Yankees legend David Wells slams ‘woke’ culture in rant against Nike, Bud Light, MLB
Emily Baldwin NEW YORK — New York Yankees legend David Wells slammed the state of Major League Baseball while ripping Nike and Bud Light for being “woke.”
“We’re in a different world,” Wells said Saturday, which was Old-Timer’s Day at Yankee Stadium. “It sucks. That’s why everyone should carry a gun.”
As Wells spoke, he wore a piece of medical tape over the Nike swoosh on the chest of his Yankees jersey. He said that if he were playing today, he would have cut a hole into his jersey and worn it on the field like that rather than display Nike’s logo on his body.
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“I hate Nike!” he said. “They’re woke!”
Wells ripped companies that he feels dabble too much in social issues and politics. He referenced Bud Light, which used the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a social media promotion earlier this year, causing some conservatives to call for a boycott of the beer.
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Asked whether he would drink Bud Light again, Wells didn’t need many words.
“Nope!”
The 60-year-old was at Yankee Stadium as part of pregame festivities honoring the 1998 Yankees team that won 114 games — then an American League regular-season record — and won the World Series.
Wells, who pitched 21 big-league seasons, also defended general manager Brian Cashman, who’s been under fire from fans this season as the Yankees sit in last place in the American League East, seemingly with no chance at making the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
“It always seems that the (general managers), the managers and all of that are getting fired, and getting blamed for it, and it’s the players’ (fault),” Wells said. “If you’re not doing the job out on the field, and if I was a GM, I would start sending a message.”
Wells, who spent four seasons with the Yankees, called out teams for being too soft on players.
“I don’t care who it was, if he was in the stink hole — pardon my French, if you can say that now. I don’t know. But send that son of a gun to Triple A or Double A and send him a wake-up call,” the retired pitcher said. “They did it to me. They did it to a lot of us back in the day. You’ve got to send a message. I don’t care how much money you’re making.
“Send a message to them and let them go sit down there and think about it. That’s what you have to do. I think now they coddle them too much. They baby them. … It’s up to your peers to make you better.”
Wells recalled an incident in which retired Yankees catcher Jorge Posada slammed him against a pillar in the home clubhouse following a poor pitching performance. He said he’d be shocked if players do that anymore.
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“He slammed me against the pillar and got in my face but I respected it,” Wells said. “He was like, ‘You gave up.’ And that pissed me off because I never gave up, you just get your ass kicked once in a while. But to me, that’s what you don’t see anymore. You don’t see the guys getting in each other’s face. And it’s not a personal thing. You’re here to win, and that’s what they try to do, and I think from seeing my perspective, looking in, they don’t have that kind of camaraderie anymore.”
He said that Cashman has been “taking a lot of heat.”
“I’m trying to defend him,” Wells said.
Wells wants a return to the 90s style of baseball. He said he had an issue with today’s pitch clock because pitchers shouldn’t need it in the first place.
“This is analytics,” Wells said. “They tell (players) certain things. To me, personally, it’s ruining the game because these guys don’t have free will to be themselves and go out there and find their own identity. Because they’re having an identity brought to them. There’s a game plan. Our game plan was go out there and win, how are we going to do it? The best nine guys are going to play.”
Wells said that he was offended that late owner George Steinbrenner once went to the Yankees’ clubhouse to call out his poor performance. He lamented how things like that no longer seem to happen, in his opinion.
“You need a fire lit under your butt sometimes,” Wells said. “They don’t do that, and it sucks.”
(Photo: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)