San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler will not be coming out onto the field for the national anthem “until I feel better about the direction of our country,” he told reporters Friday. In an impassioned blog entry posted to his personal website, Kapler explained that he had stood for the anthem on the same day 19 kids and two teachers were fatally gunned down in a Texas school shooting, and observed a brief moment of silence, but then “felt like a coward” for not taking a knee. While “proudly proclaiming ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave” during the national anthem, he said “we didn’t stop to reflect on whether we are actually free and brave after this horrific event, we just stood at attention.” Kapler said his father taught him to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance “when I believed my country was representing its people well or to protest and stay seated when it wasn’t,” he wrote. “I don’t believe it is representing us well right now.”