As Major League Baseball’s World Series ended Tuesday, an animal rights group is hypocritically slandering the league for its use of the moniker “bullpen.”
In baseball, a bullpen is where pitchers warm up before they start pitching, according to Merriam-Webster.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the largest animal rights nonprofit organization in the world, is calling on the MLB to change the name to “arm barn, which it says is a more animal-friendly term.”
But PETA has no grounds to call for change.
The animal advocacy group stated in a Twitter post that a bullpen refers to the area in a bull's pen where they "are held before they are slaughtered,” according to an Oct. 28 Sports Illustrated article.
“Words matter and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals,” PETA stated in an Oct. 28 news release.
Many believe the true term of bullpen came from a Cincinnati Enquirer writer O.P. Caylor who coined the term during a 1877 game recap. He wrote, "The bull-pen at the Cincinnati grounds with its `three for a quarter crowd’ has lost its usefulness, according to the Sports Illustrated article.
Now I can see the idea behind this but can’t help to think this quite a stretch to force a term change, especially as PETA has already proven its blatant lack of value toward human lives.
In November 2016, PETA posted an advertisement called “Women Explain What Rape Feels Like for Animals in the Food Industry,” featuring a series of women sharing their experiences with rape.
However, this seemingly meaningful beginning is undermined by what follows:
“Every year, billions of animals are born into the meat, egg and dairy industries. Almost all of them are a result of forcible artificial insemination. Almost all of them are a result of rape. Don’t participate, go vegan,” PETA stated in the advertisement.
Yes, animals experience of sexual violence needs to be addressed. But that could easily get accomplished without dehumanizing rape survivors and invalidating their traumas.
The holier-than-thou PETA is sexist, it exploits women’s bodies as allegories for suffering animals endure.
In an advertisement called “Boyfriend went Vegan,” a woman is depicted in a neck brace, injured from “BWVAKTBOOM: Boyfriend Went Vegan And Knocked The Bottom Out Of Me,” according to an Aug. 21 article from History.com.
PETA’s advertisement implies that the boyfriend had an overwhelming amount of strength and power from going vegan that caused him to violently slam her head into a wall, also known as: abuse.
The nonprofit has done great things for animals including convincing some of the world's largest fashion brands not to use fur, helping ban animal-testing by thousands of personal-care companies and ending the use of animals in automobile-crash tests, according to the History.com article.
However, PETA doesn’t sit on a pedestal.
While there is a conversation to be had about animal suffering, objectifying women to make a point about animal abuse is cruel dehumanization and sexism.
There are many more outrageous PETA advertisement campaigns to sort through but the bottom line is the nonprofit is hypocritical to try to force MLB to rename the bullpen.
Although I disagree with PETA, MLB isn’t exempt from any wrongdoings of its own when it comes to others petitioning for name changes.
As of December 2020, the Cleveland Indians decided to drop its team name and announced in July that it will be now known as The Guardians, according to a July 23 article by The Wrap.
The Indians logo, which depicted Chief Wahoo, has been a part of the team since 1947, according to the same article by The Wrap.
This isn’t the first time name changes have been petitioned in sports and there is evidence that generating petitions can work.
However, a strong and convincing argument needs to be made for it to be a reasonable change.
The baseball term bullpen just shouldn’t garner as much attention as PETA expects it should.
People in and around baseball aren't perpetuating animal harm when they say or hear the bullpen, they’re thinking about the game.
