Chicago Cubs third baseman Matt Shaw missed Sunday’s loss to the Cincinnati Reds to attend the funeral of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Arizona. During Monday night’s game between the Cubs and New York Mets, announcer Gary Cohen called the absence “weird.”
The Cubs — like the Mets — are in the midst of a late-season playoff battle. Chicago has already clinched a postseason berth but continues to jockey for seeding. New York is clinging to the final wild-card spot in the NL.
“I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird,” Cohen said as Shaw took his second at-bat of the game on Monday night.
Shaw also missed Chicago’s game on Sept. 10 — the day that Kirk was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University.
“It’s unusual. I think it’s unprecedented, at least from my experience as a player,” Todd Zeile, Cohen’s broadcast partner on SNY, said. “And I think it made it a little bit more unusual that it was not revealed until after it came to issue because he was thought to be in the dugout and maybe available, and then was not.”
If Shaw was directly related to Kirk, the Cubs rookie could’ve been placed on the bereavement list. Instead, the Cubs took the field with one fewer player on the bench.
“But I thought it was telling that the reason that they didn’t tell anybody and that they had to play a man short was that the situation did not qualify for baseball’s bereavement list,” Cohen said during the broadcast. “I think that in and of itself gives you a clue as to how it was received by a lot of people.”
The Mets went on to win Tuesday’s game 9-7. The two teams will play each other again on Wednesday and Thursday.
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
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