The Shameful History of The Red Sox and Yankees´ Dismissal of Black Talent
All knowledgeable baseball fans, and maybe even most Americans, know the profound importance of Jackie Robinson and the incalculable impact his breaking of the color barrier had upon his major league debut in April 1947. Those who revel in the lore of the national pastime surely are aware that it was the Brooklyn Dodgers who first integrated the game which had been terribly scarred by the unwritten rule barring African-Americans. Many also recognize that it was Branch Rickey, a man with a storied history in the major leagues, who decided to let black players have an equal playing field. Others will also point out that Robinson´s signing led to a floodgate of legendary players of African-American or Latino descent by the following decade, including the Hall-of-Fame immortals Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, and Juan Marichal, among many others.
Looking at this incomplete but emblematic list, one can discern that all of these key players who helped make the 1950s and early ´60s the last true golden age for the MLB were on National League teams. Nowhere to be found are two of the American League´s most beloved and iconic franchises, the Boston Red Sox and the all-time league champion New York Yankees. Despite hailing from northern progressive cities that supposedly are liberal bastions, these two teams passed on top-notch black talent for reasons more due to engrained prejudices than any objective measure of skill on the ball field. Arguably, this oversight on part of both teams helps to explain the former squad´s long-running ¨curse,¨ as well as the Yankees´ stunning fall from grace between the early 1960s and late 1970s.
Both teams were among the last to integrate, with the the Yankees signing catcher Elston Howard some 8 years after Robinson had irrevocably changed everything. Meanwhile, the Red Sox possess the dubious distinction of being the very last MLB team to sign a player of color, with the addition of Elijah ¨Pumpsie¨ Green in 1959; a full dozen years after the color line was crossed. While both players were worthy and highly skilled athletes, their names today are brought up more as historical footnotes and trivia fodder. If history had gone differently, Willie Mays could have suited up in the outfield alongside Ted Williams in Boston, while the legendary lovable loser Ernie Banks would not have played with the lowly Cubs at Wrigley Field but instead would have scored some rings playing next to Mickey Mantle at Yankee Stadium.
History cannot be reversed, but it can be properly analyzed to see why two revered and supposedly shrewd MLB franchises were so wrongheaded, short-sighted and frankly racist, and how it affected their ability to keep up with colorblind national league teams in a turbulent, momentous era.
Impact of Dodgers and Robinson on MLB Post-1947-
Following the end of World War II, a war that saw top baseball stars like Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Feller enlist, it was clear the major leagues were on a cusp of a new era. Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the hard-line and old-fashioned MLB commissioner who upheld the ban on black players, had died in 1944, right before the war´s end. In his place was Albert ¨Happy¨ Chandler, who fittingly boasted a sunny disposition and affirmed that if African-Americans could fight abroad for the country, they ¨sure as hell could make it in baseball.¨ This new promise and risk offered by the post-war age led Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey to finally take a chance on a decades-long dream.
A former player and outspoken general manager for the St. Louis Browns and Cardinals, Rickey never forgot an encounter that had occurred while coaching a university baseball team in Ohio at the turn of the century. After the lone black player was almost turned away from joining the rest of the team at the hotel, Rickey kindly offered for him to stay in his room. In the middle of the night, the black player suddenly began to frantically tear at his hands, telling the astonished Rickey that ïf only he could tear (his skin off), he would be like everyone else.¨
Finally, thanks to changing times and more progressive ownership, Rickey could scout the talent-rich Negro Leagues and finally enable an African-American player to compete in the majors. Rather than going for an aging but established superstar like pitcher Satchel Paige or slugger Josh Gibson, Dodgers management sought a young but tested player of enormous talent who could play under pressure and withstand the rigors of being the first black player to compete in the MLB spotlight. Robinson, who ironically had long considered himself to be better at other sports and was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, was chosen by Rickey for all these reasons and more.
The response was swift. Although many players and managers refused to play alongside him and the fans were often brutal, Robinson proved all the racist naysayers wrong. He deservedly won Rookie of the Year and led the often woeful Dodgers to the pennant. Meanwhile, Larry Doby some months later integrated the American League with the Cleveland Indians, while the Dodgers soon signed the likes of pitcher Don Newcombe and catcher Campanella. Mays would debut in 1951 with the Dodgers´ heated NL rival New York Giants, and by the middle of the decade, black players were increasingly widespread. A key example of this trend can be found in the Pittsburgh Pirates. For decades, they were considered a sub-par team, but between 1960 and 1980, they would go on to win 3 World Series, spearheaded by the Hall-of-Fame players of Latino and African-American descent, respectively, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell.
Why The Red Sox and Yankees Did Not Follow Suit
There were two glaring exceptions, however. The Yankees, following their defeat over the Brooklyn nine in ´47, would face and beat the Dodgers three more times before the Dodgers finally emerged triumphant in 1955. It took until that year for the Yankees to include even a single black player. By the time the Yankees faced the now-based-in Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963, the old-guard Yanks were starting to decline. Even in the swinging 60s, the Yankees continued to field a largely homogenous group of players, while the integrated and progressive likes of Dodgers, Cardinals, and Pirates were on the upswing.
The Red Sox, despite their history as one of the earliest teams and their pride in possessing a coast to coast ¨nation¨ of fandom, long failed to match the success of their division rival Yankees. The year before Robinson entered the majors, it seemed that Williams, Bobby Doerr and company would finally go all the way and bring the first World Series to Beantown since 1918. Despite being favored over the Cardinals, the Sox lost the 1946 series in 7 games, while the ¨greatest hitter who ever lived¨ Teddy Ballgame hit a measly .200. Their fortunes could easily have been improved if they, not the Dodgers, had been the first to sign Robinson.
Shockingly, despite passing over number 42, the Sox brass failed to learn their lesson, rejecting the Say Hey Kid himself Mays. If they had not let the Giants scoop up his otherworldly gifts, it is likely that the unbeatable 1–2 punch of Williams and Mays would have led to more pennants and even championships. Instead, Mays led the Polo Grounds-dwellers to a championship three years after his rookie season, while Williams would never even be in contention for another Fall Classic in his career at Fenway Park.
Instead, the Sox continued to pass up generational talent, mostly thanks to truly racist ownership led by the late Tom Yawkey, whose name has long been emblazoned on an avenue overlooking Fenway.
Williams, however, a famously color-blind athlete for his era, did indeed welcome ¨Pumpsie¨ Green with open arms. Green became the first African-American to suit up for the BoSox in 1959, Teddy Ballgame´s penultimate season. As previously noted, this made the Boston squad the very last team to allow players of color, and notoriously, the club did not insist that Green would stay with the rest of the team at hotels during road games. Instead, the Red Sox, in striking contrast to all other teams, cruelly made the rookie secure his own lodging in the middle of a starkly racist period.
During all this, the Sox would eventually return to the World Series, thanks to Williams´ successor Carl Yastrzemski, in 1967 as part of the legendary Ïmpossible Dream¨ season. This dream was squashed once again by the Cardinals, boasting the mighty talents of pitcher Bob Gibson and outfielder Lou Brock. The Red Sox had failed to sign players like these due to racial reasons, and it was not until the 70s, with the addition of Cuban pitcher Luis Tiant and left-field titan Jim Rice that the Sox would become multicultural. In the process, they would transform into consistent post-season contenders for extended periods, with two more World Series appearances before 1990.
The Yankees offer arguably a more curious case. Fairly or not, Boston has long had a reputation for being racist- especially in the sports domain. The Boston Celtics were known until relatively recently as being one of the few teams to boast so many white legends in an African-American-dominated sport; among them Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Kevin McHale, and of course, Larry Bird. However, it took decades for the city to warm up to the team´s greatest winner- and the first African-American NBA coach- Bill Russell. Meanwhile, recent events involving racist fans at Fenway Park have further painted a picture of a city that has failed to fully get with the times.
New York City, however, is the opposite; though not without its racial unrest over the decades, the city´s diversity is well-known, and the Bronx, home of Yankee Stadium, is especially a melting pot. Despite this, looking over the names of legendary Yankees over the years; Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris etc. reveals a slew of white faces. It was not until the tumultuous but game-changing arrival of Reggie Jackson, who led the Yankees to back-to-back World Series after a 13-year-drought, that a black player made a true impact in the Bronx; and he only lasted five seasons with the Yankees.
How could this have been? Larry MacPhail was the owner of the Yankees around the time Rickey decided to integrate baseball, and he was also the author of an agreement signed by many in MLB management which aimed to suppress, rather than encourage, the breaking of the color barrier. Although ownership switched hands by the 50s, and of course the notorious George Steinbrenner would take over by 1973, there was a remarkable continuity of lily-white Yankee teams for nearly 3 decades. While, as aforementioned, the Yankees retained their dominance in the 1950s with the iconic manager Casey Stengel at the helm, by the subsequent decade their stature diminished, as the organization stubbornly clung onto the past.
While Elston Howard´s arrival to the Yankees predated the Sox´ integration by a full four years, there would not be a second black player on the Bronx Bombers until the subsequent decade. By this point, some of the greatest rising stars in the game were Hank Aaron with the then-Milwaukee Braves, Frank Robinson with the Cincinnati Reds, and the aforementioned Clemente with the Pirates, with many more to come. The Reds similarly would become a mini-dynasty by the 70s, and while their most renowned players during this era were Johnny Bench and Pete Rose, their ability to seize the moment and hire players of color, among them Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, cannot be discounted.
The Red Sox and Yankees in a More Woke Era
In recent years, both American League clubs have been able to shake off their reputations as racist. As Dominican-born players especially became a force to be reckoned with by the 90s and early 2000s, the Red Sox could proudly point to the fact that many of the best players from this island nation were standout stars for Boston; Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, and especially David Ortiz, who is considered by many to be the most accomplished Red Sox player since Ted Williams. With players like these, the Red Sox finally broke the alleged curse in 2004, and have won three World Series since then.
The Yankees, while in relative decline since winning the 2009 Fall Classic, had a mini-dynasty during the last half of the 90s. Similarly, this success can be attributed to the likes of Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez, Orlando Cepeda, and the bi-racial team captain Derek Jeter. The latter became the Yanks´ biggest superstar since Jackson- and maybe even since Mantle. Meanwhile, the Panamanian Mariano Rivera is not only one of the top contemporary Yankees greats, but is widely considered to be the best relief pitcher of all time, becoming the first and only ex-major leaguer to achieve unanimous Hall of Fame Enshrinement in 2019.
While the sins of the past cannot be fully redeemed, it is fair to state that both the Red Sox and Yankees have diversified over the decades. While baseball in general still has some work to do in terms of inclusion, it has grown by leaps and bounds since the days that a player as clearly talented as Willie Mays could be passed over by a professional franchise due to purely racist motives.
