Friday game postponed between A’s and Astros to protest Jacob Blake police shooting

Friday’s game between the Oakland A’s and Houston Astros has been postponed, as part of this week’s protests against police violence sparked by the shooting of Black man Jacob Blake by officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The game will be made up as part of a doubleheader on Saturday, with the opener scheduled for 1:10 p.m. PT, reports insider Martin Gallegos. As per temporary 2020 rules, each game of the doubleheader will be only seven innings in length.

The two teams took the field for the national anthem, and took their positions. Then they held a 42-second moment of silence, with A’s leadoff batter Marcus Semien placing a Black Lives Matter shirt over home plate, and everyone headed back to their dugouts. All players were wearing jersey number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson Day, which coincidentally is being observed Friday.

The last three days have featured similar protests around the sports world, in virtually every major professional league in the U.S. The A’s themselves postponed their game Thursday against the Texas Rangers to help raise awareness , but the Astros already had a scheduled off-day and weren’t able to do their own version until tonight.

Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating the man who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball 73 years ago, is usually observed on April 15, the anniversary of his MLB debut. However, the coronavirus pandemic shutdown meant there were no games that day and so this summer it was moved to Aug. 28, the 75th anniversary of the day he first met Branch Rickey, the Dodgers general manager who signed him.