Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants and Dodgers will play two baseball games Thursday, Gabe Kapler believes.
It was not a unanimous decision not to play Wednesday, and it may have been more following the Dodgers’ lead than settling on one clubhouse decision, but a statement of support toward the Black community has been sent.
After Wisconsin police shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black man, several times in the back in yet another video that has gone viral, the Milwaukee Bucks began a movement in refusing to play that spread to the baseball world, which included Mookie Betts saying he would sit out. The Dodgers were not going to take the field without their superstar, and thus the decision was more theirs than the Giants’.
Gabe Kapler acknowledged there were different voices in a Giants clubhouse that does not currently include an African-American player. The manager was happy, though, with the conversations that were sparked.
He said groups were “really looking for ways to make changes, being creative of how to protest around our dissatisfaction,” Kapler said before correcting himself. “I’ll speak for myself: My dissatisfaction with racial inequality and systemic racism in our country.”
Even players who so wanted to show support for the Black community did not immediately jump to a decision. Mike Yastrzemski, who along with Kapler has knelt during the national anthem this season, said he considered various ways to protest and wanted to talk through the options with his teammates.
Yastrzemski said he barely slept Wednesday night.
“It’s important to see this isn’t just affecting one community — it’s affecting our country, and I think that that shows the importance of this,” said Yastrzemski, a leader on the field and off. “It’s very easy to pass off situations that aren’t affecting us personally, but I had a couple of conversations with guys [Wednesday], and they said, ‘Can you imagine if this was happening to your family? If your family was the one who is directly being affected by this?’ That hit home especially hard for me because I don’t know how I’d be able to move on from things like that.”
Major League Baseball was still witnessing the pushback, at least two games — Rangers-A’s and Phillies-Nationals — reportedly being postponed after team votes. The Giants did not vote put it to a vote, and Kapler on Wednesday declined to answer whether they would have played if the Dodgers wanted to play.
What has emerged is Yastrzemski’s voice on the team, Kapler complimenting his “very thoughtful and very empathetic and very understanding way.”
Yastrzemski is close with Oakland’s Tony Kemp, who is Black and started the Plus-1 Effect, intended to encourage open dialogue with people of color.
“I think it’s pretty clear that the message is that people in the world don’t accept killings for no reason,” Yastrzemski said over Zoom. “They don’t accept social injustice, and I think that people are starting to feel that way, and to act, and I think there is a civil way to do these things and to make your point and to make change.”