Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Ryan Thompson spoke up following the controversy surrounding San Francisco Giants pitcher Landon Roupp writing a Bible on his hat during a Pride event.
Roupp wrote Genesis 9:13-16, which speaks about God sending a rainbow after flooding the earth and the Noahic covenant:
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.
Because of that, Roupp and a few other teammates who did the same were called “homophobic,” “bigots” and “anti-LGBTQ,” according to Fox News Digital.
Thompson sounded off against the outrage.
“Like the Pride Night stuff with the Giants, like I think that there’s a perceived negativity with this stuff, of like, okay, Landon Roupp wrote a verse on his hat. That means that he’s anti something. That doesn’t mean that, right? It means that he’s pro something, right?” he said.
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“So, the rainbow means something to him. It means that he believes in the Noahic covenant being something that’s special to us as Christians, right? That means that no matter how bad we possibly could be, no matter how much we reject God, He will never again flood the earth,” the athlete explained. “That’s really cool. That’s really special.
Thompson continued: “And we do a lot of stuff, and we’re all sinful. We all do a lot of stuff, and maybe worthy of a flood, but God will never flood us because of that promise, and His promises are unconditional. So that’s something that’s really cool to me, is that there’s nothing negative, there’s nothing anti, there’s nothing that says that [Roupp] doesn’t support anything, or that he’s like hateful, or anything like that at all. It’s all positive, it’s all like, man, ‘This is what the rainbow means to me.’ And I just thought that was really cool that he did that.”
Roupp shared his perspective last week, saying of the Bible passage, “It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that He makes to us that, you know, His faithfulness and His mercy. 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.”
For Roupp and Thompson, the rainbow on the mound isn’t a line drawn in the sand — it’s a lasting symbol of a promise that bridges the gap between the flawed and the divine.
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