COVID Curveball by Tim Neverett

Author:Tim Neverett [Neverett, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

August 26, 2020. Game 32? Black Lives Matter

Today is a day that will be remembered forever, not for the games that were played, but for the games that were not. The police shooting of a twenty-nine-year-old African American man named Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, poured salt into an already wide-open wound. This country has seen its share of racial injustice and systemic racism. The sports world responded in an effort to create a heightened awareness of the multiple problems people of color have been dealing with for years. High-profile players decided to make a stand and collectively say, “Enough is enough.” NBA players decided against playing their playoff games. The Milwaukee Bucks began the protests, followed by the Milwaukee Brewers in MLB. The rest of the NBA followed the Bucks’ lead, then the entire WNBA did the same.

The Zoom conference with Dave Roberts, originally scheduled for 3:00 p.m., was pushed off. Around 5:00 p.m., in the radio booth with Rick Monday and Duane McDonald, we awaited word on what the Dodgers would do. We kept an eye on our feed from Oracle Park in San Francisco to see if anything was out of the ordinary and whether there were any indicators that there may not be a game.

Other games on the east coast had already begun and were too late to join the NBA in any kind of unified strike, but once the Brewers decided not to play against the Reds, teams in the west followed suit, except the Rockies and Diamondbacks, though Matt Kemp opted out of the game with the support of his teammates.

Mookie Betts, one of the most prominent African American baseball players in the world, decided he would not play. Dave Roberts, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother but whose father is Black, was going to sit out the game, too. He had the support of ownership, as did first-base coach George Lombard, whose father is Black and mother was white. Lombard’s mother, a civil activist in the 1960s, died when he was only ten years old, but she inspired George to never be quiet about social issues. Lombard is one of the best people in the game and has earned respect everywhere he has been, in and out of baseball.

Unlike some teams, the Dodgers supported one another and decided they were either all in or all out. If Mookie was not going to play, none of them would play. Betts’ teammates had his back and he felt it, saying during the Zoom press conference, “I was already tight with everybody in the clubhouse, but now that I know that everybody has my back even more than I already thought, it means a lot. I’ll always remember this team just having my back.”

“It’s not a political issue…this is a human being issue,” said Dave Roberts.

Kershaw, who has been outspoken and extremely supportive of his Black teammates, stood with Betts, Roberts, and Kenley Jansen at the press conference and said, “We made a

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