So why aren’t baseball players woke?

Jayson Stark, a longtime baseball writer at ESPN.com, recently asked if Major League Baseball players’ lack of political involvement was an abdication of their responsibility as citizens: “Is 2017 the time for a new code of conduct? Is it time for a more socially aware culture — in this, the sport of Jackie Robinson?”

What makes 2017 so special? Well, there’s a Republican in the White House, of course, which means the world is on the brink of calamity. We are always torn asunder in years of potential tax cuts and deregulation.

When Stark pens a piece lamenting the lack of political participation in the league of Jackie Robinson, he isn’t curious about why more African-American athletes aren’t protesting the destructive role of teachers unions in black communities or why athletes aren’t speaking out about the recent spike in crime in cities controlled by Democrats. He is talking about Donald Trump. If that were not the case, he would have written something along the same lines in 2010, when the nation was just as divided and the issues it faced just as contentious.