In what became a very reviled post in very short order, The Daily Beast ran what can only be termed an outright smear against legendary Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera Sunday when they suggested the man who was (on the same day) inducted into the baseball Hall Of Fame unanimously was a racist and a radical for being a conservative Christian who openly supports Israel.

Oh, and who has worked with the Trump administration. Because let’s be honest, that’s Rivera’s biggest sin is to an increasingly desperate leftist media that must prove this administration corrupts everything it touches.

#MarianoRivera who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday—has managed to keep his political leanings hidden for decades https://t.co/bvv0SUYgeV

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 21, 2019

Even the description of the piece drips with hackery, implying Rivera has been secretive about his political opinions (spoiler: he hasn’t).

Want to be infuriated? Read The Beast’s (who really lives up to its name on this one) invective about the only man to hold the distinction of being unanimously voted into the HOF.

To this day, he is held up as the ideal athlete, bestowed with endless grace and an unflappable demeanor on the mound that belied a burning competitive desire. Rivera represents a nearly unbroken succession of Yankee greatness that stretches all the way back to the 1920s, from Ruth and Gehrig to DiMaggio and Mantle, and then Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter.

And over the past three years, he’s also served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of a far-right government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque. It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.

The most damning thing they can dig up about Rivera (besides the fact that he doesn’t revile Trump) is that he possibly believes the Jews might be ordained by God to be in control of the Holy Land before the 2nd Coming of Christ (like most evangelicals and, frankly, most devout Christians); and that appeared at an event with, and has offered praise for, Pastor John Hagee, whose most controversial statements have to do with God smiting via hurricanes (again, not that unusual for evangelical Christians).

The Beast even acknowledges Rivera’s reputation by almost everyone else as a person of integrity and character, before utterly trashing him and presumably sending a message to anyone that likes him. The fools who actually know Rivera just need to be instructed who he really is by The Daily Beast, or so their ridiculous article seems to suggest.

Fortunately, the piece was pretty uniformly derided on Twitter immediately, and Major League Baseball seems to have better sense than the National Football League before them. Which is to say: they seem to be ignoring this nonsense. Which is really the only way to survive the woke eruptions that appear designed to destroy anything this country and culture treasures.

But from us here at RedState, decidedly un-woke though we are, let me offer congratulations, Mr. Rivera. Nice work. We’ll honor your legacy at this site.

Welcome to baseball immortality, Mariano Rivera. @Yankees #HOFWKND pic.twitter.com/xigpUEPHSI

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) July 21, 2019