Yawkey loved game, not fame
Hey, John Henry, this one’s for you, written in dismay over how someone so successful still has such a craving for attention and approval that he appoints himself a committee of one to sanitize Red Sox history by declaring Tom Yawkey persona non grata at Fenway Park. Are you serious? Claiming to be “haunted” by your predecessor’s intransigence on racial inclusion, you want the name “Yawkey Way” stripped from what used to be known as Jersey Street, thumbing your nose at the legacy of this man who once sat where you sit now.
If you’re currying kudos from the PC crowd, it’s a good move, but as a show of backbone, it is bankrupt.
Context means everything. Would you take George Washington’s picture off our $1 bills because he owned slaves at his Mount Vernon home?
Would you demolish the Jefferson Memorial because the author of our Declaration of Independence was a slave owner, too? Where do you stop?
New York’s spineless mayor, Bill de Blasio, your kind of guy, is now aching to remove all reminders of Christopher Columbus for atrocities his crews were said to have committed.
What about FDR, the patron saint of that liberal crowd you’re wooing? Wasn’t it his administration that turned away more than 900 Jews aboard the transatlantic liner St. Louis, desperately fleeing the Third Reich?
And wasn’t it FDR who issued proclamation 2537, authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans? Today they’d call that profiling.
How should we now regard these luminaries?
Tom Yawkey wasn’t honored as a paragon of virtue, though multitudes have benefited from charities he supported, especially in this town’s medical community.
No, “Yawkey Way” was meant to honor a baseball man.
When we first met, this columnist was starting out and Yawkey was winding down. The memory is clear. He was wearing baggy brown trousers and a rumpled white shirt, having just completed a game of pepper with Rico Petrocelli.
“You know,” he said, directing his visitor to a chair, “this damn game interests me. As Lefty Grove once said, ‘You’ve got a little round ball and a little round bat and anything can happen.’ If I didn’t like it I wouldn’t have stayed. There’s no rule that says I have to.”
He was asked if he felt he’d gotten his money’s worth.
“I don’t consider baseball an investment,” he replied.
“If I had to keep running to the bank for loans I’d get out. The strain would be too great and I’m not built for that.
“But the older you get the more selfish you become with your time; you’ve got to know what suits your mental and physical needs. This game keeps me feeling young.”
He was asked what disappointed him most: World Series losses? The tragedies of Harry Agganis and Tony Conigliaro? “No,” he said.
“It was the kids who came into this game with great God-given abilities and managed to throw them all away.”
Around that time, Carl Yastrzemski was being lustily booed.
“Carl can laugh it off all he wants,” Yawkey said, “but I know it’s hurting him like hell on the inside. He wants to do well; there’s nothing he wants more. But in this game you’re either a hero or a bum. He could go 4-for-4 tonight and 4-for-4 tomorrow night, but if he goes 0-for-3 the following night, he’ll hear about it.
“See, the customer doesn’t care what you did last night; he wants to see you perform on the night he’s in the park, and if you don’t, he’ll let you know how he feels about it.”
Unlike you, Mr. Henry, Yawkey never sought attention.
“I’ve known people who are more interested in getting their own names in the paper than they are in how their team’s doing,” he said.
“Hell, anybody can get his name in the paper if he wants to; just rob a bank. I never cared about that stuff.”
Tom Yawkey would be 114 years old today.
He was liked and admired the day we met, and now, 41 years after his passing, he’s still liked and admired by a no-longer-young columnist who’s never forgotten the warmth and encouragement he received from this man who loved the Sox so much.
John Henry, do not take down that sign.
Instead, take a breather. You’re way off base on this one.