MLB: Mets, Marlins make statement with on-field actions.
NEW YORK — The New York Mets and Miami Marlins jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter Tshirt across home plate as they chose not to play Thursday night.
After other games around baseball were postponed to protest social injustice — including the A’s game at Texas — the Mets were late to take the field and did not submit a lineup to the public or the umpires. Neither starting pitcher threw any warmup pitches. The teams stood around their dugouts in full uniforms shortly before the 7:10 p.m. EDT scheduled first pitch, and the national anthem was played and all players and coaches stood.
Mets outfielder Dominic Smith — a Black man who wept Wednesday night while discussing the shooting by police of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Sunday — led New York onto the field. Players took their positions, then reserves and coaches filed out of both dugouts and stood silently for 42 seconds.
Members on each team doffed caps toward the other side before returning to their clubhouses, leaving only the black Tshirt at home.
“The words on the shirt speak for themselves, just having it in the center of everything, just knowing that both teams are unified, and that we agreed to do this,” said Miami outfielder Lewis Brinson, who was the Marlins’ leadoff hitter and stood near the batter’s box for the silent display. “And it was the right thing to do.”
The 42second moment of silence came a day before Major League Baseball plans to hold its annual Jackie Robinson Day, which was pushed back from the usual April 15 because of the pandemic.
“It needs to be an ongoing thing,” Brinson said. “It can’t just be one day out of the baseball year that we bring light to everything.”
The teams walked off the field about two hours after a video appeared on the league’s official website in which Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen said that his players did not want to play and they were waiting to hear from the Marlins about coordinating a postponement.
Van Wagenen also criticized Commissioner Rob Manfred’s handling of player protests this week and alleged Manfred was pressuring New York to stage a symbolic walkout against players’ wishes, rather than a full postponement.
“That’s Rob’s instinct,” Van Wagenen said in a conversation he didn’t appear to know was being streamed on MLB.com. “At a leadership level, he doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t get it.”
Van Wagenen said in the video — after specifying the conversation “can’t leave this room” — that Manfred wanted the Mets and Marlins to walk off the field together shortly before the scheduled 7:10 p.m. first pitch, then come back and play at 8:10 p.m.
Van Wagenen apologized for his comments later Thursday, saying in a statement the idea to walk out and return was actually hatched by Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer.