Former MLB star catcher Jonathan Lucroy opened up about dealing with Major League Baseball’s own anthem-kneeling controversy during the shortened 2020 season.
Players knelt during “The Star-Spangled Banner” amid a summer of racial tension sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Lucroy said he was asked to kneel but denied the request. He did not say the team he was on, but he spent the 2020 season with the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies.
Jonathan Lucroy, #12 of the Boston Red Sox, warms up before an intrasquad game during Summer Workouts at Fenway Park on July 12, 2020 in Boston. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
“I posted about it on Twitter the other day but during my career like there was a lot of things that happened and I don’t want to get specific and call out teams or anything like that, that’s not what I’m doing,” he told Charly Arnolt on Tuesday on “OutKick the Morning.”
“But you know in general, you know these teams they come down, and they don’t want you to be politically, they don’t want you to be politically polarizing. They don’t want you to lean a certain way, they just want you to stay neutral and kind of keep your mouth shut, but the problem is I was with a team that told me to kneel for the anthem, and I gave them the finger, and I’m like no, I will never do that. Never, ever, ever, You’re not going to make me, there is nothing you’re – I’m not doing that.
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Former Milwaukee Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy waves to fans after officially retiring as a Brewer before a game against the Cincinnati Reds at American Family Field. (Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports)
“We were told by a team to get the vaccine. And if we didn’t get the vaccine, we couldn’t see our family for three months. Now that came down from the CDC, to MLB, which was then passed along to the teams so that wasn’t the teams’ fault, but the kneeling for the anthem part was a big issue for me. That was several years ago and that really turned me on to the culture war that we fight.”
Lucroy opened up about the anthem-kneeling issue in a post on X earlier this month.
Lucroy played 12 seasons with nine different teams, most of which was spent with the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers drafted Lucroy out of Louisiana-Lafayette in the third round in 2007.
Milwaukee Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy, #20, waits his turn in the batting cage before playing the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park in Pittsburgh on April 18, 2015. (Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports)
He hit .274 with 108 home runs. He was an All-Star in 2014 and 2016.
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