Spring training is underway ahead of the 2024 Major League Baseball season, and the new manager for the San Francisco Giants is already transforming the team.
One notable difference is that players are now required to empty the dugout and stand on the field for the National Anthem. Manager Bob Melvin explained that the policy has nothing to do with politics. He requires his players to join one another on the field as a show of solidarity and to signal to the opposing team that the Giants are ready to play ball.
“It has nothing to do with whatever happened in the past or whatever, it’s just something I embrace. It’s all about the perception that we’re out there ready to play,” he told The Athletic, per Fox News. “That’s it. You want your team ready to play, and I want the other team to notice it too. It’s really as simple as that.”
The previous manager, Gabe Kapler, told The Athletic that his players could stand, sit, or do whatever they thought was right during the anthem. He said there was “no wrong answer” and personally refused to take the field for the anthem in protest of the Uvalde school shooting in Texas. Kapler is now Florida Marlins assistant general manager.
“I’m often struck before our games by the lack of delivery of the promise of what our national anthem represents,” Kapler said in a blog post in 2022, as reported by Fox News. “But instead, we thoughtlessly link our moment of silence and grief with the equally thoughtless display of celebration for a country that refuses to take up the concept of controlling the sale of weapons used nearly exclusively for the mass slaughter of human beings.”
Kapler also took a knee in 2020 during the singing of the National Anthem along with Giants players to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Giants players who spoke with The Athletic said the new rule is a good one that helps bring the team together.
“I think it sets the example of hey, we’re in this together,” Giants outfielder Austin Slater said. “Whether you’re not playing that day or you’re a starting pitcher who threw yesterday, you’re still out there, on time, ready to be a good teammate.”
“Once the anthem starts, we’re locked in on the game as a unit. There’s an inherent respect level, and not only to the older guys but to your entire team,” Slater added.
The 2024 season begins on March 28. Whether standing for the anthem will make a difference is yet to be seen, but unity for the Giants should help the talented, young team in its efforts to get back to post-season play after failing last year.
