Taking a knee. In front of everyone

The Giants kneel. Trump fumes. And America takes note.

I guess nobody knew Gab Kapler was going to kneel for the national anthem.

It was quite the Monday night statement; maybe even historic. As far as anyone can determine, Kapler is the first manager or head coach in major professional sports to make the gesture.

And he wasn’t the only Giant. Black team members Jaylin Davis and Antoan Richardson knelt. Brandon Crawford stood between them, his hands on their shoulders.

Outfielders Austin Slater and Mike Yastrzemski, white players who attended Stanford and Vanderbilt respectively, also took a knee.

As the camera panned the lineup, it became a hey-look-at-this moment in the Bay Area. Whoa, check out what the Giants are doing.

But I’d also guess that the Giants never expected it to be such a big deal. The story and the video rippled across the country, all the way to the door of the White House. And President Trump, who enjoys hitting things off a tee, was happy to come out and take a swing.

"Looking forward to live sports," Trump tweeted the next morning, "but any time I witness a player kneeling during the National Anthem, a sign of great disrespect for our Country and our Flag, the game is over for me!"

We’ve seen this movie before. Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in 2016. His demonstration grew until at one point it was estimated 200 NFL players were participating. It became almost routine.

But in September of 2017, Trump gave his get-that-son-of-a-bitch off the field speech, and it rekindled kneeling as a political issue. Another cause for Trump to trumpet.

He’s giving that a try again here. And sure enough, the hashtag #boycottMLB was trending for a while around the time of Trump’s Tuesday morning Tweet.

But he may have missed an important point. America is changing its mind on racial inequities. Calling out racism isn’t a fringe position now.

For starters, Kapler’s protest answers the question: How do the Giants feel about this? Clearly they are fine. Kapler’s comments after the game only doubled down. He explained what he told the players before the game.

“I wanted them to know that I wasn’t pleased with the way our country has handled police brutality,’’ Kapler said. “I told them I wanted to use my platform to demonstrate my dissatisfaction with the way we’ve handled racism in our country. I wanted to demonstrate my dissatisfaction with our clear systemic racism in our country.”

Wow. That is definitely a reading from the progressive hymnal. And how did stodgy old Major League Baseball take that?

To put it simply, with a full embrace. The official @MLB not only Tweeted video of the Giants kneeling, it issued a statement reminding critics that the protest is not about disrespect to the flag or the military.

“Supporting human rights is not political,” the MLB Tweet said. “Supporting our players and supporting equality is not political.”

And here is the interesting part. Make no mistake, what the Giants did was both bold and brave. And great job by MLB and Giants’ ownership to stand behind their players.

But it is starting to look as if they are not that far out of the mainstream. Coincidently, just as the Kapler story was breaking, two polls came out addressing those very issues.

And, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, 69 percent of Americans “say that black people and other minorities are not treated equally to white people in the criminal justice system.” That has gone up 15 percent from 2014 and this is the first year that a majority (62 percent) of white people feel that way.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 71 percent of American believe race relations “are either very or fairly bad.” That’s up 16 percent just since February.

We always hesitate to make grand statements. Such potential to be wildly wrong.

But this really does feel like a moment in time. Not only are people, like the Giants, protesting, but those watching — a lot of them anyhow — are cheering them on. It really feels like there is a change in the national mindset.

Now, it should be said the polls make some other interesting points, some of which won’t bring joy to progressives.

Fifty-five percent of those in the WaPo poll oppose calls to “defund the police,” and 43 percent say they oppose it “strongly.”

(You didn’t ask, but “defund the police,” sounds edgy and trendy, but you are handing Trump a talking point to scare voters. He’s already using it. Not a good slogan.)

Also you’d think that, in this climate re-naming military bases and taking down Confederate statues would be slam dunks. But half of Americans opposed re-naming the bases and 52 percent don’t support removing public statues.

Frankly, I don’t get that. Confederacy = slavery. How do you defend that? And don’t say we are losing our history. As ABC’s John Dickerson said recently, it was the Civil War. Nobody’s going to forget that.

So, not a complete change in the mindset of America. But I’d submit, neither should this be ignored. Not the millions of peaceful marchers in the street. Not the strong responses from advocates. And not the kneeling protests of a group of professional athletes.

The Giants may not have started a movement. But it certainly showed which way the country is moving.

Every week I get a little note that says who has subscribed to this newsletter. And to be honest, I’m a little disappointed I haven’t seen your name. The remedy? Click on the button.

22 games in 20 days. The baseball restart looks kinda brutal

When Major League Baseball and the Players Associate were bickering over the length of the schedule, it seem like kind of an odd argument. Who cares how many games if we get a season in?

Well, behold the monster. As I said in my Santa Rosa Press Democrat column this is going to be a LOT of games in a very short time. Including the exhibitions with the A’s, they will play 38 games between now and the end of August — with four days off.

The real concern about the fact that the players were rushed into Spring Training 2.0, then not only put on the field to play games, but a fire hose of games. The first thing you think about is the potential for injuries.

But there’s also the Coronavirus. Even if someone gets it and doesn’t have severe symptoms, he’s still going to have to sit out 14 days. In a 60 game season, that’s a lot.

But it is all underway now. Best of luck, baseball and Godspeed.

Sharing is always nice, isn’t it? And to give you that opportunity, we provide this button, free of charge.

The NFL is totally ready to start the season. All they need is players, a plan and a clue

Hard to believe, but rookies and quarterbacks report to NFL camps this week. And to be honest, it is even harder to believe that the league has so much left undone.

As I mentioned in my 49ers blog in the Press Democrat, last Sunday some of the biggest names in the sport took to Twitter to call out the league.

At the time, setting a high standard for cluelessness, the owners were still agitating for a pre-season game. Are you serious? It will be a miracle if they get the season together and you want an exhibition?

That’s been solved — no exhibition — but large issue remain. And some of them involve lots of money. Stay tuned. This could get ugly.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Suggestions and compliments welcome. Complaints not so much. Twitter: @cwnevius