Bush league
Red Sox Foundation decision on Little League is absurd
Just when the rampaging, red-hot Red Sox were on the verge of being adored by the masses again … the Red Sox Foundation opted to scapegoat boys while explaining why it stopped an annual $83,500 donation to 167 Little League organizations. We kid you not. “Little League only accounts for a fraction of youth leagues and more often than not disproportionately engages boys vs. girls,” spokeswoman Zineb Curran told the Herald’s Sean Cotter in explaining the move. Curran added the Foundation has not decreased its contribution to youth sports, rather it is changing “to more equitably support leagues in Massachusetts and New England.”
“Disproportionately engages boys vs. girls.” Aren’t we talking baseball? Bottom line: Boys need not apply to the Red Sox Foundation. The 100% forever male Red Sox don’t hate your sons, grandsons and nephews. They still want 10-year-old Brady to join Kid Nation, load up on J.D. Martinez child-sized swag and root, root, root for LeBron’s team. It’s just that being a boy is now a disqualifier when it comes to getting table scraps off John and Linda’s charity plate.
Gender is nonbinary and fluid, until it isn’t.
The Red Sox Foundation said nothing about how Little League “disproportionately engages boys vs. girls” in a Feb. 28 email to local organizations announcing the shift toward supporting a more virtual baseball platform. That part of its agenda was either hidden at the time or added after the fact.
A look at the players here is necessary. Owner John Henry’s net worth is $2.8 billion, according to Forbes. The Fenway Sports Group media/sports empire, meanwhile, is estimated to be worth $7.35 billion after the $750 million paid by LeBron James & Friends for a piece of the action.
Henry owns The Boston Globe. His wife oversees the day-to-day operations of the local broadsheet and several related digital properties. FSG also owns 80% of NESN.
The Red Sox Foundation hauled in $7,957,212 in contributions and grants, according to its most-recent publicly available IRS return filed in 2019. The executive director of the RSF is Rebekah Salwasser. She also serves as the Executive Vice President, Social Impact for the Red Sox. Yep, that’s a real thing. Her sister is Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.
That’s a lot of majorleague firepower. The Red Sox have room for an Executive Vice President, Social Impact but not for Mookie Betts. Your kid never had a chance.
The Red Sox support of youth baseball at times appears to be about everything but baseball. Visit the Virtual RBI page on the Red Sox Foundation website. Under “other resources” you’ll find a “Where We Stand” link to directing kids to “additional resources around Black Lives Matter.” There are no tips on how to buy real estate.
Punishing Little League because too many boys play is far more insidious than your typical 2021 sports activism — see moving baseball’s All-Star Game — because it specifically penalizes young children based on gender.
One cannot move any lower on the predatory ladder, unless they happen to be Stephen Murphy or Donald Fitzpatrick.
The Red Sox Foundation also brought gender into play where it does not officially exist. Little League does not track the gender of its participants. The only mention of “boys” in any official Little League rulebook I could find is next to a requirement they wear athletic supporters.
One does not have to be an MIT statistician to see that more boys than girls play Little League baseball. It’s selfevident whenever the kids take the field.
Still, there are no real numbers, just estimates. But who needs actual data when you have an agenda?
The Red Sox Foundation can spend its money any way it so chooses. Here are relevant numbers. Salwasser made $252,460 in 2018, according to the Foundation’s most-recent 990 IRS form. The Red Sox Foundation paid out $1,583,808 in salary, compensation and employee benefits that year, while generating $9,457,487 in revenue and dispersing $6,137,693 in grants.
Salwasser gets bragging rights over her sister, Rollins, whose salary was a paltry $168,341 in 2019.
Sibling relationships are normally irrelevant in public life, unless the surname happens to be Bulger, Kennedy, Wahlberg or Affleck.
Here, they matter. One Suffolk County Little League parent detailed just how far $500 can go in helping a local organization, how difficult it has been to raise money during the coronavirus pandemic, and slammed the hypocrisy of the Red Sox and their Foundation. Neither this parent nor others in the same league would go on the record because they did not want to incur Rollins’ wrath. Another way to do that is to avoid the shopping rush on Christmas Eve.
The Red Sox led the way in renaming Yawkey Way back to Jersey Street in 2018. Yawkey’s record in regard to race relations and the Red Sox — never mind his blindness to the extensive sexual abuse inflicted by longtime clubhouse attendant Fitzpatrick — is indefensible.
But the Yawkey Foundation crushes its counterparts on what used to be Yawkey Way. The Red Sox Foundation touts $4.95 million in college scholarships given between 2003-20. The Yawkey Foundation has awarded more than $13 million to limited income, mostly-minority students since 2005. It funded a permanent $10 million internship at Boston University and gave $1 million to Cathedral High School in Boston’s South End for a STEM center.
Overall, the Yawkey Foundation awarded $19,371,113, according to its IRS filings from 2018, and approved another $34.6 million in future grants. The list of YF recipient groups and organizations from that year is nine pages long. It’s a “Who’s Who?” of baseball leagues, hospitals, schools, colleges, minority advocacy groups and social service agencies in and around Greater Boston.
They may have cheered when the Yawkey Way sign came down. But they all cashed the Yawkey Foundation’s checks.
How much did the Yawkey Foundation pay in salaries in 2018?
$0.
Its nine trustees earned between $23,500 and $46,700 each via contract employment. A great deal at twice the price.
I reached out to the Yawkey Foundation to see if it might step in to fill the Little League hole left by the Red Sox. Haven’t heard back yet.
Seems like an opportunity for an easy PR home run. Even if it would disproportionately benefit boys.