Mets take field for game with Marlins but don’t play

NEW YORK — The New York Mets and Miami Marlins jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter T-shirt across home plate as they chose not to play Thursday night.

After other games around baseball were postponed to protest social injustice — including the A’s game at Texas — the Mets were late to take the field and did not submit a lineup to the public or the umpires. Neither starting pitcher threw any warm-up pitches. The teams stood around their dugouts in full uniforms shortly before the 7:10 p.m. EDT scheduled first pitch, and the national anthem was played and all players and coaches stood.

Mets outfielder Dominic Smith — a Black man who wept Wednesday night while discussing the shooting by police of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Sunday — led New York onto the field. Players took their positions, then reserves and coaches filed out of both dugouts and stood silently for 42 seconds.

Members on each team doffed caps toward the other side before returning to their clubhouses, leaving only the black T-shirt at home.

“The words on the shirt speak for themselves, just having it in the center of everything, just knowing that both teams are unified, and that we agreed to do this,” said Miami outfielder Lewis Brinson, who was the Marlins’ leadoff hitter and stood near the batter’s box for the silent display. “And it was the right thing to do.”

The 42-second moment of silence came a day before Major League Baseball plans to hold its annual Jackie Robinson Day, which was pushed back from the usual April 15 because of the pandemic.

“It needs to be an ongoing thing,” Brinson said. “It can’t just be one day out of the baseball year that we bring light to everything.”