Major League Baseball and the players have been discussing how to incorporate elements of social justice into the sport, according to league sources and the players, with the most recent conversation scheduled for Sunday.
It’s unclear what shape the elements will take, be it some kind of logo placed on the uniforms or something shared and presented by the players.
Since George Floyd’s murder on May 25, many of the sport’s players and teams have joined the national conversation on social justice. Andrew McCutchen, a veteran of the Philadelphia Phillies, was among the athletes and coaches who shared a phrase and thoughts in a USA Today editorial in early June.
Los Angeles Dodgers players recently made a Zoom call directed by Clayton Kershaw to discuss racial injustice, and their discussion resulted in a video released last week in support of Black Lives Matter.
Baseball mostly didn’t participate in the social justice conversation in sports after NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016. Bruce Maxwell, a receiver for the Oakland Athletics, was He knelt during the anthem in 2017, but has since said that he felt without the support of his peers and those in the sport.
Baseball has rarely addressed issues of racial inequality uniformly across the industry. Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, but it would be a full 12 years before the Boston Red Sox became the last team to sign their first black player, Pumpsie Green.
At the 1972 World Series, Robinson called for the hiring of the first black manager in the major leagues, something that didn’t happen until 1975 when Frank Robinson took over the Cleveland Indians.
In 1997 Major League Baseball celebrated the first Jackie Robinson Day, in which then Commissioner Bud Selig announced that No. 42 would be removed in perpetuity in Robinson’s honor. Players had the option to wear No. 42 that day, and initially, many did not. But in the years that followed, it became the norm for all players to use Robinson’s number that day.
MLB will commemorate Jackie Robinson’s Day this season on August 28.
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