THE CURSE OF PUMPSIE GREEN

The Red Sox are the winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award when it comes to horseshit race relations. There isn’t a town that has had a tougher time accepting black players than Boston, which is strange because of the terrific liberal history the city enjoys. Still, the story of black players on the Red Sox is a sad one, especially considering they have had their share of talents: Reggie Smith, Cecil Cooper, George Scott, Jim Rice of course, as well as Ellis Burks, Oil Can Boyd and Mo Vaughn. Rice had the best career as a Red Sox, but he’s remembered as a sour bastard, as well as a super-hitter: admired more than adored. Smith, Cooper and Burks all had their best years after they left Boston, and Mo Vaughn never should have left Boston, plain and simple. He was the first black star who enjoyed being a black star in Boston.

But did you know that according to Howard Bryant, the Red Sox didn’t sign a black free agent until they signed Andre Dawson in 1993? That’s almost twenty years after the birth of free agency. The Yankees do not posses a good history of race relations themselves, but when it came to free agency, at least George Steinbrenner was color blind.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that once again the scarcity of black players on Boston’s roster is a reminder of a disturbing past:

”I think this is just an unfortunate anomaly,” [GM, Theo] Epstein said yesterday. ”Obviously, we do not consider a player’s race in our evaluation of the player.

”Believe me, I’m very aware of the Red Sox’ terrible history of race relations. Our goal as an organization is to reverse that history, to become a trailblazer for diversity.

”This does not always manifest itself on the field because race is not a factor in our player personnel decisions. But there are plenty of other ways to make a difference, and this owership group is off to a great start in those areas.”

Former GM Lou Gorman first initiated a change in the redneck climate, beginning to hire African Americans to front office jobs during the early 1990s. But, according to Howard Byrant in his book on racism and Boston, “Shut Out:”

With so many years of perceived slights, what existed between the club and the city’s blacks was nothing short of a cold war.

Gorman, frustrated by the lack of response to his inroads by a bitter black community, threw up his hands in despair, convinced that even his best efforts would be fruitless. For years, the Red Sox were attacked for ignoring the black community. Now, when the club attempted to create a bond in minority neighborhoods, they were rebuffed with distrust. What, Gorman wondered, was he supposed to do? It was one thing to be aware of one’s own actions and treat people accordingly, quite another to change the entire culture and perception of a team, which had been in place since the turn of the century.

There were legitimate reasons for this retrenchment. The first was the lack of tangible results. Despite positive talk, little about the Red Sox organization had changed publicly. The second reason was even more severe: The consequence of the team’s history finally seemed to have caught up with it. Black players, who because of free agency now could control to a great degree which teams they played for, now did not want to play for the Red Sox. And they were voicing it.

It was one of the great unforeseen consequences of the free agent era. Saddled with the blemishes of the past, the Red Sox now found themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage. The price the Red Sox would pay for Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, and Pinky Higgens would not completely be paid during that era, but now in the free agency era, in which players could decide not only what teams they wanted to play for but also which ones they did not. Hall of Famer Dave Winfield once said that he would never play for the Red Sox for any amount of money, thanks to an ugly incident during the mid-1980s where a bottle was thrown at him from a moving car while he took a morning jog. Joe Carter, the great outfielder, would always be wary of Boston’s reputation. Time Raines, the longtime Montreal Expos great, was bitter toward Boston because of an ugly incident at Logan Airport when police detained he and his wife while connecting through Boston to a vacation in the Bahamas. The authorities said Raines fit the description of a wanted cocaine dealer. To Raines, it was an example of the mistreatment that came with being black.

In addition to free agents choosing to avoid Boston, players with tenured status in the game chose another strategy that indicted the Red Sox: They would include language in their contracts to prevent them from being traded to the Red Sox. Two high-level black stars, Marquis Grissom and David Justice, inserted language into their contracts that prevented them from ever being traded to the Red Sox .When he was to become a free agent in 200, Peter Gammons told Ken Griffey, Jr. that he should consider Boston. A play of Griffey’s immense talent along with an effervescent playing style would be revered in Boston, Gammons reasoned. Griffey’s response was cool and incredulous. He would never consider Boston, the racist city, the place where he could get lynched. “I told him that he would own the city if he came here,” Gammons said. “He looked at me like I was nuts. The city still has a racist label. It’s very sad.”