So what did you do this weekend? Me? I read the transcript from the recent MA Gaming Commission hearing. The Globe’s Shirley Leung thought it important enough to provide a link.
Backstory: Mass Gaming Commission had a hearing scheduled last week to wrap up the details before it votes whether to give the casino license to Steve Wynn’s Everett site or Caesar’s on the Revere side of Suffolk Downs.
According the transcript the day before the city of Boston aka Marty Walsh sent a letter to the Commission saying ‘not so fast. We have host city issues and would a like a short continuance’.
On page 150 of the transcript Marty Walsh comes in and states his case why Boston is a host city and blah blah blah blah.
Here’s where it get’s good. When Walsh is finished Chairman Crosby’s toady Jim McHugh asks Walsh the first and last question.
BTW I’d Like to thank Chairman Crosby for validating my assertions that the Honorable James McHugh is his toady. Check out this from the transcript. It’s like Crosby couldn’t control himself and had to interrupt. You can hear him thinking “Damn it Jim you putz, we went over this again and again.”
(Page 154)COMMISSIONER MCHUGH: I have a question about, I guess, about procedure, Mr. Mayor. We’ve been meeting through our staff with your representatives for about a month now to try to facilitate some resolution of the obvious issues that are before us and that you’ve addressed yourself to today. And yet it was only yesterday at 2:00 that we got this request for an extension —
CHAIRMAN CROSBY: Another extension. (emphasis added)
COMMISSIONER MCHUGH: — another extension. And it was at 5:00 yesterday afternoon that we got this designation of host community.
Then McHugh accuses the Mayor of sandbagging the commission. Bad move Jimmy Boy. Bad move. The Judge thought he was busting some young lawyer’s balls who was asking foe a continuance because a witness decided to spend another week in Florida.
Baahaahah
Without laughing in the commission’s face the mayor laughed in the commission’s face.
If I may, Commissioner McHugh. I am Tom Frongillo from the law firm of Fish and Richardson and represent the city of Boston in connection with the proceedings before you.
And then a vice grabbed McHugh and Crosby by the testicles and tightened more they protested.
Such things as real estate law, lack of easements, statutory interpretations and other non-red herring issues caused blood pressures in the room to rise. And as far as the city sandbagging the Commission the gunslinger was loaded with facts to the contrary.
(And let’s not forget folks, the last count of any lawsuit will be the Commission’s appearance of conflict that is actually a real conflict. )
McHugh, Crosby, and The Commission were made to look weak and foolish.
(Go Bruins!)
——
Question: Who said the following?
“I think we have to make a statement not just in baseball but in our community that diversity is an issue that hasn’t been fully addressed in the past and certainly has to be fully addressed,” he says. “I think it’s important what your actions are. That will really define the franchise going forward.”
Answer: New Boston Globe owner John Henry in this 2002 NPR interview speaking of his recently acquired Red Sox baseball team. (The NPR link has been removed since I last posted this)
Question: of the 88 people listed as ownership, directors,partners, vice-presidents, club executives, and staff in the 2014 media guide how many are African American?
Drum Roll Please…
Answer: TWO!!
And guess what? Each was hired by the Red Sox years before Henry/Werner/Lucchino bought the team. The pre-Henry Red Sox had fewer employees yet more African Americans working in the front office.
I guess the Sox are having trouble finding “qualified” African Americans or perhaps none are sending in their resumes.
That explains why all they have is a lawyer hired in 1988 and a clubhouse kid brought on in the early 90s.
Have they hired African Americans? There annual media guides say no. However the guides do tell us that many African Americans there when Henry bought the team have left.
Here’s another question. Do you really think the good rich people on Yawkey Way have genuine respect for anyone beneath their social and financial stratospheres?
There is NO WAY the pre-Henry Globe ignores a story about a potential affirmative action issue in the Red Sox front office. Let’s see what Henry’s Globe does.
Jim, do you remember the Tommy Harper MCAD case. It resulted in an agreement with the state, the Sox, and the NAACP. Sox went all out in hiring.
Sox are probably in violation of it now.
BTW, all this was the result of a Globe story.
Since Henry bought the team the number of employees have grown substantially yet no new African Americans and all but two who were there when he bought the team have left.
BTW Jim, what do you think of Mark Bernstein’s argument below in opposition to my post?
He’s all over the map; it’s not their fault, but they’re loyal, and besides this venerable Boston institution doesn’t really matter.
I don’t remember Tommy’s case, but I do remember that he was fired on Christmas eve.
Red Sox staff hiring is hardly our most pressing issue here, but today is Real Opening Day and a brief note might be in order.
That the Red Sox have a long and deeply troubled history of racial injustice, stretching back to the 40s and beyond, goes without saying. Nor is this completely separable from Boston’s own racial tensions — hostilities that once dominated city politics and that continue to resonate beneath the surface of local politics throughout the region. As for the Red Sox, they were slow to integrate the team, did the job ineptly, and then had a long history of alienating black players.
But the Red Sox as an organization have strengths as well as faults, and one of those strengths appears to be remarkable loyalty to extraordinarily long term employees. They kept the same switchboard operator for SIXTY years, from 1941 until she died in 2001. Johnny Pesky was a rookie in 1942 and worked as a coach, manager, instructor, broadcaster and whatnot until he died in 2012. I’m pretty sure there’s an usher who has been there for 30 years.
So, it’s not a bad thing that the clubhouse attendant joined them twenty years ago, or that they have the same lawyer today as in 1988. It’s a good thing. John Henry is responsible for lots, but not for the Yawkeys or for bussing.
Finally: we tend to think of big sports teams as large, important businesses. They’re not. Pro sports teams, in business terms, are about as big as a shopping mall anchor store; they get a lot of press, but they’re just not as important as people imagine.
Mark, your response is so Larry Lucchino that a full response will be in a separate post. But let me say this my son, you did a good job with the crap they gave you to work with. (“They” meaning the Sox or Larry Rasky, but only a paycheck could have written that)
Why wasn’t he promoted to, say, equipment manager?
and still is
How about the switchboard lady? Was she promoted? I imagine they upgraded her phones.
The Lord & Taylor duck boat parade was awesome last year. Don’t miss this year’s!
I would think we should go with all groups that Ernie continually shits on, so an ethnic and gender diversity report on Baseball and the Red Sox would be an interesting find/read.
Read a book, will you?
.