Which is why I'm fairly curious about owner Tom Yawkey's stance on having African American ballplayers on the Red Sox. In a Verb Plow post (a blog run by Glenn Stout), he unearths a quote from Yawkey himself in a Sports Illustrated article about the difficulties the Red Sox had in fielding a winning team during the late 1940s and 1950s. (The Red Sox won the pennant in 1946 and would not repeat that accomplishment until 1967.) This quote is deemed the "smoking gun" in proving that Yawkey was probably not the most pro-African American fellow out there.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the quote is the following:
"...we scouted them right along, but we didn't want one because he was a Negro. We wanted a ballplayer."
(Read the whole story about the Red Sox's troubles here.)
Now someone out there has got to explain how two folks named Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays were not deemed ballplayers, as both tried out for the Red Sox. Perhaps one can make the argument that this judgment is made in hindsight, but nonetheless anyone who witnessed the Negro Leaguers play (especially against the all-white teams of the era) could see that these were special, if not talented, baseball players. I honestly have no clue how he could have made that judgment. Bad scouts? Possibility. Racism?
About that. At first glance, the quote really doesn't speak to the point of "I RAGINGLY HATE BLACK PEOPLE," but it doesn't exactly make good baseball or even logical sense either. Again, the African American ballplayers from the Negro Leagues were mostly fully capable baseball players who could hold their own (in varying degrees) in the major leagues. And even though he had somewhat of a point in not signing and ol' random Negro Leaguer, the fact remains that how he was not able to find any black ballplayer worth his salt is beyond me.
Another part of the quote from Yawkey lends some credence to the notion that perhaps he harbored some racist tendencies. He refers to them as "clannish" and rumors that the Red Sox were not signing black players spread like wildfire among the black players and the Red Sox were (no pun intended) blackballed in the community. Stout addresses this part of the quote in the following paragraphs:
The notion that an African American ballplayer in the late 1940s and 1950s would turn down an offer to sign with any major league team over any issue, even money, sounded spurious to me, and in a survey of the Negro League history books that I have in my possession, I could find no such accounting. But I wanted to be sure.
I contacted my friend Lawrence Hogan, a Professor of History at Union College in New Jersey, one of the foremost Negro League historians in the country and the author of Shades of Glory, published by National Geographic and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a book which has been referred to as a definitive history of Black baseball in America. In an e-mail I asked him, “Are you aware of any Negro League players, from the time Robinson signed to the late 1950s, who turned down offers from major league teams to remain in the Negro Leagues?” I asked specifically if he had ever heard of such a claim in regard to a player refusing to sign with the Red Sox.
The answer is no. Wrote Hogan, “I have never heard even the slightest suggestion of either thing you mention happening. I am sure there were players good enough to be signed who were not because of the glacial pace of integration. But I can ot imagine any Negro League player turning down an offer, other than on the normal personal grounds of not enough money being offered, or wanting to get on with life in a non-baseball way.”
It's pretty silly to think that apparently all the African American ballplayers would somehow all join forces and not play for the one team. It's even sillier to think that every single one of them would somehow have knowledge and stand in solidarity.
It is important to also note that most teams did not immediately jump on the sign African American ballplayers boat. Only three teams debuted an African-American ballplayer the same year that Jackie Robinson debuted, and a large number of the teams in existence at the time debuted their first African-American player during the years 1950-54. Yawkey was not exactly the quickest guy to the trend, but then again, the rest of the owners weren't either. (In the interest of parity to make sure I don't get any anti-Yankees comments, the Bronx Bombers debuted Elston Howard on 14 Apr 1955, a little more than two years before the Red Sox debuted Pumpsie Green.)
I would like to see more about Yawkey in order to accuse him of being a racist dickwad. One quote does not make him or break him. But it sure is a building block in the case against him.
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