History Friday: Bad Stuff 'Bout the Sox*

The Boston Red Sox, to be sure, have had a chequered past. In fact, their present ain't exactly smooth either, but one post at a time. The point is this: The Sox have enough triumph and tragedy in the long tale that is their history without mistake, myth, and outright lie embellishing things.

Forthwith then two of the more prominent stories about the Red Sox, how close they are to the truth, and where applicable the true story.

MYTH 1:

Babe Ruth, who was at the time a good Red Sox pitcher, was sold to the New York Yankees after the 1918 World Series for a pittance so that the then-owner of the team, Harry Frazee, could finance a Broadway play called No No Nanette. At the time neither Frazee, nor anyone else for that matter, knew of his prowess with the bat.

STATUS: Almost completely false. 

Where to begin? First of all, yes, Frazee did in fact sell the rights to Ruth. And that's where truth and falsehood diverge. Frazee sold Ruth after the 1919 season, primarily for the pragmatic reason that he was the last good player on a team that was a pale shadow of the championship teams that won four World Series in the previous six years. The 1919 squad was old and mediocre besides.

Compunding matters was the fact that Ruth himself was hardly an ideal teammate. He had gained weight, was insolent to his teammates and his manager, and generally behaved, in the words of his teammate Harry Hooper, like "a big overgrown ape." So Frazee sold his rights to bring some money into the team, get rid of a clubhouse cancer, and hopefully retool.

The Red Sox knew full well, by the way, that he was capable of slugging; in the 1919 season, his last with the Sox, he clubbed 29 home runs, which at the time was the all-time record, while playing every fifth day as a pitcher.

And the "pittance" that the Yankees paid for Ruth? They paid $100,000 for the big lug; by way of comparison, Frazee bought the entire team, including Fenway Park, for $400,000 just two years earlier, in 1917. A hundred grand for one player was a jaw-dropping sum of money, and editorials in both Boston and New York papers sniffed that while Ruth was undeniably a great player, $100,000 was too much to pay for any one player.

Finally, the Ruth transaction had nothing to do with any play; Frazee put up his money for No No Nanette in 1925, six years after he sold Ruth, and by which time he had already sold the Red Sox.

Who can be blamed for these blatant untruths entrenching themselves into the public consciousness? A Boston-based reporter named Dan Shaughnessy, who wrote a book called The Curse of the Bambino, whose poor research and general curmudgeonliness led to the errors. That plus his greatest joy in life seems to be pointing out the miseries of the Red Sox and its players.

MYTH 2:

Long-time owner Tom Yawkey was a kindly old man, an avuncular owner who loved the Sox and wanted a championship desperately.

STATUS: Entirely false.

Yawkey was for most of his tenure as owner of the Red Sox an absentee owner, who cared more about giving jobs to his drinking buddies and keeping black ballplayers off his team than winning. To that end the missteps he made were as numerous as they were incredibly stupid.

For example, Yawkey brought in shortstop Joe Cronin, who was a decent enough player but well past his prime, and because he got along with Yawkey he became the Sox' player-manager, playing for years beyond when he should have. In 1939 the aging Cronin made 32 errors in the infield yet insisted on keeping himself installed as the Sox' starting shortstop. In fact he convinced Yawkey to sell the rights to an up-and-coming shortstop in the farm system because Cronin selfishly wanted to keep playing.  The name of the young up-and-comer? Pee Wee Reese, who made the Hall of Fame after having won seven pennants with the Brooklyn Dodgers and appearing in ten All-Star games.

Yawkey was also one of the most racist men to have ever been associated with Major League Baseball. For years he resisted promoting any of the black players in the Red Sox farm system or for that matter anywhere in baseball.

In 1945, a Boston city councilor named Isadore Muchnick threatened Yawkey with revoking the Sox' license to play on Sundays unless he auditioned some black ballplayers. So shortly after the start of the 1945 season the Sox brought in three black players for a reluctant tryout. Yawkey kept them off the field for two days, citing the recent death of President Franklin Roosevelt; they weren't allowed on the field until April 16th of that year.  When they finally were allowed to take the field, they took part in a very brief tryout. It ended earlier than usual when Yawkey, sitting in the stands, shouted (and please forgive the crudity) "Get those niggers off the field!"

One of those three players was named Jackie Robinson, who was taking part in his very first Major League tryout, and whose rights the Red Sox could have easily obtained.

Robinson was not the only future Hall-of-Famer who was denied a shot with the team because he was black. In 1948 a young black player was playing for the Birmingham (AL) Black Barons, the Negro League analog of the Birmingham Barons, a Red Sox-affiliated farm team. The Black Barons shared a field with the Barons, and because of this arrangement the Red Sox had right of first refusal of all the Black Barons players. This player was so good that it was almost universally agreed that he would catch on with a Big League team, but the Red Sox passed simply because he was black.  The player's name? Willie Mays.

Yes, these times are long since past, but It's not difficult to imagine how the fate of the Red Sox would have changed if Yawkey was perhaps a clearer thinker. Instead of decades of futility, it's not difficult to imagine how much better the Sox would have been if, in addition to Ted Williams in left, they had Mays patrolling center field, Reese at short and Robinson at first. But there was just no way that was going to happen under Yawkey's watch.

To be fair, Yawkey was hardly an island of racism in an otherwise understanding front office. For example, a reporter once asked Red Sox GM (and Yawkey drinking buddy) Pinky Huggins why the team wasn't promoting any of its black minor leaguers; Huggins called the reporter a "nigger lover." It would be another 11 years until the Sox broke the color barrier, the very last team to do so, when it promoted Pumpsie Green in 1959 – and Green, it hardly needs to be said, was no Willie Mays.

That's the influence of Tom Yawkey, the "kindly" and benevolent owner of the Boston Red Sox, who named the street in front of Fenway's front door after him.
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*Five points and a shout-out to anyone who can tell me where I got the title for this post.