We should agree that we are living in strange, at very best, times. For instance there is a Republican senator in Mississippi, currently campaigning for Tuesday’s runoff, who has gleefully discussed wanting to be in the front row for a public hanging (she claims she was joking). And who seems to believe that symbols of the Confederacy — which you’ll recall was an effort to leave the United States because the country had dared to try to end slavery — represent “Mississippi history at its best!”

So surely this Cindy Hyde-Smith person is not taken seriously by serious people, right? People living in the real, existing, multi-cultural, made-stronger-by-diversity America can’t be possibly be OK with this, right?

Welp.

So. Yeah. Major League Baseball, an organization headquartered in New York City that oversees a league made up of players from across the world — and, through its long history, every corner of the United States — somehow saw fit to financially support Cindy Hyde-Smith. A league that annually celebrates Jackie Robinson’s courageous fight to integrate baseball — and of course sells merchandise commemorating that effort — decided Cindy Hyde-Smith deserved $5,000.

Worst of all, it did so after her comment on the hanging. A comment that caused Walmart, among others, to ask for a refund of its donation to her.

And now, after much public uproar, MLB is seeking a return of its money.

Much of that uproar came from the above referenced Twitter account, which you probably know belongs to Michael Schur, who you probably know as the creator of The Good Place (and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Parks and Recreation and as a writer on The Office and Saturday Night Live.)

Schur is a huge baseball fan (his twitter user name comes from his days writing for the blog Fire Joe Morgan) who expertly weaves sports into his comedy (he discussed this with our own Charles Curtis recently).

He spent his Saturday night making sure the news about MLB’s donation cut through our post-Thanksgiving, post-shopping, college-football-watching malaise. A warning: some tweets have vulgar language.

Oh hell yes https://t.co/2XEf6QOOA3 — Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 25, 2018

Hi @mlb hi Rob Manfred this is the lady you gave 5000 dollars to: https://t.co/SEUuzD86Av — Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 25, 2018

Hi @mlb and hello to you good sir Rob Manfred, if you don't do something about this I will spend the next 100 consecutive months telling everyone who will listen that my favorite sport does not deserve my or anyone else's money. — Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 25, 2018

FOOTBALL: We are run by corrupt gangster maniacs and we treat our players terribly and they all have brain damage and we won't even let them peacefully kneel without vilifying them, so we're the worst sport–

MLB AND ROB MANFRED: HOLD OUR FUCKING BEER https://t.co/4BnYpjEjyu — Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 25, 2018

My favorite sport being casually racist tends to have that effect. https://t.co/xrAeQkpCGa — Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) November 25, 2018

Schur has 169,000 followers. So word got around. And this morning MLB did the right thing — though, really, it was the only thing.

Here’s how Major League Baseball explained making the donation in the first place:

“The contribution was made in connection with an event that MLB lobbyists were asked to attend,” an MLB spokesperson said in a statement Sunday. “MLB has requested that the contribution be returned.”

Interesting. MLB lobbyists, I’m asking you to attend a dinner at my house later. I’ll probably serve hot dogs and mac and cheese. I have young children. Please bring the checkbook. Also, please don’t do any vetting whatsoever before you arrive. Thanks.

We should talk about why MLB giving $5,000 to any senate candidate anywhere is even a thing. It’s not, in the grand scheme of it all, much money. Even when you multiply it by a few hundred, it’s not *really* a significant spend for a pro sports league (OpenSecrets.com has data on the MLB PAC’s donations, as well as how much the league spends on lobbying.) In total you’re talking about a few million dollars a year. It’s only logical that MLB would spend in such a way to protect its interests.

Except one of those interests has been fighting off the pleas coming from minor league players seeking raises, since many of them get by on $12,000 a year or less and take home significantly less than the minimum wage. And Congress, in a $1.3 trillion dollar spending bill passed in March, buried a provision 2,000 pages into the document that, Ted Berg wrote at the time, “exempts Major League Baseball from terms of the Fair Labor Standards Act, ensuring that teams do not have to pay minor leaguers for spring training, for offseason workouts, or for overtime during the season.”

So $5,000 given without any thought whatsoever to a controversial candidate is, in the end, a pittance. But well worth it, as long as it ensures none of those pesky minor league players ever get their hands on a few extra thousand.