I’ve been a New York Mets fan since 1962 when they played their first season in the Polo Grounds left vacant when the Giants departed for San Francisco.
I celebrated the “Miracle Mets” 1969 World Series victory and the unlikely come-from-behind victory over the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. And then there was Mike Piazza’s uplifting game-winning home run against the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 21, 2001, in the first professional sporting event in New York after the terrorist attack that destroyed the Twin Towers.
But tonight I’ve never been prouder of my team and they didn’t even play a game.
The Mets and the Miami Marlins took the field, and then all the players on both teams took off their hats for 42 seconds (in honor of No. 42 Jackie Robinson). A Black Lives Matter shirt was placed over home plate and then all the players left the field.
At least seven MLB games were postponed on Thursday, a day after the NBA, WNBA, MLS and several MLB teams decided not to play in a show of solidarity to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
On Wednesday night, Mets first baseman Dominic Smith knelt ahead of the game. In a post-game interview, a teary-eyed Smiths said: “The most difficult part is to see that people still don’t care. For this to continually happen, this just shows the hate in people’s hearts. That just sucks, you know. Being a black man in America is not easy. Like I said, I wasn’t there (mentally) today, but I will be fine.”
Tonight after the walk-off, Smith gave a joint interview with three teammates of different races, all wearing masks by the way — Michael Conforto, who is white, and Robinson Cano and Dellan Betances, whose roots are in the Dominican Republic. Conforto, the Mets’ team rep, said the team had done some reflecting on Smith’s comments from the previous night. “Dom’s our brother,” Conforto said, adding that the team stood “united” in their decision not to play Thursday night.
And the solidarity shown by the Mets and Marlins — and many other professional athletes — to protest racial injustice is a ray of light on an otherwise dark night when IMPOTUS will conclude his four-day hate-fest
