MLB Players Alliance To Donate Salaries On Jackie Robinson Day

The Players Alliance is a group of over 100 Black current and former baseball players, and on Thursday they announced collectively that they would be donating their salaries from the games on August 27 and 28 in honor of Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball.

The group is headed by Curtis Granderson as president, C.C. Sabathia vice president, and Edwin Jackson secretary. An advisory board of seven current major leaguers and six former players includes names like Tim Anderson, Jason Heyward, and Prince Fielder. The Players Alliance sponsors programs for the Black community, including mentorship and donating baseball equipment.

On Twitter and Instagram, the alliance announced its plans for games on Thursday and Friday:

Friday is Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball, set aside to honor the legacy of Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Typically, Jackie Robinson Day is held on April 15 on the anniversary of his debut, but this year the postponement of the season pushed the day to Friday.

August 28 also holds special significance because it is the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and it is the date in 1945 when Robinson first met with Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey.

The Players Alliance announcement comes in the midst of one of the most turbulent weeks in Major League Baseball, as individual players and entire teams have been opting not to play on both Wednesday and Thursday night. They were following the lead teams and athletes in leagues across the country who did not play in an effort to call attention to racial injustice in the United States and to the civil unrest that has followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In many cases, teams decided as a group not to play, and in others, just one or two players on a team made the choice individually. On Wednesday night, the Cubs’ Heyward was among the latter group, and though he reportedly encouraged his teammates to go ahead and play themselves, their choice not to stand with him has since drawn criticism.

On Wednesday, Heyward posted to his Instagram in the hours before the Cubs game against the Detroit Tigers:

“There were multiple guys saying they weren’t comfortable going out there and playing if I wasn’t going to go out there,” Heyward said on Wednesday night. “They didn’t want to leave me hanging. I let them know, encouraged them, you know, go play the game. I don’t think the game should be canceled but I think I have to do what I have to do.”

On Wednesday, three different games were postponed, involving the Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Brewers, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Francisco Giants. Thursday, seven more games were halted, including the Miami Marlins and New York Mets, where players walked to the field and held a 42-second moment of silence in honor of Jackie Robinson’s jersey number before returning to their locker rooms for the night.

For now, the plan is to make up the Wednesday and Thursday games postponed by protest, and it remains to be seen if postponements will continue into the weekend.