Hard to comprehend Yawkey’s diehard defenders

This might be a good time for the apologists and history revisionists to cut their losses and accept the fact that Yawkey Way will soon go back to being known as Jersey Street.

And these people should be happy it’s only a street sign that’s getting pulled down . . . and not the late Red Sox owner Thomas A. Yawkey’s plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

I’ve written about this before, most recently in 2007, on the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson never played for the Red Sox, of course, but he remains a central figure in the history of the franchise because of the sham tryout he and fellow Negro Leaguers Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams were put through on April 16, 1945.

It was all window dressing; the Red Sox never even contacted the three players after the tryout. Jethroe later signed with the Boston Braves and was National League Rookie of the Year in 1950. As for Robinson, he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility.

Yawkey, who died in 1976, was inducted posthumously in 1980.

Nine years after that, the Hall of Fame unveiled its Fetzer-Yawkey wing, named for Yawkey and former Detroit Tigers owner John Fetzer. According to the Yawkey Foundation website, Thomas and Jean Yawkey were supporting the Hall of Fame as far back as 1953.

So Robinson and Yawkey have that in common: They’re both Hall of Famers. And there’s a long-standing legend that what they also have in common is being in attendance at the 1945 tryout. As the legend holds, and you know exactly where I’m going with this, Yawkey, standing somewhere off in the distance, is said to have hollered, “Get that youknow-what off the field,” or words to that effect.

I’ve never been comfortable with this. It appears to be one writer’s years-afterthe-fact recollection, and it should not be entered as evidence in this debate. But I mention it here because these days it’s the Keepers of the Yawkey Flame who dredge up that story, using it as a sort of Get Out of Jail Free card in their various defenses of the late owner of the Red Sox.

Former Red Sox CEO John Harrington, now chairman of the Yawkey Foundation, recently circulated a letter imploring the Red Sox and the city not to rename Yawkey Way. In bringing up the 1945 tryout, he writes, “Several articles and editorials have suggested that on the day in April 1945, when Jackie Robinson tried out at Fenway Park, Tom Yawkey was in the stands and yelled an inappropriate statement. In fact, Tom Yawkey was not in Boston that day. It was Tom and Jean’s custom to come to Boston in May, after the baseball season was underway.”

Yawkey defenders have also tried to educate me as to how Jackie Robinson wouldn’t have been a good fit for the Red Sox, because, well, here’s part of an actual letter I received in 2007 from a reader who noted that rabble-rousers “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.”

This is true. The Sox did have Doerr, the greatest second baseman in the history of the franchise. But the Brooklyn Dodgers had Eddie Stanky, a highly regarded second baseman in his day. The Dodgers’ easy solution was to play Robinson at first base in 1947; he didn’t play so much as an inning at second. Stanky was an All-Star in 1947 and finished 13th in MVP balloting; Robinson was National League Rookie of the Year and finished fifth in MVP balloting.

So there. But placing Robinson at first base in a make-believe Red Sox lineup, or placing Yawkey out of town when the tryout took place, misses the larger point: Not only did the Sox not sign any of the three players, it took them

another 14 years until, on July 21, 1959, Pumpsie Green debuted as the team’s first black player. Not only were the Sox the last big league baseball team to integrate, they even finished behind the Bruins, with Willie O’Ree making his NHL debut for them on Jan. 18, 1958.

Wherever Yawkey was at any given time, and regardless of “Tom and Jean’s custom to come to Boston in May,” it’s on him that the Red Sox turned an institutional blind eye to racial integration for so many years.

And even if we remove these and other charges of racial disharmony that have haunted the Red Sox for so many years, there is also this: The team never won a World Series during the more than four decades they were owned by Yawkey. In all that time they won just three pennants, and prior to the 1967 “Impossible Dream” season they posted eight consecutive losing seasons.

And yet Yawkey is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

His Hall of Fame plaque does not mention that the Red Sox were the last team to have a black player, but it

does note that they were the first American League team to travel by plane.

To all the Keepers of the Yawkey Flame, embrace your man’s status at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

But the time is coming, and soon, when you’ll also have to go to a museum to see a “Yawkey Way” sign.