MLB's Black Voices and the Exile of Oakland A's Bruce Maxwell

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the fall of 2017, Oakland A's catcher Bruce Maxwell was the only MLB player to kneel in protest of racial injustice, in support of Colin Kaepernick. Maxwell was not backed up by his teammates, or by MLB at large. A high-profile encounter with police further complicated Maxwell's career, and he wound up leaving MLB. Now, the killing of George Floyd has led Black players to organize in a whole new way, while Maxwell remains apart. Howard Bryant shares Maxwell's story, the history of Black player voices in baseball, and today's Players Alliance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I was minding my own business like usual, and the phone rang a couple of Saturdays ago, and it was Bruce Maxwell.
0:14.1	Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN and has been covering Major League Baseball for over 20 years.
0:20.2	He recently wrote about Bruce Maxwell,
0:22.6	the only MLB player to kneel during the national anthem in 2017.
0:27.2	And I didn't know because I had Bruce's number,
0:31.4	but Bruce was calling me from the 5-3 area code.
0:34.5	And I know my international codes in Europe,
0:37.0	but I had no idea where the
0:38.5	5-3 was and he was calling me from Unclever from Mexico he was really sort of upset
0:45.9	about the idea that all of these guys especially from the Major League draft you had
0:51.7	all these white executives holding up Black Lives Matter signs,
0:54.4	and he's like, what about me?
0:57.7	Have we all forgotten what happened to me?
1:14.6	Athletes across the world are kneeling to protest racial injustice. Athletes across the world are kneeling to protest racial injustice. But when Colin Kaepernick started the movement back in 2016, it was hardly mainstream, and only one Major League Baseball player.
1:22.6	A catcher for the Oakland days joined his cause.
1:33.2	Today, the story of what happened to Bruce Maxwell after he kneeled and how black baseball players everywhere are finding their voices and speaking out.
1:39.8	I'm Inakimes. It's Wednesday, July 15th.
1:45.5	This is ESPN Daily.
1:53.1	Hey, Howard. Thanks for joining us today. Hey, Mina. Good to be here.
2:03.1	So, in the present tense right now, athletes across the world, across sports are speaking out. They're, you know, taking a knee. It's no longer considered controversial, certainly not to the degree it was when Colin Kaepernick
2:09.1	first kneeled in 2016. Back then, not every sport embraced a gesture. In fact, far from
2:16.2	it, Howard. And you write about Major League Baseball,
	...

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