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Baseball players tend not to wade into politics. Many American-born players are conservative Trump supporters. Many Latino players have watched as the Trump administration has demonized people who look and speak like them and has even targeted their countrymen for deportation. Nonetheless, everyone tends to steer clear of politics in baseball clubhouses, focusing instead on balls and strikes.
That could be changing thanks to Trump’s draconian immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which has now resulted in the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens. Earlier this month, an immigration agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good while she was steering her car away from him. Then, on Saturday, several immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who had been legally filming their activities.
While the administration has twisted itself into logical pretzels attempting to portray Pretti as an extremist and a threat to law enforcement, his killing has generated widespread and bipartisan backlash. The sports world has also started to speak up. On Monday morning, former Diamondbacks outfielder and Arizona State University star Kole Calhoun joined the chorus.
“This dude was straight murdered,” Calhoun posted on his Instagram story over a picture of Pretti in his hospital scrubs.
Trump administration officials claimed Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who approached the agents with malicious intent and a loaded gun, but bystander video shows that to be a lie. In fact, Pretti did not approach agents, held only his phone camera and was trying to help up a woman shoved to the ground by a federal agent when he was tackled. What’s more, videos appear to show one agent removing Pretti’s gun — which he reportedly was legally allowed to carry in public — from its holster just before other agents shot him in the back.
In subsequent posts, Calhoun explained his decision to weigh in. The Tempe native wrote that many of his teammates through the years “were people whose first language is not English. Those players did not look like me. But I watched as those players built a better life for themselves.” He said that he’s tended to avoid “speaking on politics because I really don’t understand it,” adding that he couldn’t “have civil conversations with long time friends because views were being pushed on me.” He described himself as politically “somewhere in the middle.”
But Pretti’s killing spurred him to say something.
“The images and videos from Minnesota are alarming, on all fronts, to what this country was built on and our core values as a society are under attack,” Calhoun wrote. He called the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement “blatantly racist, targeting people based on the color of their skin or the sound of their last name.”
“I’ve been silent because that is easy,” he concluded. “But silence is a privilege and silence is complicit. Standing up and speaking for what you believe in takes courage. I don’t care about what side you’re on or who you voted for, this is wrong. This is wrong and is imposing on the basic freedoms we have in this country. Wake up! Speak up!”
Calhoun was drafted in 2020 out of ASU by the Los Angeles Angels and spent 12 years in the major leagues. He spent two years with the Diamondbacks, his hometown team, after signing a free agent contract before the 2020 season. He announced his retirement in 2024.
