Pair of St. Louis Cardinals players sit out game in protest of Kenosha shooting
St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler and pitcher Jack Flaherty opted not to participate in Wednesday night’s game with the Kansas City Royals in a statement of solidarity with others around Major League Baseball, the team announced just before game time Wednesday.
Fowler was originally scheduled to start the game batting eighth and playing right field. Flaherty, who was Monday night’s starting pitcher, was not scheduled to appear.
The club issued the following statement:
“Dexter Fowler and Jack Flaherty have decided to stand in solidarity with other players throughout Major League Baseball. Dexter Fowler is a healthy scratch from tonight’s game. The Cardinals organization supports their decisions.”
Several postponements occurred throughout professional sports on Wednesday following the shooting of Jacob Blake by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday.
“I woke up and saw (the shooting) this morning and that was tough to watch,” Flaherty said after his start on Monday. “It didn’t really make sense. It still doesn’t make sense.
“It’s one of those things, when it happens and you see it, you want justice. You pray that he’s OK. You pray for him to make a recovery, and it sounds like he’s going to be able to, but it sounds like Jacob’s going to have a lot of work and a lot of probably changes in his life due to what happened.”
Blake’s family attorney, Benjamin Crump, told the news media on Tuesday that Blake is now paralyzed.
“You get seven rounds fired into your back like that, it just doesn’t really make sense,” Flaherty said. “You just kind of wonder what’s going through everybody’s head there in that kind of situation.
“Like I said before the season started and others have said, just because sports are coming back doesn’t mean that these conversations stop and that there’s no call for action. It means that we need more calls for action. We need more people to continue this conversation, continue to bring light to events like this.”
All three NBA postseason games set to be played in the league’s Walt Disney World bubble were canceled after members of the Milwaukee Bucks opted not to take the court and instead used their time in the locker room to contact the Wisconsin state attorney general and lieutenant governor.
The evening’s scheduled WNBA games were also postponed.
The Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers agreed to postpone their game in solidarity with the actions of the NBA players, as did the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 8:17 PM.
