Giants' Mike Yastrzemski explains why he chose to kneel during anthem

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It has been nearly a week now since Giants players and coaches first took a knee during the national anthem.

Manager Gabe Kapler and several players have continued to do it through the opening series at Dodger Stadium. Among them is Mike Yastrzemski, who said Sunday that the reception from family and friends has been overwhelmingly positive.

"It's just been a ton of support and love," Yastrzemski said. "I've been hearing a lot of really, really cool, unique stories of friends whose family has been on this side of things in the past and in history, and how important it is to them that they feel that their legacy, their history, means something. 

"I think it's really cool to have those experiences and those stories of love and support and it just solidifies why we do the things we do and make the choices that we make to try and make the world as good of a place as we can."

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One of those friends is a fellow Bay Area big leaguer. Yastrzemski was roommates at Vanderbilt with current A's utilityman Tony Kemp, who started the +1 Effect and has seen plenty of support from his teammates. Yastrzemski said one of his closest friends was an inspiration in recent months as he thought about what his own first next step would be.

"He's someone I hold super dear in my heart, he was in my wedding," Yastrzemski said. "Being able to hear how hard he has worked -- he's been talking to senators, and governors, and really is trying to do something positive to make sure we don't have any sort of divide ever again. It's inspirational. When you're inspiring, that's how you create change."

Yastrzemski said there was no one event that sparked his own decision to take a knee. He said "it was a personal decision" and he wanted to express where he stood after listening more to the experiences of friends and doing more research on injustice and racism.

[RELATED: Kapler on why he's kneeling during anthem]

"The biggest reason for me was to start conversation, just being open to learning and hearing new experiences and hearing things from a different perspective, and it's really empowering to hear all of those," Yastrzemski said. "It really kind of helps you develop yourself as a human. We're not just limited to baseball players, we can become better people in the locker room and we can share our experiences and our conversations, and we're very fortunate to be able to do that."

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