Baseball team apologizes for tweet mocking Kaepernick over ‘Betsy Ross’ controversy

A Tennessee minor league baseball team apologized Wednesday night for a since-deleted tweet mocking NFL star Colin Kaepernick’s reported influence on Nike pulling a Betsy Ross flag sneaker design. 

“Regarding one of our recent tweets regarding @Kaepernick7 and our field design for tonight’s game, it was meant to be a light-hearted take on a current situation. We did not mean to offend anyone by it. If it did, we certainly apologize,” the Tennessee Smokies, a Chicago Cubs affiliate, tweeted.

Regarding one of our recent tweets regarding @Kaepernick7 and our field design for tonight’s game, it was meant to be a light-hearted take on a current situation. We did not mean to offend anyone by it. If it did, we certainly apologize.

— Tennessee Smokies (@smokiesbaseball) July 4, 2019

Earlier in the day the team, with more than 38,000 followers, had tweeted an image of their infield with the Betsy Ross 13-star flag drawn in the dirt, CNN reports.{mosads}

Along with the photo, the team tweeted, “Hey @Kaepernick7 after a lot of thought, we have decided it’s best to just do it. #America.”

Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal reported Nike pulled the sneaker at the request of Kaepernick, who said the slavery-era design was offensive to some.

Kaepernick made headlines over his decision to kneel during the national anthem on the field in 2106 to draw attention to racial inequality. Nike made him the face of a “Just Do It” campaign in September. 

Kaepernick declined to comment in the Journal’s report. 

The flag has also been appropriated and used by some extremist groups opposed to increasing diversity, the paper reported. 

The decision faced backlash from some Republicans.