So I point out that the Red Sox have only two African Americans in a front office of 88 employees. The two were hired at least ten years before John Henry bought the team.
In the 1980s a scout and former player named Tommy Harper brought a wrongful termination/discrimination claim at MCAD. As a result the Sox entered into a comprehensive agreement related to minority hiring. The story received a lot of press at the time.
Anyway I’ve been pointing these numbers out most of the past seven or eight seasons and never seem to get much of a reaction from rabbit ear discriminations fans. Hmm
Instead I get the following from mark bernstein:
On the Red Sox(0+ / 1-) View voters
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.
markbernstein @ Mon 31 Mar 10:24 AM
What am I missing?
You’re not wrong for pointing out that the Sox are still the whitest team in MLB.
You are wrong to create another diary about it. The last one is still active, and making another one has you looking like an attention whore. Seriously – this thread won’t accomplish anything that the other one wouldn’t, besides getting your fakernie name in everyone’s face again, of course.
I’m not sure about that.
I added a comment in the original post, but the main point is that Ernie is stuck in the 70s. Workplace diversity is race, but also ethnicity AND gender. Why so little engagement? It because Ernie’s work here has displayed struggles in these areas and you have to question the sincerity of the post. So when you read, the knee jerk reaction is that it’s just another personal attack.
Tommy Harper’s termination suit goes back to the Jean Yawkey era, but it epitomizes the way the Red Sox have stumbled over their feet on matters of race.
Harper, a speedster and journeyman 3B, returned to the Red Sox after his playing days and served as first base coach for several years. This made lots of sense: the Red Sox through the 50s and 60s and 70s had played a station-to-station style of baseball that emphasized power and the perceived advantages of Fenway Park and of the greatest Red Sox career player ever, Ted Williams. Harper was fast — I believe he held the Sox record for SB until Jacoby Ellsbury came along — and he was popular.
Back then, the Sox did stuff at an Elk Lodge during Spring Training, presumably because the late Tom Yawkey liked the place. As late as 1985, the Winter Haven Elks Lodge was segregated. Tommie Harper complained (as he ought to have done), the Red Sox fired him (which was stupid), and they lost the ensuing litigation.
The well that John W. Henry & partners bought along with the Red Sox some 17 years later was deeply poisoned. Jackie Robinson could scarcely pronounce the team’s name, so deep was his contempt for them. Where other teams had Jackie and Ernie Banks and Willie Mays, the Red Sox didn’t.
– – – –
Let me turn this around and ask about some other Boston-area institutions that were a big deal, and already ancient, when I first moved here. I’m asking for instruction: I don’t know what the answers are.
* The Big Night Out restaurant used to be the main dining room at the Ritz. When did the Ritz first employ an African American as maitre’d, the key front-of-the-house job that, in its time, was the equivalent of today’s celebrity chef?
* What about Locke-Ober?
* What about Jacob Wirth?
* Who was the first Black director of the Watch and Ward society, and when was he or she elected?
* What other Boston institutions should be asked about here?
As you can see, I’m not from here. Boston is a strange place with lots of history. There’s more here than an opportunity to snipe at the publisher of the Boston Globe.
None of the institutions you mentioned come close to the cultural cache of the Red Sox. The Globe does …but who owns the Globe? So in having a Sox-meets-Globe item, Ernie might be on to something.
Locke-Ober, by the way, did not admit women until 1974.
I’m not sure that Watch and Ward doesn’t rise to this level; there was a time when “banned in Boston” was proverbial. But you see what I’m saying; the Red Sox racist tradition most likely should be placed in the context of Boston institutions.