BUT.....when little "know-nothings" whose only qualification to become a sports show host is to have been on the DEBATING??? team in college....start mouthing off calling Tom Yawkey a racist and wanting to change the name of Yawkey Way because it's honoring a racist.....I can't stay quiet any longer. Let me simply say THEY don't know what they're talking about. BUT...as the old timer writers used to say...."Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."
This latest headline is sickening for a few reasons....one is that these "kids" weren't even alive when Tom Yawkey was owner of the Red Sox. These "rug-rats" start their stories with....Tom Yawkey was the last owner to hire a black player....he passed on Jackie Robinson and Willie Mayes.
Well, let me "educate" you boys (and girls).....so did EVERY OWNER except for two. AND, the year before the Red Sox hired Elijah (Pumpsie) Green the New York Yankees finally gave in and hired a black player. Never heard any writers call the Yankees racists, did you.....THAT is FAKE NEWS....
NOTE.....Tom Yawkey was not, and always admitted to it, a baseball man. He was a businessman. He hired, what he considered, good baseball men as general managers to run the team. In THEIR opinion BOSTON, (and most other cities in the baseball circuit) WERE racist and they felt the team would have suffered at the gate. As a matter of record...most of the country was racist in those days.
So it was not TOM YAWKEY who passed on black ball players. TOM YAWKEY was a most generous man to ALL including the black community.
Johnny Pesky once told me (in a private interview totally off the record) that TED WILLIAMS told Mr. Yawkey that he was going to let the press "have it" over those "racist" charges and Mr. Yawkey (all his players called him MR. out of respect and over Mr. Yawkeys pleas to "just call me Tom)." told Ted that he would rather just let it die out and not give them any further reason to keep this foolish "racist" thing going keep going. (smart move, don't you think?)
Back to these know nothing. fake news commentators....After the "Passed on Jackie Robinson, etc" stories become old hat they jump to the cry,..."What did he ever do for the Sox and what did they ever win...NOTHING. Well, kiddies...let me give you a history lesson...and it's all true, just look it up (you CAN read can't you?) When Tom Yawkey bought the Sox they had been a permanent fixture in the cellar of the American league. There were no other buyers and the team seemed headed out of town. Tom Yawkey stepped forward and paid a lot of money (for those depression days) reportedly between two to three million dollars. He then proceeded to hire some good baseball men to start rebuilding the team with great players. He put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in hall of fame players like Lefty Grove and Jimmy Foxx. Then paid for a good group of scouts who knew talent and went out and got him the likes of Bobby Doerr, Domenic DiMaggio (Joe's kid brother,) Johnny Pesky and, lest I forget....TED WILLIAMS. All through the late 30's to early 50's Boston saw some of the most exciting games, constantly, in professional baseball. The only thing that kept them from winning many world championships was THE NEW YORK YANKEES. (By the way all you little boys and girls pretending to be sportswriters....THAT is where the RIVALRY came from....not from the sale of Babe Ruth in 1920. (there's a trivia question for you...I've made a lot of money from some young writers who really think it was 1919.)
AND, when these babies claim Tom Yawkey never won anything....in 1946 the Sox, for the first time in 28 years, won the American League Pennant. Yup...THAT used to be a big thing before they put in all these playoff scenarios to get into the WORLD SERIES. When you think about it THAT virtually makes the regular season useless if the teams with the BEST record in the American and National leagues may not even GET to the world series.....What's the sense of Playing the season to produce a WORLD CHAMPION if the teams in it don't have the best season's records????
LAST, but definitely not least.....TOM YAWKEY....through his philanthropic foundations has given the citizens of MASSACHUSETTS, not JUST Boston...almost a half BILLION dollars....For one, If you've ever been to the Mass General Hospital in Boston you'll notice that huge hospital wing beside it is named THE YAWKEY BUILDING....AND...The Jimmy Fund...although started by the Boston Braves, would have collapsed when the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 if not for Tom Yawkey, who took over the fund raising efforts and TED WILLIAMS became their spokesman....
All you people out there who are stuck listening and reading the rants of these so-called sports media people would do well to look into the TRUTH about Tom Yawkey rather than just listen to these know-nothing guys and girls spouting off.
NOW.....to the end of this and probably the ENTIRE reason this came up in the first place.......The owner of the Red Sox, John Henry, is the man who has started this hullabaloo with his headline in the Boston Globe (which HE OWNS) that the street named "YAWKEY WAY" should be changed because TOM YAWKEY was a racist. Talk about a PRIVATE, SELF SERVING AGENDA.......Let alone the fact that the Boston Globe is about as far left wing liberal Democrat leaning as you can get and would make a ton of money from this "movement" and controversy surrounding such a move....BUT, I have a feeling there are some political motivations on the horizon. Remember you heard it HERE first.
What other reason(s) would John Henry have for besmirching the name of such a fine and, yes, as noble a man as Tom Yawkey. If you look into the man himself and what he's done in his lifetime you'll see that he has left the world a far better place for having been here.....and there are very few people you can say that about. AND, all you youngsters in the sports media who don't know a suicide-squeeze from a hit-and-run play.....learn some history of the game and people in it that you report on. It's called HISTORY...AND, you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. Maybe John Henry just wants to make history START with him and erase all the history that's happened before him. That's how the Communists took over Russia in 1918.....Does anybody out there think that John Henry has political ambitions? Hmmmm.....Stay tuned to this site......