The New York Yankees and Washington Nationals kicked off their 2020 60-game season on Thursday evening, which was cut short due to rain, but the Yankees received attention for the Black Lives Matter shirts that they wore during batting practice, as well as their kneeling during the national anthem.
Yankees slugger Aaron Judge spoke about the team’s decision to wear the shirt with the media following their 4-1 victory over Washington.
“We got a lot of guys in this clubhouse with different beliefs and different feelings and different walks of life and they’re from different countries” according to the New York Times’ James Wagner.
“We wanted to respect all of that. As a team, we made a united decision to kneel right before the anthem. … There’s a lot of injustice in this world and a lot of bad things going on. We just wanted to show that we’re aware of it and start the conversation and start the change.”
Additionally, every player from the Yankees and Nationals knelt along the baseline prior to the anthem.
