Although that wasn't always the case. In Leslie Heaphy's article Baseball and the Color Line, he discusses the history of African Americans throughout baseball. There was a booming popularity of the Negro Leagues amongst black communities as that was the only place the sport and the colored man could be together. After WWII, possibilities of integration were being discussed. Heaphy said, "... it became harder to argue that both black and white young men could fight and die for their country, but not play baseball together."
To much dismay, the Red Sox were the last major league team to cross the color line and sign an African American player. Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers in 1945 and Pumpsie Green signed with Boston in 1959. He came from their Triple AAA team but never really became a regular player. It wasn't until 1962 when Earl Wilson began a five year run with the Sox and became a regular in the rotation. The Red Sox integration 14 years after Robinson entered the major leagues was half-hearted.
MLB.com profiled countless players during the month of February as a part of Black History Month. They just so happened to focus on left fielder Tommy Harper and his accomplishments playing in a Red Sox uniform. He held the record for stolen bases, 54, in 1973, which happened to be the same year he was voted MVP for the Red Sox. He was a great player for Boston but did not have fond feelings for Fenway and Red Sox fans for quite sometime. African American fans weren't welcomed whole heartedly into Fenway Park. The majority of people who went to see the Red Sox play were white.
When asked about having colored skin in Boston, Harper said, "Sometimes people think it's an exaggeration from the fans who said, 'I didn't feel comfortable, I didn't feel welcome at Fenway Park.' I'm going to tell you the truth. They were right. How could they feel comfortable when I wasn't? And I was on the field. I know what they were talking about." He says he was constantly hearing racial slurs from the stands and had no intention but to get to Fenway, work, and get out of there. Even after 14 years of playing in Boston, African Americans still did not feel worthy enough to be there.
John Henry, Larry Lucchino, and Tom Werner took over in 2002. They had every intention of cleaning up their awful reputation and making a new name for the organization. Pumpsie Green comes back for team events, but refused to until new ownership took over. Can we blame him?
It's a difficult thing to say whether or not more African Americans should have made their presence in Fenway Park understood as a permanent fixture. On the one side, nobody should be expected to be made a martyr of against their will, especially when they are faced with violence and unknown consequences. On the other, if we had never started the process of desegregation in the first place, where would we be now? Players like Jackie Robinson, who willingly took on the role of the sacrificial lamb made it possible for baseball heroes of all ethnicities to emerge in future generations. Yet even though the outcome was good, it is still hard to justify the suffering that players like Harper had to endure as a result, as well as the black fans who came to watch the games.
ReplyDeleteThis post raises some good points. It's important to talk about wounding issues from the past to try and keep them from happening again. I think Mr. Green is absolutely justified in taking his time when going back to Fenway. While clearly, there has been great progress in creating equality in baseball, I think there are still some undertones. Announcers through out the game can be heard calling Latin American players "lazy"", African American players as "better athletes than players" and small white players as "scrappy".
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