Orioles reliever Mychal Givens views Major League Baseball’s yearly honoring of Jackie Robinson as an opportunity for education. This year’s celebration comes at a valuable time for that effort.
Friday, every in-uniform member of each team will wear No. 42, the number Robinson wore when he broke the league’s color barrier in 1947, with the Orioles doing so for Friday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays in Buffalo. It comes a day after the Orioles elected to not play against the Tampa Bay Rays, one of seven MLB matchups that was postponed Thursday.
It was part of an effort to bring attention to systemic issues of racial injustice and police brutality in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Wisconsin.