FORMER A’S CATCHER WEIGHS IN ON PROTESTS
In September 2017, Bruce Maxwell brought Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality to baseball when he took a knee during the playing of the National Anthem at the Oakland Coliseum.
His A’s teammate, Mark Canha, propped a hand on his shoulder. The clubhouse, Maxwell said in a lengthy conversation with The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, was supportive of the catcher’s protest.
But support never came outside the of the organization. And, after his arrest for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon that October in Scottsdale, Ariz. Maxwell found himself out of Major League Baseball and, this summer, is playing ball in the Mexican League for the Acereros Del Norte. He is one of two black men on his team.
The A’s supported him and his protest and assured him the catcher’s job was his for the 2018 season. But, Maxwell arrived at camp in Arizona overweight. He fell into a skid, lost the catching job to a newlysigned Jonathan Lucroy and was demoted. After he refused an assignment, Maxwell drew little interest from other teams. Was it because of the protest? Or the lack of production on field?
“When I did my (protest), my team supported me. But MLB didn’t really back me,” Maxwell said to Slusser. “When I was going through my things, I was by myself. I didn’t have anyone to talk to outside of the locker room, outside of my teammates. My agent was no help. The players’ association was no help. After I got arrested and took a knee, it took until December for them to contact me.”
Years later, the country’s youth are protesting systemic racism again in the wake of George Floyd and other black victims’s deaths at the hands and knees of police brutality. Maxwell, who is biracial, is happy to see the protests awaken.
“All 50 states contain some form of protest march for the murder of George Floyd,” Maxwell said. “I support the movement and the protest and the message. I commend our people of all races and colors coming together and sharing that message for equality and humanity. I do not condone the looting and rioting, but I do understand where it’s coming from. People are sick and tired of trying to be peaceful and trying to be cordial and politically correct.”
These protests feel different than those in years past, Maxwell says. When he took a knee, he received horrifying death threats — his sister, too, at her workplace.
Those that needed to listen years ago, he says, are listening more now. Athletes are hopping aboard, and he can see more support for Kaepernick’s protest now than when he first took a knee.
“Where was this three years ago? Where was this when Kaepernick lost his career?” he said. “Where were these people when I took a knee and people in Texas ran out above the dugout after the national anthem and said I didn’t deserve what I had sacrificed my whole life for and proven I deserved because I was a (expletive)?
“People think I’m some thug. These are the same people that support (President) Trump. That still say all lives matter. I’m always going to have hate for the rest of my life...I continue to pay my dues. I had to move to Mexico to pursue my career down here because my own people in my country hated me so much. These people in a different country that I’ve never been in have shown a genuine love and respect for me and for what I do on the field.”