might show up in the owner’s suite?This is what happens when politics becomes religion. Everything becomes a loyalty test. Even baseball.

The irony is almost too perfect.

San Francisco is not exactly at risk of becoming a MAGA beachhead because a Democratic donor with the wrong last name bought a small piece of the Giants. But symbolic politics runs the city now.

In Democrat circles in San Francisco, politics is not just something people believe. It is something they perform. It is identity. It is status. It is social sorting.

So even indirect association becomes contamination. Joshua Kushner does not have to be Trump. He does not even have to be conservative. He just has to be Kushner.

That is enough.

San Francisco is not exactly at risk of becoming a MAGA beachhead because a Democratic donor with the wrong last name bought a small piece of the Giants. But symbolic politics runs the city now. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

To be fair, Giants ownership was already politically sensitive. Current owner Charles Johnson has drawn years of criticism for conservative political donations.

So this latest development landed on dry grass.

Still, the reaction says more about San Francisco’s liberal elite than it does about the Giants. The city’s activist class cannot even let baseball remain baseball.

A minority owner becomes a political emergency. A family connection becomes a scandal. A business transaction becomes a moral crisis.

This is not normal.

Fans used to argue about batting orders and pitching rotations. Now they investigate ownership family trees.

And the Giants are not being bought by Donald Trump. They are not being turned into a Trump campaign surrogate. They are not replacing team mascot Lou Seal with a MAGA hat.

A minority stake is changing hands. That’s it.

Yet for the loudest voices in San Francisco, even that apparently requires public anguish.

If this is the reaction to the brother of Trump’s son-in-law buying a minority piece of the Giants, imagine what happens if Donald Trump ever throws out the first pitch at Oracle Park.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics and a lifelong baseball fan, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.