Mets and Marlins walk off field, leave Black Lives Matter shirt on home plate

And that's what you saw tonight."Both teams held clubhouse meetings Thursday afternoon before Conforto, the Mets' player representative, met with Brinson and Miguel Rojas, the Marlins' player rep.Conforto said Rojas came up with the idea of the teams walking off the field, and that it came together at the last minute. "It can't just be one day out of the baseball year that we bring light to everything."The teams walked off about two hours after a video appeared on the league's official website in which Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen said that his players did not want to play and they were waiting to hear from the Marlins about coordinating a postponement.Van Wagenen also criticized Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred's handling of player protests this week and alleged Manfred was pressuring New York to stage a symbolic walkout against players' wishes, rather than a full postponement."That's Rob's instinct," Van Wagenen said in a conversation he didn't appear to know was being streamed on MLB.com. He just doesn't get it."Van Wagenen said in the video - after specifying the conversation "can't leave this room" - that Manfred wanted the Mets and Marlins to walk off the field together shortly before the scheduled 7:10 p.m. first pitch, then come back and play at 8:10 p.m.Van Wagenen apologized for his comments later Thursday, saying in a statement the idea to walk out and return was actually hatched by Mets Chief Operating Officer Jeff Wilpon."I have put myself and this organization into this conversation in a way that takes away from the real point," Van Wagenen said on a conference call Thursday night.