Following a 42-second moment of silence at Citi Field on Thursday night, the New York Mets and Miami Marlins walked off the field and left a Black Lives Matter T-shirt on home plate as they departed back to their dugouts and into the bowels of the stadium.
“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 Marlins outfielder Lewis Brinson. “And it was the right thing to do.”
Prior to the demonstration, there had been an indication the teams did not intend to play their game to protest social injustice and call attention to the shooting of Jacob Blake, as the Mets never submitted a lineup and neither starting pitcher threw any warmup pitches.
The player reps for each team, Michael Conforto for the Mets and Miguel Rojas for the Marlins, came up with the idea of the teams walking off the field.
“We wanted to do something special,” Rojas said. “We wanted to do something different.”
In addition to Mets vs. Marlins, six other MLB games also were not played on Thursday night: Nationals vs. Phillies, Rangers vs. A’s, Tigers vs. Twins, Red Sox vs. Blue Jays, Diamondbacks vs. Rockies and Orioles vs. Rays.
Though there has been some speculation about MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s acceptance of games being postponed in the name of protest, he released a statement saying he supports players opting not to play.
“Over the past two days, players on a number of Clubs have decided not to play games,” he said. “I have said both publicly and privately that I respect those decisions and support the need to address social injustice. I have not attempted in any way to prevent players from expressing themselves by not playing, nor have I suggested any alternative form of protest to any Club personnel or any player. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”
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