Cubs' Ian Happ, Marcus Stroman, Teammates React to Highland Park Shooting

Cubs on Highland Park shooting: 'Enough is enough' originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

MILWAUKEE — As soon as the first news reports started filling up his timeline Monday, Cubs outfielder Ian Happ’s heart skipped a beat.

“I have a ton of friends who live in that area, between Winnetka and Lake Forest and Highland Park,” said Happ, whose sister-in-law has family there. “I was reaching out to people all morning, checking on families, making sure everybody’s OK.

“It’s horrific.”

By game time Monday, Happ had accounted for the whereabouts and safety of all friends and loved ones who might have had any chance of proximity to the mass shooting at the Highland Park 4th of July parade — as, it appeared, the rest of the Cubs’ traveling party had.

By Tuesday afternoon, a seventh victim had died, according to authorities, with dozens still hospitalized. And a pall still hung over a Chicagoland community that on this day extended to Milwaukee, where many in the Chicago clubhouse at the Brewers’ ballpark still processed yet another terrorizing massacre by yet another young man with a military-style assault rifle.

“It feels like we wake up every other day now to a mass shooting, to innocent souls being taken in America,” said pitcher Marcus Stroman, who might be the Cubs’ most outspoken advocate on social media for racial equity, women’s rights and such issues as gun laws that might give the average parade goer, grocery shopper, worshipper or school kid at least a little better chance to avoid becoming a victim in a growing epidemic unique to the United States among peer countries.

“It just weighs on my heart,” Stroman said, “not only for the families of everybody involved, but I feel like you always have to put yourself in those positions, your family in those positions. I was just talking to my girl yesterday, like it’s starting to really put a damper on wanting to do things publicly, where there’s going to be large groups of people, just because you really don’t know.”

The contradiction is not lost on Stroman that his entire professional life is about public places as his apprehension increases.

“Honestly, as I’ve gotten older, and especially being a Black man in America, I don’t leave my house a lot. When I’m not at the clubhouse, man, I’m home, safe with my family,” he said, “just because I actually don’t feel safe at times, just going out in this world.”

Stroman is barely 31.

Many of his teammates are young enough that active-shooter drills in classrooms were part of their reality before graduating high school.

“It wasn’t something I grew up with, but by the end we were doing it,” shortstop Nico Hoerner, 25, said.

And watching the reason why happen with increasing frequency ever since — “a headline all too common in America right now,” Hoerner said.

“It’s not something that’s an acceptable part of any society, much less one that holds itself to as high a standard as we supposedly do,” he said.

This is the third high-profile mass shooting to make national headlines since May 14 — among many lesser reported. They also included the racism-motivated shooting in a Buffalo supermarket and the shooting of grade-school kids in Uvalde, Texas, 10 days after that.

It’s impossible to ignore anymore in almost any walk of life in this country, with how often the new headlines appear and how high the death toll rises.

And with a younger, more socially aware generation of players filling clubhouses in the post-pandemic, post-George Floyd, politically polarized world we all occupy, it might finally have reached a tipping point for not sticking to sports — even within the traditionally silent, politically conservative sport of baseball.

“I wish I could stick to sports,” Jason Heyward poignantly said as baseball reconvened during the summer of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police two years ago.

“Trying not to get too political with everything,” Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said Tuesday, “but at some point enough’s enough.”

The main difference Monday was that this one hit closer to home for many of us, inside and outside that Cubs’ clubhouse.

“We’re all impacted by it,” Cubs bench coach Andy Green said. “And it seems to be if you don’t know somebody in Highland Park, at this rate it’s not going to be long until you know somebody in the next community.”

Anthony Rizzo didn’t have to wait until Highland Park. His high school in Parkland, Fla., was devastated by a shooter with an assault rifle in 2018. Kris Bryant’s hometown of Las Vegas took its turn in 2019 — with some of Bryant’s family and friends at the concert targeted by the shooter (they made it out safely).

And as much as Highland Park hit home for Happ, his hometown of Pittsburgh made headlines for an anti-Semitic, hate-motivated shooting at a Jewish synagogue in 2018.

“I think every single person in the country can agree that something has to be different, because we can’t just become numb to this and accept it as reality,” Happ said.

Yes, he said, he’s talking about gun control at some level.

When reminded of the strong, confounded response Liam Hendriks, the White Sox’ closer from Australia, had to the Highland Park shooting, Happ brought up the mass shooting in Australia in 1996 that took 35 lives — and that country’s response.

“They had massive, sweeping change [in gun laws], and they haven’t had any [mass shootings] since,” Happ said. “It worked.”

RELATED: Hendriks calls for change after Highland Park tragedy

What exactly “massive, sweeping” changes might look like in this country even if bipartisan support were possible is anything but clear.

But maybe something that would remove AR-15s and other assault-style weapons from more people? Maybe higher age requirements at least?

“I’ve been around a lot of 18-to-20-year-old people, and there’s not many of them I thought that should have any access to a [military-style assault] gun, no matter what kind of state they’re in, background check or anything,” Hoerner said. “There’s no situation in daily life where you need [that style of] gun, in my mind, living in our country.”

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