Enough with the excuses
None for racism at Fenway
It’s never going to stop around here.
I’m not just talking about the racism. I’m talking about the endless excuses that tag along with the racism, serving as guardians of the gates of bigotry.
Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones, who has said somebody from the Fenway Park stands directed an N-bomb at him on Monday night, is being called a liar. OK, so maybe that’s too strong. He’s been asked to offer some proof, to produce some witnesses, to, you know, come up with something, anything, to back up his story.
Jones can’t do that, thus providing a nice out for the excuse-makers.
On Tuesday night, a Red Sox fan named Calvin Hennick complained to Fenway Park security officials that a fan in his section made a racially insensitive remark about the woman singing the national anthem.
Hennick took to Twitter to get it out there that the fan, who he described as “a middle-aged white man,” felt the anthem was “too long, and she (N-word)-ed it up.”
It’s one thing to insist that that’s not what happened, even though Red Sox president Sam Kennedy told me last night that the guy admitted as much to Fenway security. But as I was driving along Storrow Drive yesterday on the way to Fenway, I was shocked to hear a caller to WEEI’s “Dale & Holley” program try to explain that the guy who made the remark was being taken out of context.
According to the caller, the fan who made the remark was not using the Nword that ends in “er.” He was using the N-word that ends in “a.” And that makes it . . . OK. I’d like to tell you I danged near drove off the road, but no sense stooping to cliche. And while it certainly seemed funny in real time — “good radio” is what we call it in the biz — it’s also kind or sad, and stunningly revealing.
Same old racism, same old excuses being offered up by people on the sidelines. Ten years ago, on what was the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, I wrote a column stating that the late Red Sox owner Thomas Yawkey should be removed from the Hall of Fame, and for the following reasons:
• Under Yawkey’s watch, the Red Sox were the last big league team to integrate.
• In 1945, the Red Sox tossed a bone to the critics by offering a “tryout” to Jackie Robinson and fellow Negro Leaguers Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams. They didn’t even follow up with a letter or a phone call.
• In 1950, bowing to yet more public pressure, the Sox signed Lorenzo “Piper” Davis of the Birmingham Black Barons and assigned him to their Double-A Scranton ball club. Through 15 games, Piper hit .333 with three home runs. But he never played a 16th game, because the Red Sox released him.
The Red Sox never won a World Series in Yawkey’s more than four decades of ownership, but let’s not quibble: The race stuff should have been enough to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. He was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1980, four years after his death. Be sure to check out Yawkey’s plaque next time you’re in Cooperstown. And be sure to visit the Fetzer-Yawkey wing, opened in 1989. Thanks, Yawkey estate!
Yet when I wrote that 2007 column, among the letters and emails I received was a snarky history lesson from an enraged reader who wanted to school me on the 1940s Red Sox.
“You bleeding heart politically correct liberal,” the email began. “How come whenever you phony media types talk about Robinson and Yawkey you always forget to mention the fact that the Red Sox already had a pretty good future Hall of Famer named (Bobby) Doerr as their second baseman? . . . Should they have dumped Doerr just so they could add a black — I mean African-American — player?”
Now that’s a nice little Christmas story for the kids, and it’s true that the postwar Red Sox were blessed to have the great Bobby Doerr playing second base. But what this concerned reader failed to point out is that the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers had a pretty good second baseman of their own in Eddie Stanky. Know what the Dodgers did? They brought Jackie Robinson to the big leagues and moved him to first base. In Robinson’s rookie season he didn’t play so much as an inning at second base.
Bur while the Red Sox were making excuses, the Brooklyn Dodgers were making history.
Thankfully, the Red Sox don’t make excuses any more when it comes to race issues. We could learn from them.