‘I’m a Christian,’ says sole MLB player who didn’t take a knee during BLM tribute
Silence ran steady through the empty seats of Dodger Stadium on Thursday night. As the starting lineups for the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers were announced to an eerie, cheerless void, baseball’s Opening Day felt odd. Everything was off — except for the long black ribbon at the feet of both teams.
And then came Morgan Freeman.
“Today, and every day, we come together as brothers,” his voice boomed over the loud speakers, taking over the empty park. “As equals, all with the same goal — to level the playing field. To change the injustices. Equality is not just a word. It’s our right. Today we stand as men from 25 nations on 6 continents.”
As Freeman reached the end of the monologue, both teams took a knee, grasping the ribbon.
“Today, we are one.”
One player remained on his feet as his teammates kneeled on the outside of that quiet diamond.
Giants relief pitcher Sam Coonrod explained his actions following the Dodgers’ 8-1 win over the Giants.
“I’m a Christian,” Coonrod said according to multiple outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle. “So I just believe that I can’t kneel before anything besides God.”
The 27-year-old said that he doesn’t agree with things he’s heard about the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement that Major League Baseball stands behind.
“I’m a Christian, like I said, and I just can’t get on board with a couple of things that I have read about Black Lives Matter,” Coonrod said. “How they lean toward Marxism and they’ve said some negative things about the nuclear family. I just can’t get on board with that.”
Marxism, a doctrine formed by German philosopher Karl Marx, is a political and economic way of organizing “social change through an economic lens, with the assumption that the rich and the poor should become more equal,” according to PolitiFact.
Political figures such as Rudy Giuliani and Ben Carson along with conservative talk show host Mark Levin have been arguing that the BLM movement is considered Marxist.
In a 2015 interview that recently resurfaced, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and her fellow organizers as “trained Marxists.”
“We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories,” Cullors said in an interview with The Real News Network. “And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folk.”
Since 2015, the Black Lives Matter movement has broadened, most of its followers recognizing the message of the movement as anti-racist and not Marxist.
“Regardless of whatever the professed politics of people may be who are prominent in the movement, they don’t represent its breadth,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University African American Studies professor and author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” said to PolitiFact.
“There are definitely socialists within the movement, as there have been in every single social movement in 20th century American history and today. But that does not make those socialist movements, it makes them mass movements.”
Coonrod said he meant no “ill-will” by standing.
“I’m not mad at someone who decided to kneel,” the pitcher said. “I just don’t think it’s too much to ask that I just get the same respect.”
After the moment, some players, including Dodgers star Mookie Betts and Giants managers Gabe Kapler, remained kneeling during the national anthem.
Kapler said that he supported Coonrod’s decision to remain on his feet during a Zoom conference with the media, USA Today reported.
“The one thing that we said is we were going to let people express themselves,” Kapler said. “We were going to give them the choice on whether they were going to stand, kneel or do something else. That was a personal decision for Sam.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 12:09 PM with the headline "‘I’m a Christian,’ says sole MLB player who didn’t take a knee during BLM tribute."