Maybe Playing Could Have Been The Ultimate Tribute To Daunte Wright

I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. This is just another side I felt like I needed to share. 

Mental health days are good. Emotion is different in everyone and when Daunte Wright was killed by police the other night, I was furious just like the millions of others around the country. As a white man, the only thing I can offer is sadness and sorrow. I’m not a person of color. I don’t know the feelings that Aaron Hicks felt when he pulled himself out of the lineup the other night. But what I can offer is a question. Not a question to start trouble… not a question to cause anger. My question is simply this… wouldn’t a night of playing as hard as hell been the ultimate tribute to Daunte Wright and his name?

The New Yorker writes of the incident:

“On Sunday, a twenty-year-old named Daunte Wright was stopped near the intersection of Sixty-third and Lee Avenues in Brooklyn Center, an inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis. The reasons for the stop are in dispute: Wright’s mother, Katie, told a rally on Sunday evening that Daunte had called her when he was pulled over and said that it was because he had an air-freshener hanging from his rearview mirror (which is prohibited in Minnesota). On Monday, the police department suggested that there had been an issue with his registration tags. (On Tuesday, Benjamin Crump, a lawyer now representing the Wright family, noted a pandemic-related backlog in processing paperwork for license plates.) A young woman sat in the front passenger seat. During the stop, the police reportedly found that there was a warrant against Wright for two misdemeanors—involving a weapons-possession charge—which were issued after he had missed a court date. What is not in dispute is that Kim Potter, a twenty-six-year veteran of the police force, shouted “Taser!” as Wright struggled with an officer who was trying to remove him from his car, but she was actually holding a gun instead of a Taser, and fired a single bullet. (The police department later said that she had drawn the gun in error.) Wright drove off before losing consciousness and crashing several blocks away. He died at the scene. The young woman in the car was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a hospital. Officer Potter resigned on Tuesday, as did Tim Gannon, the city’s chief of police.”

Distraught at the news that yet another Black man, this time Daunte Wright, had been killed by police in a Minneapolis suburb, Hicks approached manager Aaron Boone and begged out of the night’s lineup, when the Yankees were set to face the Toronto Blue Jays.

The happenings in Minneapolis are likely particularly personal for Hicks because he began his career with the Minnesota Twins; he was the team’s first-round draft pick in 2008 and spent seven years in the organization, including three with the big club, before being traded to New York after the 2015 season.”