An excellent article by Adrian Walker in Monday’s Globe “It’s time to banish the racist legacy of Tom Yawkey” argues Boston should change the names of the Yawkey Way alley outside Fenway Park, and the nearby Yawkey T station, because the former owner should not be celebrated.
Walker is absolutely right, and the sooner this is done, the better. Yawkey was a loser who held the Red Sox and Boston back in part because of his racial retardation. Not only did he pass on Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, his teams were more famous for losing than for winning, and never brought us a World Series championship. Why celebrate that? Now “2004 ALCS Way,” for example, which was arguably the greatest comeback in the history of U.S. professional sports, and a Boston triumph, would be a T station name worth applauding. Here are a few key paragraphs:
The Red Sox, meanwhile, marched in an entirely different direction, becoming the absolute last team in baseball to integrate, when Pumpsie Green finally came aboard in 1959.
All this history raises an uncomfortable, current-day question. Why on earth does Boston have a street called Yawkey Way? Or a Yawkey MBTA station? At a time when activists, especially on college campuses, are clamoring for renaming monuments to racist history, it’s long past time for Boston to think long and hard about the official Yawkey legacy. That the Red Sox are so central to the city’s psyche makes it even more urgent for Boston to act now to banish this legacy of racism. …
“This current ownership does not run away from the history of this team,” Red Sox historian Gordon Edes told me last week. Edes confirmed the story of the Robinson tryout, though stressed that the culprit has never been positively identified. “We embrace it as part of the Red Sox story. I think it was Larry Lucchino who called it ‘an undeniable legacy of racial intolerance.’ John Henry has referred to ‘the shameful past.’” …
Changing the name of a street is simple enough. I’ll spare you the mundane bureaucratic process, but the city could do it in a matter of weeks. Renaming a T station is just as simple. The Sox organization doesn’t have a role, or an official position on what to call Yawkey Way; Edes says the topic has never been discussed internally.
But the rest of us should start talking about it, now. The city has moved so far from the days of Tom Yawkey. By comparison, changing a few street signs and renaming a train station is just a small step in expressing who we are now, and what we aspire to represent.
The time has come.
Boston should do better.
We know eventually a bunch of stuff will be renamed Menino whatever, we might as well get it on with it. Plus, it will provide cover for all the politians who need to pander to the racists (i.e. the GOP)!
for the one they dropped the ball on. 🙂
Fred Rich Lariccia
Granted I know he started and ended his career in Boston, but that Baltimore native is a Yankee through and through. Even played himself in Pride of the Yankees. Do we want to give Shaunessey more material? No thank you.
(Surely your request was made in jest but we take our baseball seriously around here)
n/t
so it is named for Jean Yawkey
The Policy for Name Changes and Square Dedication for Public Way and Private Way in the City of Boston (pdf) document is pretty detailed. It sure isn’t “simple enough” and even a boring street that 1000 people in all of Massachusetts had ever even been on would take more than a couple of weeks.
I’m not arguing the merits, just that the process is far more onerous than the author lets on.
If they are to rename it, I’d suggest a baseball name that isn’t associated with on-field performance while wearing a Red Sox uniform, and need not even be associated with the Red Sox organization at all. Something in the spirit of Abner Doubleday, Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Marvin Miller, Roberto Clemente, Satchel Paige, Curt Flood, that sort of thing. I’d like to think that we can find a baseball-related name that is larger than merely home runs or strikeouts.
I hear he went to school in the area. Also, rhymes.
. . .is that dumping on Tom Yawkey has been a convenient way for racists to pretend that it was only Yawkey who was a racist in wonderful non-racist Boston. There is a daisy chain of Boston sports and media figures going back 60 years, all of them citing someone in the past as the real racist, in contrast to which they are blameless and enlightened.
Menino? Do we really want to name a street after the Mayor who gave it away to private interests? Babe Ruth? Why not just call it “No Imagination Station”?
Naming the station and the street after Ted Williams is better, but only if we name both of them “The Ted Williams Tunnel”, screwing up GPS devices and filling up the Fens with people trying to get to the Airport and vice versa.
My personal choice would be to name everything after the owners of the Boston Braves–I think they were called something like “The Three Steamshovels”. They got their team out of racist Boston, then brought up Henry Aaron.
“Three Steamshovels Way” would get Yawkey’s name off the signs without causing an epidemic of orthopedic injuries from people patting themselves on the back.
Boston still has a national reputation for racism, to the extent that a joke about racism was on an episode of the Carmichael show this season. (It’s a great show on NBC if you get a chance.)
“You don’t go to Boston for the food, you go there for the enthusiastic racism”
That’s the only way this thing wouldn’t spur outcry from Red Sox nation. Our third place Mayoral candidate is clearly beloved, rallied the city after the Marsthon bombing, is retiring this year so we have an excuse, and is arguably our most beloved athlete, period, but definitely the best beloved athlete of color to come our way in quite some time. Luis Tiant and Pedro are incredibly
popular, but Big Papi is our Papi.
According to its website, Fenway Park was built on land acquired in 1911 (emphasis mine):
Perhaps an intrepid investigator could discover if there was an owner of that parcel prior to the 1911 public auction, and that owner could be memorialized for the contribution he or she unwittingly made to the history of Boston.
What contribution did he make over and above others in his position? Honestly I care less about sports than just about anything else, so when it comes to choosing your battles I probably wouldn’t choose this one. However, I am quite disturbed by the trend I have seen lately of trying to erase any history that makes us uncomfortable, or trying to commit damnatio memoriae against any person, even one who lived generations ago, whose values and attitudes aren’t completely acceptable to modern times. Taken to its logical extreme, there are a lot of people we couldn’t honor because they were racist, including the Great Emancipator himself who did not believe the white and black races were equal.
The sports world is often ahead of society in general when it comes to addressing problems. Yawkey was behind the times and it hurt his team. It also brings forth stereotypes for examination.
Any reactions on here to the Black manager (Dusty Baker) of the Washington Nationals saying that his team needs to add some speed to his team, so he’ll have to go out and hire some Black guys??
While we debate a new and more fitting honoree, we can restore the former street name.
I also would like to see something other than “Way” as the suffix for this street. Closing off Yawkey Way (or any other Way) for private purposes sounds significantly different than closing off Ortiz Avenue.
Wouldn’t it be cool if the Red Sox played at 42 Jackie Robinson Avenue?
BOYCOTT !!!!!!!