Change long time coming
Yawkey Way’s end is fitting conclusion
After weeks of debate, weeks of soul-searching, weeks of handwringing, weeks of point/counterpoint, the vote to bring an end to Yawkey Way was about as dramatic as a late-inning defensive substitution.
Meeting yesterday morning in Room 801 at City Hall, the Boston Public Service Commission voted unanimously to change the name. There were no cheers, no screams of indignation, no rallies being assembled to espouse this or that cause. The Yawkey Way debate has been relegated to the back alleys of Twitter.
But for one man in particular, what happened in that cold, antiseptic conference room was deeply personal. Walter Carrington is 87 years old, and, while he carries himself with the bearing and clear-mindedness of a man a third his age, 87 is still 87. It’s not like he could just sit around and hope somebody would rename Yawkey Way. He’d have to get out of the house and contribute. Again.
In 1959, before the Red Sox would become the last team in Major League Baseball to have a black man on their roster, Carrington was commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. He was himself a black man who happened to love baseball, but he had supported the Boston Braves while growing up in Everett — a bad investment when, in the spring of ’53, the Hub’s National League team moved to Milwaukee.
So here we are, well into a new century, Carrington well into his ninth decade, and now he can step inside Fenway Park with no conflicts inside his head.
“I’d just like to go without walking under a Yawkey Way banner,” he said after yesterday’s vote.
Is that so hard? This doesn’t need to be about drawing lines in the dirt, taking sides, pointing fingers. For those who want it to live on, the Yawkey name will surely live on. The late owner of the Red Sox left millions to a foundation named in his memory, and the foundation performs many good deeds throughout the city and beyond. You’ll find the Yawkey name at the Dana-Farber. You’ll find it at Boston College. You’ll find it at so grassroots a level that college-aged baseball players from Savin Hill to Revere swing for the fences in the Yawkey Baseball League.
But, sorry, as the owner of a big league baseball team, Yawkey was no great shakes. Even if his defenders want you to believe Yawkey was not responsible for finishing in last place in the race to integrate, it’s impossible for them to defend that for too many years Yawkey’s Red Sox also toiled in last place in the American League. In the more than 40 years he owned the Sox, they won just three pennants and no World Series. And while he virtually rebuilt Fenway Park in the early ’30s, he was largely an absentee owner as the ballpark grew old and tired.
This isn’t about political correctness. This is about a simple question: Why, oh why, was a street right outside Fenway Park renamed in memory of Yawkey in the first place? The money in his will resulted in his name being attached to many fine projects. There was also enough to help finance a building at the Baseball Hall of Fame, and for that Yawkey earned posthumous enshrinement in Cooperstown. That’s more than enough. As for Walter Carrington, he did seem to enjoy his moment under the spotlight yesterday as a dozen media folks converged on the Harvard-educated former ambassador to Senegal and Nigeria and his wife, Dr. Arese Carrington.
When the session was over, I asked Carrington what he was going to do now. Little did I know that I was tripping into that scene from “Field of Dreams” when Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella says to James Earl Jones’ Terence Mann, “What do you want?” and Jones/Mann responds, “I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.” (The camera pulls back, and we learn the two men are at a Fenway Park concessions stand, and Costner/Kinsella is asking for a food order.)
And so when Carrington was asked what he’s going to do now, he said, “I’m going to go back to work on my memoirs and a book on Nigeria. I am going to explore issues, events . . .”
No, I asked, what are you going to do for the rest of the day?
“Oh,” he said. “We’re going to go home and have dinner.”
“A very nice, pleasant dinner,” said his wife.
We should all go somewhere and have a nice, pleasant dinner. What happened in Room 801 at City Hall shouldn’t inspire us to celebrate. It’s a call for us to chill a little, to go somewhere and have a nice talk.