Ian Desmond is a baseball hero. You have to be pretty courageous to call out the whole “play the game the right way” thing as a white baseball culture construct. I also commend his decision partly because he feels a real responsibility to teach his kids and build community.

Desmond is forfeiting millions of dollars to protect his health, but also because his desire to make the world better has grown over the last few months. He decided his role as a global citizen outweighs that of professional baseball player. I respect the hell out of that.

His statement is incredibly inspiring and even challenged me to continue to figure out ways for me to make our global community better. I appreciate his candor. I also want to see team owners and MLB execs respond with the same candor. Stop being quiet.

There are so many players and people within the industry who are speaking out. I think there is a real focus now from a lot of folks and my hope is this sustains itself. What we aren’t seeing are the power brokers speaking up. They’re all quiet. We hear your silence.

Will they ever speak? Probably not. That doesn’t mean we don’t continue to bring attention to it. That doesn’t mean we don’t advocate for foundational change. This isn’t going anywhere because racism continues to unabashedly permeate in almost everything we do.

Anyway, Ian Desmond is awesome. I didn’t know he felt this way for this long. Maybe he didn’t know he felt that way. He joins a growing personal list of players that I would like to elbow bump (COVID crushed the handshake) and say thank you.