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I looked at the article:

“Here’s my thing,’’ the career .279 hitter asserted, “there’s somebody on the 49ers’ team that commits an act like that, accosts a 70-year-old man and his kid, and nobody’s talking about that. But they talk about Kaepernick doing something that he believes in, as his right as an American citizen. People need to talk more about that guy than Kaepernick.”

The wording here is odd: if people weren't talking more about Kaepernick, something of his "effort" would've failed.

Or is he saying that more people shouldn't be talking about Kaepernick "negatively"? I can think of a few reasons that aren't race-related. In other words, the former teammate might've been black, or a black player might've done the same thing, and the amount of conversation would still be similar. A completely white player who sat as a "protest" during the National Anthem would still be controversial.

The two most prominent in my mind:

First, assault isn't that controversial and usually wouldn't lead to much debate.

Second, Colin Kaepernick has been by far the more famous and more discussed player, with some flashes of talent and a moderately interesting history. He'll get more attention than other people.

An "ordinary" man who is charged with felonious assault on "ordinary" people probably wouldn't appear on national news without some odd reason, and Adam Jones probably would've never heard of him. An "ordinary" murderer who kills an "ordinary" person has done something even worse than anything yet mentioned above--and without some "exceptional" reason, we probably wouldn't be talking about the case.

(We talk about the presidential candidates' health because what they seek is not some unimportant office in an unimportant country. If your 68-year-old aunt is an obscure woman with little "newsworthiness," you probably don't complain that her extremely serious health problems don't get the attention that Hillary Clinton's less severe problems do.)