Trump derangement syndrome: San Francisco cant 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.Not Donald Trump.Not Jared Kushner.

Joshua Kushner.And not control of the team.

A minority stake.Apparently, that is enough to send parts of San Francisco’s activist and media culture into full panic mode.One Giants employee posted a video from Oracle Park turning in their uniform and quitting because Kushner was buying into the team.Social media lit up with complaints about “MAGA ownership” and Trump-world influence invading one of San Francisco’s most beloved civic institutions.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.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.

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