McCutchen promotes social justice at opener
Former NL MVP credited with idea for pregame ceremony promoting social justice
PHILADELPHIA » For Andrew McCutchen, an Opening Day that could have been unlike any other felt similar to his first 11 in the major leagues.
“Emotionally, no, it doesn’t feel different,” McCutchen said Friday before the Phillies’ first game of their 60-game regular season against the Miami Marlins. “Aesthetically, of course it is (different), but getting ready to play the game, the emotions I feel right now, they feel no different.
“I feel like this every single time Opening Day rolls around. Excited, nervous, anxious and ready to go back out there and play the game the way I’ve always played it.”
It will be a challenge for former National League Most Valuable Player McCutchen to do that, considering he’s coming off an extensive knee injury that required surgery and a dedicated rehab. In that respect, the 32-year-old was one of the rare players in the majors essentially helped by the length of the coronavirus shutdown.
“There’s a lot of emotion that’s going to go into tonight, being back on the field,” McCutchen said. “I said something earlier on social media that it’s been 417 days since I
last played in a major league baseball game. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone since I first picked up a bat when I was 5 years old. So there’s a lot of emotion that’s gone into that, a lot of jitters and anxiousness. You really feel like you’re going back to school for the first day, just being so excited about it.
“I’m looking forward to tonight and just stepping back on that field and knowing that I get the opportunity to be able to play the game of baseball. Through a pandemic, through an injury, it’s been some ups and downs, but baseball is going to start. And I’m looking forward to it.”
Baseball did start on this second day of league play just as it did for the first two games of the season Thursday night. That was when the Giants and Dodgers and Yankees and Nationals had their respective players form a line from third base to first, each holding a fabric ribbon and kneeling for 60 seconds while a video played promoting the idea of social justice and support for the message carried by Black Lives Matter. Along with the video, actor Morgan Freeman voiced a message of togetherness, which played at the Yankees and Phillies games on successive nights. McCutchen is the player who has been credited with formulating the idea and promoting to other players in the lead-up to the restart, quietly organizing it without involvement from MLB officials. So in that respect, this Opening Day was indeed a very different one for McCutchen, no matter that it felt the same way. He called it “a moment of unity.” “It all began with a conversation me and my wife were having, just about what I felt I wanted to do and having the platform that I have, what did I want to do going into the season?” McCutchen said. “I felt the only thing I could do was kneel, me personally, I felt that was the only thing I could do to show my reasoning and my emotions.
“It was after really giving it some thought and talking to my wife, asking the question of why are we kneeling, saying we’re kneeling because we’re asking for change, then her saying, ‘Don’t you think you could do more?’
“I didn’t quite understand what the ‘more’ was at the time, but that opened the door to be able to have the conversation of what the more could be, really sitting down and talking on what that more was.
“Fast forward, what it is now is everyone linking together, unified, standing for each other and having a moment for us, as baseball players, which is separate from Major League Baseball, which is separate from the anthem. “It’s having a moment for us that links our unity together.” McCutchen said the original intent was to have the players link arms around the baselines, “but of course due to safety protocols we had to think of a different thing, a different way to go about it.” That’s when the idea of the ribbon was introduced by McCutchen. “I’ve been extremely impressed by Andrew, because Andrew is one of the people that’s had a lot of hard conversations with different individuals,” manager Joe Girardi said. “Andrew’s focus is change. He wants to make a difference. He wants there to be change and a move forward. That has been his focus. He has been very involved in the players’ alliance and has had a number of wonderful ideas. Basically, Andrew is saying, ‘We’re all in this together. All of us.’”