Miami Marlins Sterling Sharp hasn't stepped on the mound at the Major League level yet, but he is making his voice heard.
And his platform has never been more important than these past few weeks.
There's social unrest around the globe following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer drove a knee into Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds while he was face down on the ground.
Sharp, a 25-year-old Black pitcher from Detroit who the Marlins took in the Rule 5 draft in December, wasn't going to stand idle while there was a need for social activism and while protests were going on throughout the country.
The Marlins organization, led by a Black CEO in Derek Jeter and a Black president of baseball operations in Michael Hill, didn't want him to stand idle either.
Jeter, who put out a statement of his own on June 1 calling for "racial hatred to end," held a Zoom meeting with the team saying players' voices weren't going to be restricted as the Black Lives Matter movement continues to unfold.
It "was kind of a reassurance that they won't hold our voices down and they encourage us to speak up and use our platform," Sharp explained on MLB's "Being Black in Baseball and America" roundtable this week that was moderated by MLB Network's Harold Reynolds and also included Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Josh Bell, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jon Duplantier and Jackie Robinson's daughter Sharon Robinson. " ... It's just a really good feeling knowing that we have guys at the top looking out for us and encouraging us to use our voice and our platform."
The 25-year-old wasted little time doing just that. On May 29, he posted a photo to Twitter that merely said the phrase "silence is so loud."
The caption for the tweet: "For my non black 'friends' or people that care about me (a black man) ... stand up for me and my family, my community, for us" with a black fist emoji at the end.
