Former MLB catcher Jonathan Lucroy recently recounted his handling of players kneeling for the national anthem in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. As racial tensions boiled over in the summer of 2020, many professional athletes across sports began kneeling when the “Star-Spangled Banner” played before games. However, Lucroy refused to partake in the disrespect toward the national anthem.
“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,” the former baseball player said during a podcast appearance on “Outkick the Morning.”
Lucroy then recounted when he was encouraged to kneel for the anthem. “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,” he said. However, when they asked him to kneel for the anthem, that’s where Lucroy drew the line.
The former baseball player said, “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.”
He continued blasting the woke politics of 2020, stating, “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.”
The American Tribune recently reported on other comments from Lucroy regarding the 2024 presidential election, where he celebrated President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory. Lucroy labeled the election the “dawn of a new era” where the American people chose to reject wokeness and the radical left. “It’s the dawn of a new era. What a blessing to live in this wonderful country where we can vote to make changes every 4 years,” Lucroy wrote. He further praised the “silent majority” for standing up to the radical agenda promoted by the Democratic Party. “Silent majority spoke up last night. Vehemently rejecting the radical, anti-American policies of the socialist woke,” he said.
The former All-Star continued, “A commenter said last night that we ‘auto corrected’ as a nation. The people, WE the people, went and handled up on the plague that was upon us.” He added. “I’m so proud to be an American today. I look forward to watching Trump, Elon, RFK, and others clean up the swamp that is our government.”
Watch Patrick Mahomes’ mom rocking a MAGA hat on the eve of the election:
Featured image credit: Scott U, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonathan_Lucroy_-_batting_practice_(28960144107)_(cropped).jpg
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