Sports
Lindsey Horan just wants to talk soccer
It’s USWNT captain Lindsey Horan’s final morning in the States before a flight back to France to rejoin Lyon, her club team. She’s spending it in a hotel lobby, tucked away at a table, talking to The Athletic for an hour about her time leading a team in the spotlight, how she sees her role during this time of transition, and one thing above all:
“Can we think about the football?”
Horan was speaking almost exactly five months since being named by then-USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski as captain of the national team alongside Alex Morgan (Horan has been getting the armband when both are on the field at the same time). The role is the fulfillment of a life goal, but also seems like a natural outcome, given how often, and how intensely, she thinks about the game.
Her first five months in that leadership role were full of notable exits: her team’s from the World Cup, Andonovski’s, and the retirements of Megan Rapinoe and Julie Ertz. It was capped with a big addition: U.S. Soccer’s announced hiring of Emma Hayes as head coach.
Horan, now 29 years old and with 139 senior national team caps under her belt, is part of an in-between camp: too experienced to be a newcomer, and too new to be on the way out. It’s her generation – which also includes Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnett and others – that must keep the team’s signature fire, that USWNT DNA, burning even as the team undergoes a serious re-think after its worst ever World Cup finish.
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“We have to continue that,” she says of herself and fellow in-betweeners. “You have to be amongst this team for a while to know what the f— that takes… it’s one of the most competitive national teams to be a part of.”
No one on the team is talking about starting from scratch. It’s just that they need more ways to win. More than mentality or fitness levels, more than a never-say-die approach. That’s what Horan said her early conversations with Hayes have been about. And that’s why she wants to talk about football, and how the USWNT can bounce back — not just by playing better, but by thinking more.
“We’ve been so successful for so long in a certain way that we play, that attack and transition,” Horan says. “We’ve had individual brilliance. We’ve had soccer players on the field and real players that want to play and it all kind of meshed together or it would always work out, or our DNA would take us to this place where we come out on top because our mentality was so f—ing good.”
The game is changing, and Horan recognizes this. She praises Portugal’s level of play at the World Cup, the investment into the game in Spain and other European countries, and the high level of up-and-coming U.S. talent (specifically citing 19-year-old San Diego Wave forward Jaedyn Shaw). If there was a theme for Horan and the rest of the USWNT in that final camp of the year, it was a repetitive one: no one actually knows the ceiling of this team.
Horan cited Shaw as an exciting young player for the U.S. (Brad Smith/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
“Even in these past few games, you see little glimpses of that, but it’s the final product, continuing to do that throughout the game, getting everyone on the same page, not just four or five players,” she says. “If you can develop that more, and it’s inherent in every single player on the team, you’re looking to play the combinations, all of these things? No idea what this team can do.
“Then you have the mentality aspect on top of it, where if the football is not going well, we know that we can freakin’ go. We have players on the field that are faster, stronger, capable in behind, and we’re gonna gut it out, right? The world is going to be very fearful.”
Those words could cause a stir. In 2019, Ali Krieger suggested the USWNT substitutes could take on and beat multiple other teams at the World Cup, and it was a massive point of contention for a team that got plenty more criticism from across American culture even as it was celebrated for its third consecutive title.
“We have to be one of the most talked about teams,” Horan says. “We’re always in the magnifying glass on every single thing we do or anything we say.”
Individual players can bear the brunt of that magnifying glass just as much as the team can. There’s a clear, though understandable, vein of frustration from Horan over how her own performances are understood, even from the USWNT’s own fanbase. To illustrate her point, Horan brings up that many viewers will take a television commentator’s analysis at face value.
“American soccer fans, most of them aren’t smart,” she says. “They don’t know the game. They don’t understand. (But) it’s getting better and better.”
She takes a brief pause, sensing that those words, too, will cause a stir.
“I’m gonna piss off some people,” she continues, “but the game is growing in the U.S. People are more and more knowledgeable, but so much of the time people take what the commentators say, right? My mom does it!” She breaks into laughter. “My mom says, ‘Julie Foudy said you had such a good game!’ And I’m here, just going, ‘I was f—ing s— today.’”
When playing with Lyon in France, Horan says, things are different.
“From what I’ve heard, people understand my game a little bit more, a sense of my football and the way I play,” she says. “It is the French culture. Everyone watches football. People know football.”
None of that, though, compares to Horan’s experience at the 2023 World Cup. The outside commentary, including from her own former teammate Carli Lloyd, the entrances into stadiums in their custom suits; the tone used in interviews; the body language. Everything was scrutinized. This time, though, the talk was accompanied by bad performances, and bad results.
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Carli Lloyd’s USWNT criticism a natural extension of her public persona
Horan says she wasn’t bothered by the outside criticism, but noted no one else but the players could understand what it was like to be on that team. Ultimately, she says it felt “perfectly fine” that people would find something to talk about.
“If you’re not backing it up on the field, people are gonna come and talk s— about what you’re doing, where your priorities are,” she says. “Like, ‘Are you getting ready for the game? Are you caring more about this s—?’”
Horan has leaned on Lavelle (left) to help lead a team in transition (Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Horan, again, comes back to a small, seemingly innocuous detail: The traditional pre-match starting XI photo. In the NWSL, more and more teams have started using the occasion for various hijinks; something that Horan’s European teammates bring up as an example of Americans not taking their business seriously. It’s clear that it gets under her skin, too.
“I want professionalism,” she admits. “Those little things, they really irked me. I don’t think I could do it, and maybe I’m wrong in saying that, I don’t know. It just bothers me. We put so much into this game, and it’s just like a joke sometimes.”
She’s quick to point out she’s not going to be the one who shuts it down if it works for others. That’s not what she’s trying to say. It’s just that, ultimately, for her, it’s about the football.
“We need to get back to the football. The football is the most important thing” Horan says. “So maybe we should knock some of the s— out for now. We need to focus on the game, we need to focus on being the absolute best we can be.”
As captain, Horan can help enact that. It’s a role she’s clearly grown into, even as she has struggled to understand it in the months between Andonovski’s exit and Hayes’ hiring.
Hayes hasn’t officially started yet, and won’t coach in games until after her job as Chelsea’s head coach ends along with the European season in May. But Hayes’ December visit with Horan and the rest of the team helped clarify the process, Horan says. It also gave Horan a chance to open up the lines of communication, to admit that sometimes she didn’t feel like she had full control, that she hadn’t been handed the reins.
“I always felt like I was someone that could really touch on every single player and get the best out of them and try to make them the best that they could be,” Horan says. “I’m not going to be like the rah-rah speeches, all that nonsense. Becky (Sauerbrunn) and me are probably a little similar in that. I’m probably a little more crazy on the field. I want to make sure I’m the leader that I want to be, and no one’s trying to make me something else.”
Before Andonovski gave her the armband — a move made in part because longtime captain Sauerbrunn missed the World Cup due to a lingering foot injury — Horan told him that getting the armband wouldn’t change her, or how players could talk to her. What it would change, she told him, is the tone it would set. She wanted to be a role model.
“I’m not going to be a coach’s captain, I’m going to be a players’ captain,” she told Andonovski. So if that wasn’t what he wanted, then he shouldn’t make her a captain.
Horan has lived up to her word since interim head coach Twila Kilgore stepped in, leaning on Morgan, Lavelle and Sonnett to make them part of the transitional process. She has empowered the team’s relative newcomers, too. The normally-reticent 23-year-old center back Naomi Girma said Horan “encouraged me just to find my voice.”
“A lot of these new young players are going to have big freaking roles, even in this Olympics,” Horan says. “How the hell do we get the best out of them to go put us on the podium? It’s been a crazy place, but this is a really exciting role for me because I’ve felt like this is what I’m meant to do.”
The team has four months until Hayes takes over, and six until the Olympics. The sprint is very much on for this massive group project to re-establish the team at the top, before looking ahead to 2027 and a World Cup that could be hosted at home. Every voice matters to Horan, from Horan to Lavelle to Morgan to Girma to Shaw and beyond.
“We need to be doing everything we possibly can to be improving, to make each other better, holding the standards,” Horan says. “We need to change every bit of culture that we had prior to the last World Cup and going into this Olympics because we need to win. And that starts now.”
(Photo: James Gilbert/Getty Images)
Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani was away from the team Friday for the birth of his second child.
He was out of the lineup for the series opener against the Orioles, but the Dodgers did not opt to put him on the paternity list, temporarily playing down a player instead. The team said it expects Ohtani back at some point this weekend.
Ohtani pitched Wednesday, so he should be back with the team well before his next turn in the rotation.
With Ohtani out, rookie Ryan Ward served as the designated hitter Friday, batting seventh. And right fielder Kyle Tucker moved up to the leadoff spot that Ohtani usually occupies.
Entering Friday, Ohtani owned the second-highest OPS (.962) in the National League, among qualified hitters. And his 1.47 ERA ranked No. 2 among pitchers who have thrown at least 50 innings, despite giving up seven combined earned runs in his past two starts.
Ohtani has been pitching through a blister on the middle finger of his right hand. And last week he missed a game to address a bout of inflammation in his left knee, which he thinks may have stemmed from mechanical problems in his pitching delivery.
Will Smith to get injection for neck
Catcher Will Smith (stiff neck) will get an injection to address his neck injury, manager Dave Roberts said. Recent imaging came back “fine,” Roberts said, and didn’t reveal anything “really bad.”
Smith said last week, before undergoing imaging, that he was diagnosed with an “inflamed disk.”
Smith — remaining on the injured list past the minimum stint, despite the Dodgers’ initial optimism — will be sidelined through the weekend, and he may not make the trip to Minnesota on Monday, which kicks off a three-city trip.
Edwin Díaz throwing off mound
Dodgers closer Edwin Díaz pitches against the Washington Nationals in April.
(Nick Wass / Associated Press)
Closer Edwin Díaz (elbow surgery) has progressed to throwing off the mound. He threw a 15-pitch bullpen on Friday, all fastballs, at 91-93 mph, Roberts said.
“Really positive day for Edwin,” Roberts said.
When Díaz underwent the procedure to remove loose bodies from his elbow in late April, the Dodgers eyed a post-All-Star break return. And they won’t push for an aggressive build-up, with the long-term in mind.
Short hops
Left fielder Teoscar Hernández (strained left hamstring) is on track to begin a minor-league rehab assignment early next week, Roberts said. … Left-hander Blake Snell (elbow surgery) is progressing in his throwing program after undergoing a NanoNeedle scope procedure to remove loose bodies from his elbow in mid-May. He is close to throwing off a mound, Roberts said.
Sports
Florida AG launches civil rights investigation into MLB’s warning to Christian pitchers over Pride Night caps
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The attorneys general from Missouri and Florida have reacted strongly to the controversy stirred when Major League Baseball warned three San Francisco Giants players about inscribing a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps, and that reaction includes MLB being served with a subpoena that signals the launch of an official investigation.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched his investigation on Friday by serving MLB with a subpoena to investigate whether it is violating the civil rights of players based on their religious beliefs.
The general purpose and scope of Florida’s investigation “extend(s) to possible civil rights and deceptive and unfair trade practices violations in matters of employment concerning the business practices, policies, and procedures of Major League Baseball,” per the subpoena obtained by Fox News Digital.
In a letter from Uthmeier to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, the AG warns that “a pattern or practice of selectively enforcing its rules to benefit favored secular beliefs over disfavored religious beliefs would not only potentially violate Florida civil rights law, but it would also violate the League’s own policies.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FACES BACKLASH FOR ITS STANCE ON CHRISTIANS WRITING BIBLE VERSES ON PRIDE CAPS
“And a practice of claiming not to discriminate based on religion while discriminating based on religion could further amount to an unfair or deceptive trade practice in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks at a news conference in Orlando on July 15, 2025, where he said U.S. Masters Swimming should not allow transgender athletes to compete against women swimmers or face legal action. Advocates Cassidy Carlisle and Lainey Armistead also attended. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
Uthmeier is particularly troubled by the fact MLB said its warning had nothing to do with the players’ religious beliefs but rather was strictly because of a violation of the league’s uniform code.
It should be noted MLB said in a follow-up statement to its initial warning to the players that it was merely enforcing its uniform codes and the warning had nothing to do with Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker writing a Bible verse on the team’s Pride Night Cap most of the other players wore.
MLB ACCUSED OF ‘DOUBLE STANDARD’ AFTER CALLING OUT PLAYERS’ BIBLE MESSAGES DESPITE BACKING BLM IN 2020
Uthmeier noted that doesn’t ring true and presented in his letter a handful of examples where MLB has been absolutely fine with players adding to their uniform.
“In 2019, for example, a Cincinnati Reds player wrote on his cap in tribute to a nearby mass shooting,” Uthmeier wrote to Manfred. “And in 2020, MLB evidently added new, sweeping exceptions to its uniform rules by allowing players to ‘support social justice and diversity and inclusion.’ These policy changes included permitting players to add Black Lives Matter patches to their sleeves.
“MLB therefore appears to applaud — even change its rules for — the ideological beliefs it prefers, but targets players who express religious views the League doesn’t like.”
Commissioner of Major League Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr. speaks at the 2024 MLB Draft presented by Nike at Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 14, 2024. (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The Florida subpoena, issued under the Florida Civil Rights Act, demands action from MLB on July 23, 2026, at 9 a.m.. At that time, MLB must deliver to the AG’s office documents including:
- All documents concerning how MLB characterized or classified the June 2026 cap writing, including, for example, whether MLB treated it as religious expression, political messaging, protest, or a violation unrelated to its content.
- All documents concerning what prompted MLB’s review of and warning regarding the June 2026 cap writing, including any complaint, media inquiry, internal escalation, or third-party communication received before the warning issued, and the timing of each relative to the warning.
- All documents concerning the actual June 2026 warnings issued by the MLB to any club.
- All documents, including drafts and internal deliberations, concerning MLB’s decision to issue and publicly announce the June 2026 warnings, and any analysis of whether doing so adhered to the Code or with MLB’s treatment of comparable non-religious expression.
San Francisco Giants pitcher Landen Roupp wrote “Genesis 9:12-16” on his Pride-Night themed hat. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Uthmeier is thus joining Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who recently wrote a letter to Manfred asking the commissioner to confirm that no player who has chosen to refrain from “wearing Pride Month paraphernalia or included Bible verses on Pride Month hats” will not be disciplined in any way.
Hanaway’s letter states that if Manfred fails to answer by June 25 or does not confirm that no discipline will be levied, she too will open an investigation of MLB.
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The two attorneys general have authority over their individual states. But it affects four MLB teams.
Florida is home to two MLB teams — the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins — while Missouri is home to the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals.
FOLLOW ARMANDO SALGUERO ON X: @ARMANDOSALGUERO
Sports
Commentary: Why MLB’s Pride Night cap condemnation isn’t the anti-Christian crackdown conservatives claim
Amid the first days of grief after Alex Vesia and his wife lost their newborn daughter last fall, Vesia noticed something as he watched the World Series on television. He paused the broadcast, then checked the video, then texted another player to make sure.
51.
Dodgers teammates wore his number on their caps. So did players from the Toronto Blue Jays.
“It was awesome,” Vesia said. “It was a very heartwarming moment.”
Moving.
Touching.
And, under baseball’s rules, illegal.
Who knew, really, until this week? Three pitchers from the San Francisco Giants wrote the name of a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps and, amid an uproar, Major League Baseball said it had warned the players that “writing of any kind, with any message” on any playing apparel is not permitted. The issue, the league said in a statement, was not what they wrote on their caps but simply that they wrote on them at all.
Said MLB in the statement: “We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad’, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
To its credit, the league did not enforce the rule when Vesia’s number started appearing on caps in the World Series. But, if you’re going to draw a line on enforcement, where should you draw it?
In San Francisco, the actions of the Giants’ pitchers were widely condemned.
“They were in for a rude awakening with the response, and it wasn’t just from the gay community,” Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow told KNBR, the team’s flagship radio station. “It was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community.”
In response to media inquiries, and as first reported by Outsports, MLB confirmed it had warned the three players. I asked the league whether warnings had been issued in two other instances in which players had written on their caps, including Clayton Kershaw last year writing the same Bible verse on his Pride Night cap that the Giants’ pitchers wrote this year. MLB declined to comment.
“I got chastised by the league when I put Charlie [Kirk]’s name on my hat last year, because a man was murdered in cold blood,” Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen told me, “and now these gentlemen who are relievers in San Francisco are getting chastised by the league for putting a Bible verse on their hat. It’s crazy to me.”
Treinen said league officials had told him the rule is strictly enforced.
“I straight up asked Clayton last year, ‘Did they call you when you put that on your hat?’” Treinen said. “He said, ‘No.’”
The Pride caps feature team logos decorated in the colors of the rainbow, a symbol long associated with the gay community. In the Bible verse cited by the pitchers (Genesis 9:12-16), the rainbow represents “the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.”
That the league would warn players against writing a Bible verse on their caps ignited a wave of conservative outrage, from Vice President JD Vance to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley fired off a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, alleging apparent discrimination “against baseball players who profess their Christian faith” and threatening the league’s antitrust exemption. Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said on national television that players might be able to file a claim for employment discrimination.
That is complete nonsense. This is what you want: When employees raise an issue to their employer, the employer listens and addresses their concerns.
In 2023, the year after five Tampa Bay Rays players declined to wear rainbow logos for Pride Night, Manfred said the league would no longer compel players to do so.
“We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views,” Manfred said then.
Teammates congratulate Freddie Freeman after his walk-off home run gave the Dodgers a 1-0 win on June 5, when the Dodgers held their annual Pride Night. Blake Treinen, the winning pitcher that night, elected to wear his regular Dodgers cap instead of the Pride version.
(Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
Manfred said the Pride Night celebrations could go on, however a team wished to stage them — or not, in the case of the Texas Rangers, the only one of the 30 MLB teams that declines to hold a Pride Night. And the league still sells Pride gear on its website for all teams, including the Rangers.
In the cases of the Giants and Dodgers, MLB grandfathered each team’s long-running use of a rainbow logo on the cap, with this accommodation to players: If you don’t feel comfortable wearing the Pride cap, just wear your regular cap.
That is what Treinen and outfielder Alex Call did when the Dodgers celebrated Pride Night. That is also what a fourth Giants pitcher did.
“My job is to abide by the rules,” Treinen said. “Ultimately, the only rule we have is to wear our team-issued uniform. So that’s what I chose to do.”
To Treinen, the decision over whether to wear a Pride cap is not about passing judgment on anyone else but about what he sees as the push “to force something on people that you know that is controversial to their faith — and, in fact, straight up against their faith.”
He expressed his support for the Giants pitchers.
“Kudos to those men over there who are standing strong in their faith,” he said. “It’s a sad thing to corner someone and try to make them feel bad about their convictions.”
I respect Treinen for explaining his viewpoint. To me, wearing a Pride cap for one night does not diminish your faith at all. It might sharpen your convictions. More important, it signals a welcome to everyone in the community that buys the tickets and broadcast subscriptions that help pay your salary.
“I think a few people made it about themselves and not about the community,” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told the Bay Area Reporter.
We always proclaim the life lessons of sports. One of them: Sometimes you have to put the team’s interests ahead of your own.
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