Boston’s Yawkey issue not so cut and dry
Officially Fenway Park in Boston is located at 4 Yawkey Way. That won’t continue to be the address much longer if Red Sox owner John Henry has his way.
No, Henry is not planning to move the team. He merely wants to change the name of Yawkey Way to Jersey Street. That was the name of the street before 1977, when it was renamed to honor Tom Yawkey, who had owned the Boston Red Sox for 34 years before dying of leukemia.
Henry says the racist legacy of Yawkey is an embarrassment to the Red Sox and he doesn’t want the man’s name associated with today’s franchise. However, not everyone agrees. Yawkey left a lot of friends in Boston and was famous for his generous contributions to the Jimmy Fund that supports children’s cancer treatment and those people want the street’s name left alone.
The nastiest arguments are often the ones that erupt when both sides are right. That might be what we have here.
The Boston Red Sox were the last team to integrate, waiting until 1959 to hire a black utility infielder named Pumpsie Green. That was a full 12 years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was 10 years after he refused to sign a promising teenager from Alabama named Willie Mays. It was nine years after Sam Jethroe won the National League Rookie of the Year award while playing for the Boston Braves, who played their home games only a mile and a half away from Fenway Park.
Robinson, himself, once described Yawkey as “one of the most bigoted guys in baseball.”
How can anybody blame the current management of the team for wanting to disassociate itself from such a man and his legacy? I certainly don’t. I think changing the street name would be a good move. But something still bothers me.
It bothers me that far too many people are treating Yawkey as though he were a villainous creature surrounded by a culture of enlightenment. That’s a patently ridiculous depiction of the situation. Yawkey was primarily a product of his era and his environment. When the world changed around him — even slightly — he was slow to change with it.
Perhaps the only thing that separated Yawkey from millions of Americans of his day was the fact that he inherited more than $40 million from an uncle who had raised him. He loved baseball and determined to purchase the first team available, which turned out to be the Red Sox. In 1933, at the age of 30, he became an owner.
Yawkey immediately blended into a fraternity of owners whose racial attitudes were well known and generally accepted by the population at large. Only white men could play major league baseball. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was determined that it would stay that way.
Only after Landis’ death did the Brooklyn Dodgers take the bold step of signing Robinson and promoting him to their major league club in 1947. In the ensuing years some clubs followed the Dodgers’ lead and signed black superstars, but the Red Sox were not one of them. They resisted the change. So, by the way, did the New York Yankees and both Philadelphia teams — the Phillies and Athletics.
Bit by bit all of them relented and finally, in 1959, the Red Sox became the last to integrate.
That sounds disgusting today, but it didn’t in 1959. Baseball — in Yawkey — was ahead of much of America in 1959.
In 1959 many industries refused to hire blacks or hire them only for menial low-paying jobs. Blacks were not permitted to vote in many southern states, where they were also forced to attend inferior schools and were not protected by the justice system. They could not be admitted to many American colleges, and not just in the South. None of the three military academies accepted black students. Many property deeds included “Caucasians only” clauses. Heck, the Washington Redskins played professional football almost in the shadow of the United States Capitol and the owner was very proud of the fact that all the Redskins had white skins.
By 2018 standards, Yawkey seems like a disgusting creep. In reality, he was nothing more than one of the boys and it seems very unfair to single him out and ignore the others.
If all vestiges of baseball racism are to be scrapped, the Phillies need to remove their statue of Connie Mack and rename the Carpenter Cup. The Yankees need to remove a number of plaques in Monument Park. I don’t even want to think about what the Hall of Fame would have to do.
Speaking of the Hall of Fame, Thomas Austin Yawkey has had a plaque there since 1980 when he was inducted posthumously.
Like everyone else honored by the Hall, he was an imperfect man who made a contribution to an imperfect sport.
Mike Trout has hit 10 home runs. His team, the Angels, are 8-2 in the games in which he has homered… Giants pitcher Johnny Cueto has made four starts and allowed only one run to score against. Even that run came when he was protecting a 10-0 lead on April 4…The Phillies are 4-0 in extra innings and 6-1 in one-run games…Franchy Cordero of the Padres blasted a home run in Arizona last week that was measured at 489 feet. According to Statcast that was the longest clout of the season…Josh Reddick of the Astros has driven in 16 runs — 15 of them have come on home runs…The Angels are 5-7 at home but 11-1 on the road…The Cubs’ Javier Baez leads the National League in triples with three and his seven homers leave him only one short of the league lead…The Tigers are 8-4 in day games but 1-7 at night…The Mariners have won 12 games and Edwin Diaz has saved nine of them… Jon Gray of the Rockies has an ERA of 7.09. Sonny Gray of the Yankees has 8.27 ERA. No, they’re not related.