The normally chatty and opinionated Boston Red Sox television broadcasters gave the team’s massive Black Lives Matter banners a good leaving alone when it came to commentary Friday night.
During the Opening Day broadcast, the festive Dave O’Brien, Jerry Remy, and Dennis Eckersley offered opinions on baseball strategy, Mookie Betts’s new contract in Los Angeles, what they would do with $60 million after taxes, wardrobe sense, and even Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s coronavirus performance (which they pronounced good). But the multiple Black Lives Matter displays drew a just-the-facts description from play-by-play guy O’Brien, followed by silence.
With one out in the top of the fifth inning and the Baltimore Orioles at bat while training the Red Sox 10-0, O’Brien announced the existence of the banners, part of what was apparently a production-meeting exercise for a slow moment of the game.
“Well, the Red Sox unveiled a 254-foot-long banner facing the Mass. Pike on the billboard outside Fenway Park that reads ‘Black Lives Matter’,” O’Brien said. “They have added another one in center field, as of tonight, which is 120 feet wide, and 20 feet tall.”
As the camera panned the center field bleachers banner, O’Brien said: “And there is a look.”
“The players wearing Black Lives Matter on their sleeve, as well,” O’Brien also noted.
Then the camera showed and later panned the longer banner on the billboard outside.
“There’s the 254-foot-long banner facing the Mass. Pike,” O’Brien said.
Remy and Eckersley said nothing, while O’Brien went back to calling the game.
Black Lives Matter is a polarizing private corporation and social and political movement. It has drawn support from some American corporations and a portion of the American public for calling attention to actual cases and disputed cases of police brutality toward black men.
The group has also drawn criticism for its attacks on police (including efforts to de-fund police and denigration of police during demonstrations); its claim that America suffers from “systemic racism”; and its statement that members of Black Lives Matter “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.” Leaders of the group also say they “foster a queer-affirming network … with the attention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”
Red Sox president Sam Kennedy said Thursday, July 23 that the team does intend the banners and other displays for Black Lives Matter as a political statement but rather as “a human rights statement,” according to NBCBoston.com.
