Peter Dreier / Research & Analysis / Players
Sean
Doolittle, Baseball’s Left-Wing Lefty, Retires
By
Peter Dreier
The
Nation, October 6, 2023
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/sean-doolittle-baseball-conscience-retires/
How
the Nationals’ star
reliever became the conscience of baseball.
Sean
Doolittle may lack the
notoriety of Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe, or LeBron James, but he’s
the
most outspoken progressive professional athlete of the 21st
century.
Doolittle
will never make
the Hall of Fame as a ballplayer, but he’s a Hall of Fame activist and
humanitarian. Sports Illustrated called
Doolittle “the conscience of baseball.” He spoke out for the rights of
workers,
women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and military veterans, as well as
racism, gun
violence, and DC statehood. He stood up to Donald Trump and sat down
reading to
children at bookstores. His joined the Democratic Socialists of
America, which
in 2022 hosted
“When
I was a kid, I
remember my parents would say, ‘Baseball is what you do, but that’s not
who you
are’—like that might be my job, but that’s not the end-all, be-all,”
he told The New York Times.
“I feel like I might even be able
to use it to help other people.”
In 11
years in
the majors, Doolittle was the ace left-handed reliever for the Oakland
A’s and
Washington Nationals. A two-time All-Star, he helped lead the Nationals
to the
2019 World Series championship. But his career was hampered by constant
injuries.
Doolittle
never fully
recovered from his July 2022 elbow surgery. He spent this season in the
minors,
but made only 11 appearances, his elbow problems compounded by a knee
injury.
Last
month the 36-year old
Doolittle announced on Instagram that he
Doolittle
was among the
most popular players among fans in Oakland and Washington. A huge Star
Wars
fan, Doolittle calls himself “Obi-Sean Kenobi Doolittle.” His Twitter
handle—@whatwouldDOOdo—was
filled with his enthusiasm for sports, books, music, movies, and
politics. He
and his wife, Eireann Dolan, whom he met while she was a reporter
covering
the A’s and married in 2017, approach life with a sense of humor, often
poking
fun at each other and themselves in their constant tweets.
At
the University of
Virginia, he was a slugging first baseman as well as an outstanding
pitcher.
Drafted by the A’s in 2007 as a first baseman, Doolittle left college
after his
junior year and spent three years in the minors. He missed the next
three
seasons to injuries and surgery. The 6-foot-2 Doolittle began his
comeback in
2012 as a relief pitcher for the A’s. By 2014, he made the All-Star
team.
Traded
to the Nationals in
2017, he had another All-Star season in 2018 and the following year had
29
saves, 66 strikeouts, and only 25 walks in 60 innings, despite frequent
injuries. In three World Series appearances that season, he didn’t
allow a run.
He and Dolan made Washington, D.C., their home, were active in the
community,
and embraced the cause of D.C.
statehood.
Doolittle
has always been
clear about his priorities: “Sports are like the reward of a
functioning
society.”
In
2015, the couple
organized a Thanksgiving dinner for 17 Syrian refugee families in
Chicago,
Dolan’s hometown. “We just felt it was a way we could welcome them to
America,
to let them know there are people who are glad they’re here,” Doolittle
recalled.
That
year, the A’s hosted
their first Pride Night. Some social media trolls threatened to boycott
the
event. In response, Doolittle and Dolan hatched a plan to buy tickets
from
season ticket holders. They raised almost $40,000 from over 1,000
contributors
through a GoFundMe campaign, which provided tickets and buses
for 900
“There
should be no
discrimination or hate in the game or a stadium,” Doolittle said.
In
2018, when the media
exposed antigay slurs tweeted by several ballplayers, Doolittle tweeted:
It
can be tough for
athletes to understand why these words are so hurtful. Most of us have
been at
the top of the food chain since HS, immune to insults. When all you’ve
known is
success and triumph it can be difficult to empathize with feeling
vulnerable or
marginalized. Homophobic slurs are still used to make people feel soft
or weak
or otherwise inferior—which is bullshit. Some of the strongest people I
know
are from the LGBTQIA community. It takes courage to be your true self
when your
identity has been used as an insult or a pejorative.
At
the Nationals’ 2019
Pride Day, Doolittle wore a trans flag on his right baseball shoe, a
rainbow
flag on his left shoe, and a Nationals-branded rainbow shirt under his
uniform.
“Everyone
deserves to feel
safe and free to be who they are and to love who they love. Love is
love,” said
Doolittle.
In
October 2019, after
fellow Nationals pitcher Daniel Hudson faced criticism for missing a
game to be
with his wife for the birth of their child. Doolittle defended his
friend on
Twitter: “If your reaction to someone having a baby is anything other
than,
‘Congratulations, I hope everybody is healthy,’ you’re an asshole.”
In
2016, after
then-candidate Trump dismissed his vulgar “grab their pussy” comment as
just
“locker room talk,” Doolittle retorted: “As an athlete, I’ve been in
locker
rooms my entire adult life and, uh, that’s not locker room talk.”
In
January 2017, Trump
signed a travel ban against Muslims, sparking nationwide protests.
Doolittle
commented:
These
refugees are fleeing
civil wars, terrorism, religious persecution, and are thoroughly vetted
for
2yrs. A refugee ban is a bad idea…. It feels un-American. And also
immoral.
Refugees
aren’t stealing a
slice of the pie from Americans. But if we include them, we can make
the pie
that much bigger, thus ensuring more opportunities for everyone.
When
white supremacists
descended on Charlottesville in 2017, Doolittle tweeted: “The C’ville I
knew
from my time @UVA is a diverse and accepting community. It’s no place
for
Nazis.”
When
the Nationals won the
2019 World Series, Doolittle and several teammates boycotted the White
House
celebration with Trump. He criticized Trump’s “divisive rhetoric and
the
enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this
country.” He
told The
Washington Post, “I
don’t want to hang out
with somebody who talks like that.’”
In
2019, the New Era
Cap Company, which makes caps for all major league teams, announced it
was
closing its unionized factory in Derby, N.Y., to move to nonunion
facilities in Florida. In a Washington
Post op-ed
column, Doolittle wrote that ballplayers “will be wearing caps made by
people
who don’t enjoy the same labor protections and safeguards that we do.”
He
told ThinkProgress,
“It’s basically union-busting, plain and
simple,” adding that major leaguers should be “wearing caps made by
people
earning a union wage.”
When
MLB put its season on
indefinite hold in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020,
Doolittle
and Dolan hunkered down in a Florida house, where he could exercise and
stay in
shape. They hosted a podcast about their daily lives, discussing the
books they
were reading during the lockdown. No player was more eager to return to
play
than Doolittle, but he was the first to publicly oppose MLB’s plans to
restore
play without adequate public health protections and guarantees that
players and
other workers would be compensated during the long layoff.
Dolan,
his alter ego,
tweeted:
What
about the
non-millionaire hotel workers, security staff, grounds crews, media
members,
team traveling staffs, clubhouse attendants, janitorial workers, food
service
workers, and the billion other people required to make that 3.5-hour
game
happen every night?
Doolittle
urged his fellow
major league players to demonstrate “solidarity with those workers who
are in
those supporting roles.” He added: “Sorry, I had to get that out of my
system.
Stay safe. Keep washing your hands and wearing your masks. I hope we
get to
play baseball for you again soon.”
When
MLB proposed shaving
$100 from every minor leaguer’s $400 weekly paycheck during the
pandemic,
Doolittle and several Nationals teammates pledged to cover the lost
income of
players on the Nationals’ farm teams.
“Minor
leaguers are an
essential part of our organization and they are bearing the heaviest
burden of
this situation as their season is likely to be cancelled,” Doolittle
explained.
“We recognize that and want to stand with them in support.”
Players
on other teams did
the same. Embarrassed, the owners withdrew the plan.
In
response to the mass
shooting at a school in Uvalde, Tex., in 2022, Doolittle posted a
series of
tweets that began: “The issue of gun violence is too important and too
urgent
to stay silent. We have to use our voices because if we don’t, the
people who
profit from gun violence will continue to obfuscate and change the
subject.”
After
Minneapolis police
killed George Floyd in 2020, triggering nationwide protests, Doolittle
tweeted:
Race
is America’s original
sin…passed down from generation to generation. And we struggle to
acknowledge
that it even exists, much less to atone for it…. Racism and violence
are
killing black men and women before our eyes. We are told it is done in
the name
of “law and order,” but there is nothing lawful nor orderly about these
murders. We must take action and call it for what it is. We must
recognize our
shared humanity and atone for our Original Sin or else we will continue
to
curse future generations with it. RIP George Floyd.
Doolittle—who
in 2017 had
stood by his former A’s teammate Bruce Maxwell, who refused to stand
for the
national anthem—talked to his teammates about protesting during the
song. He
concluded that the decision should be made by Black players.
“The
goal should be to
amplify the voices, not to be louder than them and steal the spotlight
away
from what the movement is trying to accomplish—trying to end police
brutality
and end racism and injustice,” Doolittle explained.
Doolittle’s
father served
in the Air Force for 26 years and taught aerospace science to ROTC high
school
students in New Jersey. His stepmother served in the Air National
Guard. A
distant cousin, aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle, led the first attack
against
Japan after it bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“I
came from a military
family, so there are a lot of things I think about when the anthem is
playing,”
he told ESPN. “One thing that bothers me is the way people use veterans
and
troops almost as a shield. But where is that outrage in taking better
care of
veterans? The most recent statistics say that we still lose 20 veterans
to
suicide every day.”
In
D.C. and during road
trips, Doolittle regularly visited locally owned independent
bookstores,
promoting them on Twitter. The big online chains like Amazon, he said,
“might
be a little bit cheaper, but they’re not furthering anything as far as
authors’
careers or supporting their workers.”
Doolittle
often
participated in a reading program for the children of soldiers. After
reading Where the Wild
Things Are to children from D.C.
area military bases, Doolittle observed, “I hope they came and saw a
professional athlete that reads books. It shows that maybe reading is
not
something that’s just a part of their homework. It can be something
that you
enjoy as much as being outside and playing sports.”
Doolittle
and
Dolan support Swords to Ploughshares and Operation Finally
Home,
which help veterans find jobs and homes. The couple worked
with Human
Rights Watch and wrote a Sports Illustrated column
urging the Veterans Administration to provide adequate mental
health
services to military vets with less than honorable discharges, or “bad
paper.”
Doolittle
criticized
ostentatious displays of patriotism at ballparks. He claimed it wasn’t
enough to
“just capitalize on people’s patriotism, and sell hats and shirts with
your
team’s logo and camouflage on it.” He observed that “as long as we have
an
all-volunteer military, it’s on us—the civilians at home—to advocate
for our
military families. To make sure they are deployed responsibly and that
they get
the care they were promised when they signed up.”