The Miami Marlins and New York Mets jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter T-shirt across home plate as they chose not to play Thursday night.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Miami Marlins and New York Mets jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter T-shirt across home plate as they chose not to play Thursday night. After other games around baseball were postponed to protest social injustice, the Mets were late to take the field Thursday and never submitted a lineup to the public or the umpires. Neither starting pitcher threw any warmup pitches. The teams stood around their dugouts in full uniforms shortly before the 7:10 p.m. scheduled first pitch, and the national anthem was played and all players and coaches stood. Mets outfielder Dominic Smith — a Black man who wept Wednesday night while discussing the shooting by police of a Black man in Wisconsin over the weekend — led New York onto the field. Players took their positions, then reserves and coaches filed out of both dugouts and stood silently for 42 seconds. Members on each team doffed caps towards the other side before returning to their clubhouses, leaving only the black T-shirt at home. “The words on the shirt speak for themselves, just having it in the center of everything, just knowing that both teams are unified, and that we agreed to do this,” said Marlins outfielder Lewis Brinson, who was Miami’s leadoff hitter and stood near the batter’s box for the silent display. “And it was the right thing to do.” The scene capped a whirlwind 20-hour span that began with Smith’s emotional press conference following the Mets’ 5-4 victory. “It really touched all of us in the clubhouse, just to see how powerful his statements were, how emotional he was,” Conforto said “He’s our brother, so we stand behind him and we stand behind (Black Mets outfielder) Billy (Hamilton).
