Red Sox say racism at Fenway ‘is real’
Team admits to reports of fans using racial slurs
WASHINGTON Last week, former MLB outfielder Torii Hunter told ESPN’S Golic and Wingo show that he did “everything I (could) not to go to Boston” during his lengthy career, a feeling so strong that he had a no-trade to the Red Sox clause inserted into any contract he signed.
Hunter’s reasoning was simple.
“I’ve been called the N-word in Boston 100 times, and I’ve said something about it,” he said. “It happened all the time, from little kids, and grown-ups right next to them didn’t say anything.”
On Wednesday night, as the national conversation over racism and police brutality in the United States continued amid the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death, the Red Sox acknowledged Hunter’s experiences as a black ballplayer at Fenway Park. Three words accompanied the statement: “This is real.”
“If you doubt him because you’ve never heard it yourself, take it from us, it happens,” the team wrote in a statement posted on social media, adding that there were seven reported incidents of fans using racial slurs at Fenway Park during the 2019 season alone.
“Those are just the ones we know about,” the team wrote.
Hunter was merely the latest black baseball player to come forward about racism at Fenway Park. In May 2017, then-baltimore Orioles centre-fielder Adam Jones said he was “called the N-word a handful of times” by Red Sox fans, who also threw peanuts at him.
The Red Sox apologized to Jones and called the behaviour “inexcusable,” and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said it was “completely unacceptable.”
Said Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat: “We are better than this.” The Red Sox have had a fraught racial history.
Even though they were one of the first teams to offer a tryout to black players, they were the last team to actually desegregate when they called up Elijah (Pumpsie) Green from the minors in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke MLB’S colour barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Tom Yawkey, the businessman who was the sole owner of the Red Sox for an Mlb-record 44 seasons, had a chance to purchase the contract of a 17-yearold Negro Leagues player named Willie Mays in 1949, but he and GM Joe Cronin rejected the move.
“Cronin sent another scout down to look at him, but Yawkey and Cronin already had made up their minds they weren’t going to take any Black players,” Red Sox scout George Digby told reporter Gordon Edes in 2005.