Red Sox dogged by claims of racism, sexual abuse
NEW YORK (AP) » Last month, when former Major League Allstar Torii Hunter said he’d been called the N-word “a hundred times” at Boston’s storied Fenway Park, the Red Sox were quick to back him up with a promise to fight racism.
“Torii Hunter’s experience is real,” the team said in a June 10 Twitter post, adding that there were at least seven incidents as recently as last year where fans used racial slurs. The team promised to do a better job dealing with racism: “As we identify how we can do better, please know we are listening.”
But those words rang hollow for more than a dozen Black men who have spent the last several years trying to get the Red Sox to listen to their claims that they were sexually abused by a former
Red Sox clubhouse manager who died in 2005.
The former clubhouse manager, Donald “Fitzy” Fitzpatrick, pleaded guilty to criminal charges of attempted sexual battery in 2002, admitting that he used Red Sox team memorabilia to lure young, Black clubhouse workers into secluded areas of the team’s Florida spring training facility, where he abused them. Fitzpatrick did not admit to abusing young boys in other ballparks.
Since then, a growing number of men have stepped forward to allege that they, too, were abused by Fitzpatrick at Fenway Park and at major league stadiums in Baltimore and Kansas City, when the Red Sox were playing on the road. Because their claims date to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, they are too old to be included in civil lawsuits, and the men say their requests for out-of-court settlements have fallen on deaf ears.
Gerald Armstrong, 65, said he believes the team knew that Fitzpatrick, who worked for the Red Sox for decades, was molesting youngsters hired as bat boys, ball boys, and club house attendants. “You can’t tell me that you can have 30 or 40 guys traveling around with him and observing his behavior and not know what he was doing,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong said that former Red Sox first baseman George Scott, known as the “Boomer,” frequently told him to “stay away from Fitzy.” Scott died seven years ago.
“It was another slap in the face for me,” said Charles Crawford, 45, an African American from Taunton,
Massachusetts after hearing the most recent Red Sox statement about combating racism at Fenway Park. Crawford alleges that Fitzpatrick abused him in a locked storage room and in the team showers at Fenway Park when he was 16 years old, in the summer of 1991.
“Now would be a good time for the Red Sox to show everyone they mean what they say,” said Armstrong, who claims he was the first Black youth to be hired in the visitors’ clubhouse by the old Kansas City Athletics — only to be allegedly abused by Fitzpatrick multiple times in a stadium storage room and the historic Muehlebach Hotel in downtown Kansas City.
When contacted by The Associated Press, Daniel Goldberg, an attorney for the Red Sox, re-issued a statement the team released in 2017, noting that Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty to criminal charges under the team’s previous ownership.
“The Red Sox have always viewed the actions — which date back as long as six decades ago — of Mr. Fitzpatrick as abhorrent,” the team statement says. “When the team, under prior ownership became aware of the allegations against Mr. Fitzpatrick in 1991, he was promptly relieved of his duties.”
Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney representing 21 men who claimed they were abused by Fitzpatrick — 15 of whom are Black — has been pushing for outof-court settlements with the Red Sox, three other teams and Major League Baseball for years, but to no avail. Recently, following the death of George Floyd and statements about combating racism issued by the Red Sox, Major League Baseball and several teams, Garabedian has tried again to open negotiations, without success.