'Deeply personal': Six teams, several players refuse to play as Jacob Blake protests extend to MLB

For more than a century, baseball has grappled with racism, injustice and inclusion. 

Wednesday, as a national reckoning with police violence against Black people took yet another turn, a half-dozen teams and a few more players took matters into their own hands, with a display of solidarity that partially shut down the sport in hopes of forcing its fans to better understand the world around them.

Three major league games were postponed Wednesday after players involved refused to play, picking up on a movement that started in the NBA’s virtual bubble in Orlando, where three playoff games were postponed in the wake of Sunday’s police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.

Like many movements, Wednesday’s actions began locally but spread globally.

Just as the Bucks were the first to refuse to take the court for a playoff game, the Milwaukee-based Brewers – located some 40 miles from Kenosha, where Blake was shot multiple times in the back by an officer – became the first MLB team to refuse to play, a decision that came with the blessing of their opponents, the Cincinnati Reds.

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“The players from the Brewers and Reds have decided to not play tonight’s baseball game,” the teams said in a statement. “With our community and our nation in such pain, we wanted to draw as much attention to the issues that really matter, especially racial injustice and systemic oppression.”

Once the Brewers game was called, the movement trickled west in fits and starts, resulting in the postponements of the Padres and Mariners in San Diego, and the Dodgers and Giants in San Francisco.

In Detroit, Chicago Cubs outfielder Jason Heyward removed himself from the lineup as his teammates played on, a move that reporters in Chicago said came with the support of the team.

In St. Louis, the Cardinals' two Black players, outfielder Dexter Fowler and pitcher Jack Flaherty, declared themselves scratches, with the club stating that both "decided to stand in solidarity with others throughout Major League Baseball. The Cardinals organization supports their decisions."

In Phoenix, Colorado Rockies outfielder Matt Kemp sat out Wednesday's game against the Diamondbacks, writing on Instagram that he "could not play this game I love so much tonight knowing the hurt and anguish my people continue to feel." 

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, as the Mariners and Padres prepared for a 9:10 ET game at San Diego’s Petco Park, Seattle held a team meeting and, players said, voted unanimously not to play. A consortium of players from both teams – Seattle’s Shed Long, Kyle Seager, Marco Gonzales and San Diego’s Tommy Pham, Austin Hedges and Manny Machado, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune – met shortly afterward at the batting cage.

While the population of African-American players in MLB has diminished to 7.8%, the Mariners had the most Black players – 10 – of any team on its opening-day roster.

“There are serious issues in this country,” Mariners outfielder Dee Gordon said on Twitter. “For me, and for many of my teammates, the injustices, violence, death and systemic racism is deeply personal.

Finally, in San Francisco, Giants players and coaches met on the field before batting practice more than two hours before their 9:45 ET start against the Los Angeles Dodgers, as GM Farhan Zaidi looked on from the dugout. According to their flagship radio station, the field was cleared shortly thereafter.

Regardless of the Giants' decision, Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts' mind was made up. 

"For me, no matter what, I wasn't going to play tonight," he said on a video call with reporters after the game was postponed.

Word of the game's postponement began to circulate less than an hour before the scheduled first pitch.

The league issued a statement last Wednesday supporting its players' decisions.

“Given the pain in the communities of Wisconsin and beyond following the shooting of Jacob Blake, we respect the decisions of a number of players not to play tonight," MLB said. "Major League Baseball remains united for change in our society and we will be allies in the fight to end racism and injustice.”

The league announced that the three postponed games would be made up Thursday as part of doubleheaders.  

Wednesday’s actions created a real-time reaction to racial injustice that MLB and other sports largely avoided in May and June following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. With the novel coronavirus still shutting down all sports, athletes were literally confined to the sidelines.

Some joined protests in their home cities. Others crafted thoughtful statements on social media, even as their own teams and leagues often clumsily or belatedly tried to do the same.

Wednesday, baseball players had a platform awaiting them. And dozens used it, through the mere act of not taking the field.