Baseball tiptoeing fine line on protests
It used to be in the NFL that when a team’s starting quarterback took a knee, late in the game when his team had a lead with the clock winding down, they would call it the victory formation. Now when an NFL quarterback takes a knee during the national anthem, some are calling it treason.
President Donald Trump has been stoking that partisan fire, fanning the flames at a Republican rally in Alabama in support of his preferred candidate for the Senate. Wouldn’t it be nice to see NFL owners fire those “sons of bitches,” he said.
The fallout from Trump’s brilliant misdirection has been dramatic. He has turned the focus away from the root cause of the original Colin Kaepernick protest, which was trying to point out unpunished police violence against African Americans. Instead it became about Kaepernick and his followers disrespecting the flag, their country and the military that has allowed them to be able to use their First Amendment rights to free speech — except in this case, where in the president’s opinion they all need to be fired. Free speech be damned.
Trump’s inflammatory speech was a week ago and the 16 NFL games this past week showed a variety of individual and team responses ranging from remaining in the locker room until the anthem ended, to sitting on the bench as a team, to linking arms in solidarity, to a mix of kneeling and standing on the sideline during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” All these forms were supported by coaches and ownership.
On Sunday, just one baseball player, A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell, took a knee during the anthem at Oakland Coliseum, becoming the first in MLB to show support for what heretofore had been a hissing match with the Oval Office that involved just football and the NBA. Baseball seems reluctant to enter the fray.
“You know what I’d rather see, if that’s the way you want to approach it: don’t even go out for (the anthem),” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said Monday. “I’m not even out there half the time. But if that’s the way you want to do it, I’m fine with that. (As for this team), I haven’t heard one word.”
The Blue Jays’ backup catcher, Raffy Lopez, is of Puerto Rican descent, married to a white woman.
He has thought long and hard about Maxwell’s stand and he said he is able to see both sides of the issue.
“I’m not going to agree or disagree with anyone on this,” the 29-yearold Lopez said. “He comes from a mixed family. His father’s African American. My children are going to be mixed, Latin and white. He comes from a military background. Like he said, they bled for the country. They made sacrifices for the country, so to see someone who comes from a family like that take a stand, whether people see it as right or wrong, I think it says something about him.
“People shouldn’t necessarily take it in a bad way with regards to how he’s taking a stand. I can’t voice out other people’s opinions who kneel, but I think (Maxwell) is coming from a just place, from a fair place. Even as a child he made sacrifices coming from a military family, moving around a lot, knowing his father, his relatives could die any moment, potentially. I see both sides.” Bobby Meacham, manager at Triple-A Buffalo, is African American and is also in a mixed marriage. He grew up in Los Angeles in the dangerous 1970s and played in New York for the Yankees in the ’80s. He is not siding with the president on this issue, but his wife Gari has taught him over 35 years that there are different ways of looking at the same issue.
“I grew up in L.A. where you were a little nervous when the cops came around,” Meacham said. “There’s a history. There are stories from my uncle, stories from people that he knew and stuff like that. Your perspective is different. Everybody’s got different stories that form how they feel, and for me the whole perspective is a little disheartening to see that some people don’t understand why they’re doing it. You figure by now people would at least under- stand — maybe not agree with it, but understand it.”
But he knows how difficult it is for someone who has never had that fear of being stopped by the police to understand the protests.
“It’s understandable on the other side, too,” Meacham said. “My wife is quick to point out, too, there’s a lot of black-on-black crime. There’s a lot of crime, more crime from the black community, blah-blah-blah. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s her perception. It’s just interesting. To me the biggest thing is, you just hope somebody understands that there’s another side to the story that needs to be addressed. Hopefully people can talk about it and get better because of it.”
But Meacham also believes that the president could do a better job of being the president to all Americans and trying to unite instead of divide.
“To most people it seems (divisive), but obviously to (Trump) he doesn’t look at it that way,” Meacham said. “Once again, that’s his side of it. I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way. But that’s only looking at things from your point of view.”
Remember when pro sports used to be a simple diversion, a threehour escape from the problems of the real world?