I love baseball and there are just no two ways about it. Baseball is the quintessential American game for so many reasons that I shall not list here.

I once said I would never go back to watching the game after the strike of 94, but I did. The game is just too ingrained in me to walk away from it for good. Even if I didn’t watch the players in the majors there are smaller leagues in and around the country that you can watch and still enjoy the great game.

So when the latest protest nonsense started to sweep the nation before the beginning of this COVID-19 shortened season I knew that there would be players who would join in being it is the “thing” to do. I figured that people would take extreme offense to it and start the SCREW BASEBALL rantings. I understand why and if that is how they feel they should roll full force with it.

Yet there is another side of this issue with baseball and this should be acknowledged. There are teams and players that are not going along with this nonsense endorsed by the raging mob.

Last Thursday when the San Fransico Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers every player knelt down during the national anthem except one. Sam Coonrod decided to stand and ended up being the only one. According to Fox News…

San Francisco Giants pitcher Sam Coonrod was the only player to stand during a moment honoring the Black Lives Matter movement ahead of the season opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers, telling reporters after the game that as a Christian he “can’t kneel before anything besides God.”

I’m a Christian,” he said, according to TMZ Sports. “So I just believe that I can’t kneel before anything besides God.”

“I just can’t get on board with a couple things I’ve read about Black Lives Matter, how they lean towards Marxism,” he continued. “And … they said some negative things about the nuclear family. I just can’t get on board with that.”

That is a guy with some cojones and deserves some props from people who aren’t down with this craziness going on.

Yesterday for the league-wide opening day New York Mets and Atlanta Braves lo and behold all the players stood during the anthem. From the Ny Daily News…

Almost every player on the Mets and Braves stood for the national anthem on Friday, as was mostly typical across baseball’s restart.

Players, coaches, and staffers on the Nationals, Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants all knelt (except for one) before the anthem on Thursday, then mostly stood for the actual anthem.

A video of clips from players around the league was played on the Citi Field screen calling for fans and MLB to “acknowledge the pain of the Black community.” Dozens of players in the video said “Black Lives Matter,” which was absent from the Morgan Freeman-read, Andrew McCutchen-written speech that players knelt during Thursday night.

While audio from that speech played, Mets and Braves players stood along the foul lines holding the league-provided black cloth. They all remained standing for the performance of the national anthem, delivered virtually by New York-area essential workers.

Baseball is as diverse as the country it plays in. There are MANY players who are willing to show respect to this country for a couple of moments before playing a kids game that pays them millions. Don’t throw the whole sport out because of a few bad eggs. Support the game and the players that support your view and boo those that don’t.

That is truly the American thing to do.