The Red Sox honor Chuck Stobbs

Like with every team in baseball this evening, the Red Sox players all wore #42. It is a unique gesture from the Red Sox on this Jackie Robinson Day.

Remember, the Red Sox were the first team to give Jackie a try out. Back in the mid 1940s the Red Sox had Robinson and Sam Jethroe play for scouts at Fenway Park. Supposedly someone yelled “Get that ni–er off the field.”

Seeing the Red Sox lost a racial discrimination suit 40 years later, I do not find the story to be outlandish.

The Red Sox had a chance to be the first team to integrate.
Instead, under the grip of the dreadful Yawkey family, they became the last.

The Red Sox could have lead the way in integration. Instead they were dragged kicking and screaming into it… up until the 1990s when Dan Duqette discovered that the Red Sox didn’t even send scouts to the Dominican Republic.

In 1947, while Jackie Robinson changed history in Brooklyn wearing number 42, Chuck Stobbs was a pitcher for the Red Sox.

He wore #42 in Boston instead of Jackie.

Stobbs was 18 years old and a young phenom of a left handed pitcher. His career never blossomed and he is best remembered as a member of the Senators when he let up a 560 foot homer to Mickey Mantle that brought about the term “Tape Measure Shot.”

He became a minor league coach before passing away in Florida a few years ago.

He wore the number 42 with pride for the Red Sox.
That’s almost as good as having Jackie Robinson, isn’t it?

Sully Baseball… your go-to source for the Yawkey’s racism

I have never been shy about expressing my disgust at the Yawkey family.

As a Red Sox fan, I have nothing but venom towards Tom and Jean Yawkey, the two who controlled the team from 1933 until 1992 and then kept it in the family until 2002.

They controlled it for a period of time when the Red Sox won a grand total of zero World Series and decided not to be pioneers of integration and instead kept the stench of racism (and an inferior product) hovering over the Sox until both were long dead.

But I already slammed the Yawkeys when I openly questioned the sanity of Red Sox fans for HONORING him! 

And I did so again when saluted Pumpsie Green.

But a throwaway comment I made in my Home Grown vs. Acquired post for the Dodgers has given me a great moment of pride.

After praising former Dodger Dixie Walker who came to terms with his racism and was turned around by the greatness of Jackie Robinson, I talked about Reggie Smith.

I wrote:

“Well we go from Dixie Walker’s eyes being opened to the wrongs of racism to Reggie Smith… a product of the Red Sox farm system.

The Red Sox had a switch hitting, power hitting All Star Gold Glove winning outfielder with speed… and they traded him.

Hmmmm. Why would the Yawkeys trade a player like that?

I wonder!

Smith became a staple in the Dodgers line up finishing in the top 5 of the MVP two times and hit three homers in a losing cause in the 1977 World Series.

If only Tom or Jean Yawkey had a Dixie Walker moment. (Then again Yawkey was the one who turned down Willie Mays.)”

Not my greatest passage… but I can never resist slamming the Yawkeys for what they did to my team all of those years.

Well friends, I checked on my Blog Tracker and evidently I’ve been linked to the Tom Yawkey wikipedia page!

Someone, and I swear to the ghost of Josh Gibson it wasn’t me, included the following sentence in the “Charges of Racism” section of the entry.

“Even after integrating, racism was believed to play a role in moves made by the Red Sox, notably the trade of star outfielder Reggie Smith in 1973.”

That sentence is footnoted and linked to the Sully Baseball – Home Grown vs. Acquired Dodgers entry.

I couldn’t be more proud.

Not only will I continue to hate the Yawkey family, but I have become a reference!

Hopefully some kid will be writing a term paper on the Yawkeys and use my site as a source. It would be an honor.

(In my days we couldn’t cut and paste! We had to plagiarize from the World Book!)

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