When Black History Month started Feb. 1, the Red Sox unveiled a brand new web page on their web site to “celebrate and recognize the contributions of our Black players and alumni,” with new content material all through February.
The hub contains exercise pages and movies, together with a number of about Jackie Robinson and Pumpsie Green, the staff’s first Black participant.
In partnership with the Red Sox Foundation, the Sox are providing free admission and excursions of the Museum of African American History in Boston and Nantucket from Feb. 21-26. Fenway Park Tours this month can even have a particular give attention to the membership’s Black historical past.
But as they try to be a extra equal, inclusive ball membership, the Sox are combating a battle in opposition to their former selves. They will all the time be the final staff to combine on the big-league stage; Green grew to become their first Black participant in 1959, 12 years after Robinson grew to become MLB’s first. And Green’s debut solely occurred after the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination carried out an investigation and held public hearings.
Thank Tom Yawkey for that.
Over a decade earlier than, the Sox proprietor had the possibility to signal Robinson and combine baseball first, in 1945. He selected to complete final, as an alternative.
In 1950, he may have bought the contract of a 17-year-old Negro Leagues star named Willie Mays for under $4,500. He handed on Mays, too. Decades later, Mays famously lamented to Ted Williams, “We should have played together.”
Yawkey bought the staff in 1933, and after he and his spouse handed away, staff management went into the Yawkey Trust, the place it remained till present possession bought the membership in 2002. The Robinson famously referred to as Yawkey “the most bigoted man in baseball.”
Over the years, folks have tried to come back to Yawkey’s protection by making numerous factors: that he was a product of his time, that the Sox had been truly the primary staff within the majors to have a Mexican-born participant (Mel Almada debuted in 1933), that he was a charitable particular person and that the Yawkey Foundation continues to make an enormous distinction in New England.
All of these issues are no less than partially true, however the reality stays that as the only real proprietor of the staff, Yawkey had the ultimate say on all the things, and when it got here to integrating, the Sox solely capitulated when below duress by a authorities company.
If Yawkey was not overtly racist, as his defenders keep, he was, on the very least, complicit in and unbothered by his staff’s enduring racism. In 1965, he informed Sports Illustrated that he had “no feeling against colored people,” and tried to assert that it was truly the Black gamers who selected to signal with different golf equipment as a result of they thought the Sox didn’t need them. Even if that had really been the case, he had clearly been in no rush to alter that notion, and because of this, his groups had been worse than they wanted to be, to say nothing of the racist status that flourished because of this.
There is not any approach round any of it, no solution to erase what’s already been written in everlasting marker. The Sox don’t have a DeLorean to drive into the previous and alter Yawkey’s thoughts. They can take away his title from the road — and did so, in 2019 — however they can not undo the harm of their predecessors; the one approach is ahead.
After principal proprietor John Henry admitted that Yawkey’s legacy nonetheless “haunted” him in 2017, the Sox made a profitable bid to return Yawkey Way, the road that borders the proper aspect of the diamond, to its authentic title, Jersey Street.
At the time, the Yawkey Foundation issued an announcement decrying “the effort to expunge” their namesake “based on a false narrative.” They referred to as the change a “drastic step” that may “give lasting credence to that narrative and unfairly tarnish his name.”
And if the Sox had been solely attempting to erase Yawkey’s title — as if that would erase the worst elements of membership historical past — the muse would have been considerably right. But over the past a number of years, the Sox have labored to maneuver past their unlucky legacy by acknowledging and confronting the issue, relatively than pretending it doesn’t exist.
In May 2017, Baltimore outfielder Adam Jones informed reporters that followers had hurled racial epithets and a bag of peanuts at him in the course of the recreation. The Sox issued a public apology and powerful condemnation the next morning, and Henry met with Jones. In the following recreation, Jones acquired a standing ovation from the gang at Fenway.
In June 2020, Torii Hunter revealed to ESPN radio that he’d stipulated no-trade clauses to Boston in every contract of his profession, noting that he’d “always wanted to play for them,” however that he’d “been called the N-word in Boston a hundred times” and understandably, didn’t need to expertise that for 81+ video games annually. The Sox had been fast to concern a statement of support, tweeting, “Torii Hunter’s experience is real. If you doubt him because you’ve never heard it yourself, take it from us, it happens.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com