Yankees, Nationals players all kneel before national anthem in MLB opener

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WASHINGTON — Though it was the novel coronavirus that delayed Major League Baseball’s Opening Day by nearly four months, the social reckoning that occurred along the way could not be ignored before it was time to play ball.

In a coordinated gesture between the reigning World Series champion Washington Nationals and New York Yankees before their Thursday night opener, players clutched a black cloth that winded from the Nationals’ first base line around to the Yankees on the third-base line.

Then, before a pre-recorded rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, every player and coach out for pregame introductions took a knee on the grass, for about 20 seconds.

With no fans in the stands as baseball re-starts while mitigating the risks and worries of COVID-19, the park was particularly silent for the moment, which comes nearly two months after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The subsequent protests that galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and precipitated a global racial awakening of sorts found its way to baseball.

As the Yankees took batting practice Thursday, a majority of the players and manager Aaron Boone wore Black Live Matter T-shirts, a maneuver that months ago would have been viewed in a far more radical light.

It was the work of millions of protestors – and perhaps the time of reflection created by COVID-19 – that made the gesture feel safe, almost rote, even, though still steeped in meaning.

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In the wake of Floyd’s killing, the sport of Jackie Robinson, which has seen its Black player population dwindle to around 8%, saw a coalition of current and former Black players come together and form the Players’ Alliance, with Yankee stars Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge both prominent members.

Yankees players kneel before the game at Nationals Park.

 (Photo: Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports)

Thursday night, a Players’ Alliance video played on the video board at Nationals Park as a black cloth lined the grass. After the video, players clutched the cloth and then, silently, knelt for about 25 seconds before Nationals favorite D.C. Washington’s rendition of the national anthem played.

And so the 50-plus players and coaches did not join their peers from the San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds who protested systemic racism and police brutality before recent exhibition games.

“Tonight, as a team, we’ll have our own demonstration moving forward,” Boone said before the game.

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