SF Giants Gameday: Giants-Dodgers postponement a historic moment in baseball

SAN FRANCISCO -- When the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers agreed to postpone Wednesday's game at Oracle Park in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha, Wis. police officer, they were agreeing to mutually partake in a historic moment.

Giants manager Gabe Kapler and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts have made several public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, but on Wednesday, their teams made a collective decision to take greater action to protest racial injustice and police brutality.

The Giants-Dodgers matchup was one of three postponed across Major League Baseball on a day when the Milwaukee Bucks set the stage for protests across the sports world by refusing to come out of their locker room for Game 5 of their postseason series against the Orlando Magic.

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Roberts and Dodgers players spoke at length immediately following the announcement Wednesday's game would be postponed about expressing support for Mookie Betts, their superstar outfielder who informed teammates he would not participate if they chose to play.

“For me, I think no matter what I wasn’t going to play tonight," Betts said postgame.

Pitcher Clayton Kershaw said the decision to support Betts and elect not to play was made by the entire Dodgers team.

”As a white player on this team, how can we show support?" Kershaw said. "What’s something tangible we can do to help our black brothers on this team? Once Mookie said that he wasn’t going to play, that started our conversation as a team.”

The Giants, it appears, did not have unanimous support within the clubhouse to move forward and play Wednesday's game. They did have several conversations, both as a team and in small groups, about whether or not they wanted to take the field.

"What I can share with you is that when you're dealing with 26 personalities in a Major League clubhouse, you're going to have different viewpoints and different opinions. I don't think that's any secret," manager Gabe Kapler said. "I think what's really cool about this day and age that we're in is players are using their platforms to express themselves, and in exactly the way they want to express themselves and exactly their own words."

The Giants didn't have any players join Kapler in a postgame press conference, so it's difficult to know what "their own words" might sound like. That will change in the coming days as Giants players will be asked to recap how the team handled Wednesday's postponement and whether or not there were conflicting opinions on how to approach the possibility of playing.

Regardless of how the Giants' conversations unfolded, the Dodgers planned to support Betts and not take the field. Kershaw and Roberts both said the Giants understood, supported and agreed with the decision to postpone the game.

“We did talk to the Giants as well," Roberts said. "And they were in lockstep with our thoughts."