Boone: Aaron and all Yanks are free to speak on social issues

Aaron Judge is free — and encouraged by his manager — to speak out on any issue he would like. Aaron Boone pushed back against an allegation against the Yankees organization made in an ESPN article about former A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell on protest and race in baseball.

“I mean, as far as I know, that’s absolutely false,” Boone said of the report the Yankees discouraged Judge from speaking up. “In fact, if anything, we encourage our guys to [be vocal]. If they want their voice to be heard on whatever the subject may be, we’re going to always encourage them to speak their mind and their heart.”

Boone made his comments before Thursday night’s intrasquad scrimmage.

The Yankees manager said that the Yankees’ star should always feel safe to speak out, particularly in this time when the country is talking about systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

In an article describing the isolation Maxwell — the only baseball player to join in with Colin Kaepernick’s protest movement by taking a knee during the national anthem — felt during his days taking a stand, ESPN’s Howard Bryant wrote:

“Today, in a time when the biggest voices in American sports are using their influence to speak out on injustice — as [Jackie] Robinson would — it is the Yankees subtly discouraging their new superstar, Aaron Judge, from being publicly vocal on racial issues, encouraging him to follow the racially disengaged, politically neutral model of Derek Jeter, another signaling of the price Black players can expect to pay by supporting Black people.”

During Jeter’s playing days, he was pointedly noncontroversial. As a minority owner of the Miami Marlins, though, Jeter has used his voice in the weeks after George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

In a statement on June 1, Jeter said he was “deeply saddened by the death of George Floyd,” then adding “it is time for racial hatred to end.”

A month ago ‚Judge, Aaron Hicks, Giancarlo Stanton and CC Sabathia took part in a powerful MLB players video in support of Black Lives Matter: “One team. One dream. Be the change.”

Stanton had come out with a strong statement in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Floyd.

“Enough is Enough,” Stanton wrote in a post on Instagram and Twitter. “It’s going to take everyone to help this system change. No matter your color or attributes, We are all human, who know what’s right deep down. Making a real change will be Justice for Floyd & everyone who came before him. Let’s all be a part of the change.”

“I feel like a door’s been opened that should have been opened a long time ago,” Stanton said earlier this week. “We’ve always talked about it among ourselves, the cities where we hear things we shouldn’t in the outfield. Now is the time to let it be known that this needs to stop.

“And we’ve got to be the outlet to get the information out there, to lead the force.‘’

Hicks was also vocal about how this moment has affected him.

Hicks said he’s become more conscious in supporting black businesses and having more of a community presence.

“It’s a strong movement that I definitely want to be a part of, because this is something that’s been going on throughout my life, in black people’s lives in general,‘’ Hicks said. “And it’s kind of been going unnoticed.‘’

Not anymore in the Yankees organization, Boone said.

“We have talked about that throughout the organization, within our team within our club, you know, individually with different guys as well. It is something that I think it’s a very important conversation and hopefully is obviously a huge conversation in our country right now,” said Boone, who in the aftermath posted on social media that he was having tough discussions within his own family, which includes his two black sons adopted from Haiti. “It’s a conversation that we hope to advance and, and be better for and hopefully, we’re having difficult conversations amongst each other all the time.”

When Maxwell took a knee back in 2017 as a rookie, he felt alone and unsupported, Bryant wrote. With the baseball season set to open in two weeks amidst the national conversation about race and civil rights, there is a chance there could be more signs of protest this time around.

“Well, we’ll see. I mean, we’ll have conversations and you know, I’m sure those things are very, very possible across we’ve already seen those in different leagues,” Boone said. “I’m sure that’s very much on the minds and hearts of several players.”