Giants manager Gabe Kapler won’t come out of clubhouse for national anthem

In the wake of the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler has penned a blog post and is protesting in his own way. He will not be coming out of the clubhouse or dugout onto the field for the playing of the national anthem for the time being. 

His explanation is on his personal blog, but he also elaborated in the dugout in Cincinnati before Friday’s scheduled Giants game against the Reds. 

“I just don’t plan on coming out for the anthem going forward,” he said. “Until I feel like there’s — until I feel better about the direction of our country. So that’ll the be step. I don’t expect it to move the needle necessarily, but it’s just something that I feel strongly enough about to take that step. The rest of what I wrote, I think explains that.”

“I was having a hard time articulating my thoughts the day of the shooting, the day we went out there on the line,” Kapler said, referencing the Giants’ home game on Tuesday. “Sometimes for me it takes me a couple of days to put everything together. I knew that I was not in my best space, mentally, and I knew that it was in connection with some of the hypocrisy of standing for the national anthem and how it coincided with the moment of silence and how those two things didn’t sync up well for me.” 

“But I wasn’t quite sure — I couldn’t make sense of it in real time and it took me a couple of days to pull all my thoughts together and to be able to articulate them clearly. Sometimes that happens for me. I don’t necessarily always talk on the spot. I want some time to think it through.” 

The Giants have a three-game series in Cincinnati scheduled for Friday through Sunday, but Friday’s game started in a delay because of inclement weather.