Giants' Gabe Kapler encouraged by MLB players speaking against racism

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Like many in the baseball community, Giants manager Gabe Kapler has been particularly active on social media over the past week, posting his own thoughts on the death of George Floyd and retweeting others in baseball who have reacted. 

During his weekly spot on KNBR, Kapler was asked about his thoughts on what he has seen in recent days. He said he is encouraged by how many people are finally speaking up. 

"I think the baseball community is doing some good work right now, I think the sports leadership community is doing some good work right now," Kapler said. "In our own community in the Bay, we have leaders like Steve Kerr and Steph Curry speaking up against some injustices that are very clear to everyone right now. They're speaking up on how important it is to not just not be racist, but to be antiracist, and what that means is demonstrating very clearly and very strongly that it is unacceptable to discriminate against anybody for the color of their skin, for their socioeconomic background, for how they grew up. None of those things is acceptable, to discriminate anybody for any of those reasons. 

"People in the baseball community -- like Jimmy Rollins and like Rocco Baldelli and like Jack Flaherty -- are coming out publicly on social media and demonstrating their anger and their sadness. We have the opportunity right now to come together with the black community and demonstrate that whether you're a white man or a black man or a white woman or a black woman right now, we all have the collective responsibility to speak up. I guess the one thing that is somewhat encouraging right now is that people are beginning to make their voices heard and I think that's a really important bit of progress right now."

Protests continued across the country Monday night, a week after Floyd died while in police custody in Minneapolis. Kapler said he is focused on listening right now, while also having conversations with his two sons and his parents, who marched in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 

In general, baseball teams have been slower than others to react to what's happening around the country, although the Giants did put out a statement Sunday. Several stars have put out messages on their social media pages, most notably Flaherty, the young St. Louis Cardinals right-hander. His message was one of the ones Kapler shared on his Twitter page:

[GIANTS INSIDER PODCAST: Listen to the latest episode]

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