Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Mookie Betts was not going to play, and thus the Dodgers were not going to play.
The circumstances around the Giants were less clear but resulted in neither team playing at Oracle Park on Wednesday, a silent, no-game protest against systemic racism and police brutality taking place instead.
Two days after Wisconsin police shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black man, in the back several times, video of which went viral in the latest instance of excessive force against minorities that has led to a country-wide reckoning, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play. The rest of the NBA followed their lead, the whole slate being wiped away. Some of baseball followed — Reds-Brewers and Mariners-Padres also were postponed — before the Giants and Dodgers joined.
“No matter what, I wasn’t going to play tonight,” Betts, the Dodgers star, told reporters on a Zoom. “There’s a lot going on in the world, and change needs to be made. I have to use my platform to at least get the ball rolling. I talked to my teammates and told them how I felt, and they all were by my side.”
As they were during his interview, in which Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen and manager Dave Roberts were on the call. The Giants and Dodgers had talked through the decision — the bitter rivals even released a joint statement in which the clubs said they “proudly join our players in the shared goal for a more equitable and just society” — yet it was not entirely clear how the Giants reached the decision to not play (if indeed they reached it, rather than the Dodgers pulling them along).
“There was no formal vote,” said Gabe Kapler, who has taken a knee during the national anthem all season. “A lot of conversations where groups were getting together and talking through things, that was the mechanics of it.”
The Giants manager did not want to divulge the nature of those personal conversations. The Giants did not make any players available, which shed no further light on how a diverse, 28-man clubhouse ensemble either reached a decision or accepted the Dodgers’.
Kapler’s counterpart, Roberts, said he would not have managed even if the game took place. Kapler declined to answer the hypothetical directed his way, saying he didn’t have to think about it.
He answered similarly when asked whether the Giants would have played if their opponent were willing.
“That’s an impossible question to answer because of all the variability that was going on today,” said Kapler, who did say he met with the team and said it is united in believing “racial inequality is completely unacceptable.”
After Wednesday’s protest, the Giants and Dodgers are expecting to play a traditional double-header Thursday that begins at 1:05 p.m. Its length, though — each game will be seven innings — will not be traditional.
As he always does, Kapler went out of his way to say he supports each player and coach in the clubhouse and their viewpoints, though he provided just one peek at a viewpoint.
“I did have a conversation with one of our coaches today. It was a group conversation, but the coach brought it up, which was like: These days are going to keep happening,” Kapler relayed. “And so every day is going to present an opportunity for us to continue to have these conversations.
“There are going to be more days where systemic racism and social injustices are exposed and become national stories. Every time that happens, we have a decision to make because we have uniforms on and we have these very powerful platforms.”