Aaron Frey: As athletes push for change, take time to listen

Our son has a knack for not looking at people when they’re speaking to him about something he doesn’t want to hear.

Granted, he’s just 7, but it’s a bad habit at any age. (This is the part where my wife would chime in to say I’m just as awful with it any time she’s talking to me.) Often, if I’m trying to explain something to him and notice he’s not looking at me, I’ll ask him what the last thing I said was.

It usually results in a blank stare followed by, “I dunno!”

So I’ll remind him to look me in the eye, I repeat what I said before and voila — he actually knows what I’m saying to him. What a concept!

I get the impression that a lot of folks have had that same issue with this most recent round of peaceful protests by professional athletes. “Stick to sports!” and “Stay out of politics!” are all-too-familiar phrases when athletes do not stick to sports or stay out of politics.

Following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, players seized their power and brought games to a halt last week in the NBA, NHL, MLS and WNBA. Several contests in Major League Baseball also were postponed. Several Black players, including the Cubs’ Jason Heyward and the Cardinals’ Dexter Fowler and Jack Flaherty, opted not to play in their teams’ games. Multiple NFL teams canceled their practices.

While many players and coaches shed tears and struggled to gather themselves to explain why this moment, this cause, was so meaningful to them, too many of us were keeping our eyes somewhere else, as if they were my son getting distracted by a tractor driving past or by an episode of “Bluey” on TV.

What was it they were saying? Do you even remember?

“Obviously, the past few days have been pretty emotional,” Fowler said. “I wanted to play baseball, but some things are better than baseball. African-Americans in this country have been hurting for some time, and I took that day just to bring awareness.”

“I think the most difficult part is to see that people still don’t care,” New York Mets first baseman Dominic Smith said. “For this to continuously happen, it shows the hate in people’s hearts. That just sucks. Being a Black man in America is not easy.”

"It's amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back," Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. "It's really so sad. Like, I should just be a coach. I'm so often reminded of my color. It's just really sad. We got to do better. But we got to demand better.”

“To people who just say shut up and play football, that’s just, to me that’s ignorant,” Packers linebacker Christian Kirksey said. “Why, when it comes to a football game, you love me, but when it comes to me talking about people and real-life issues, now you all of a sudden have a problem with me? I’m more than just a football player. I think that people forget that and they look at us as entertainers and not people.”

We don’t have to agree with everything they’re saying. They just want us to hear what they’re saying.

Don’t we owe them that?

We don’t necessarily have to be activists. But it’s important to them that we act as allies.

Isn’t that the least we can do?

People want Black athletes to shut up and play?

Maybe we should just look them in the eye and listen.

Aaron Frey is a public relations specialist at Carl Sandburg College and the former assistant sports editor for The Register-Mail. You can follow him on Twitter @Aaron_Frey