Customer Reviews

Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The publication of Shut Out occurs at a time when the Boston Red Sox have
just finished their first season of a new era. An era promising to right
every wrong of the past 101 seasons. The sad part is that in reading this
book we come away with the feeling that there is more to the antidote than
simply John Henry, new seats at Fenway, and the mere promise of final racial
equality for the team. Howard Bryant, while publicly a journalist covering
the rival New York Yankees, is also a black man who grew up in the city of
Boston during its most turbulent period for blacks- the school busing crisis
of the early 1970s. Bryant's journalistic talents shine brightly throughout
this well-written expose. He begins the story with a good deal of Boston
history entirely unrelated to baseball. He examines early 19th century
Boston when it was known to blacks as home to the abolitionist movement.
Tracing Boston's slow move away from perceived abolitionist leanings and

into political rivalries among various groups, he shows a city ripe with
prejudice. The Boston Red Sox of the early Tom Yawkey era was very much a
club. Yawkey surrounded himself with cronies who thought very much the way
he did. While never publicly speaking out against the idea of integrated
baseball, others in his organization did. From the eloquent dodging of the
question by General Manager Eddie Collins to the very public racist comments
of Manager Pinky Higgins we learn how a team who could have been the first
in baseball to integrate, became the absolute last. A good deal of time is
given to the story of Jackie Robinson's Fenway Park tryout- predetermined to
failure and ignored by all from Joe Cronin on the field to the top ranks of
the organization. Two years later, Robinson would break the color barrier
with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In similar fashion we see the refusal of a Red
Sox talent scout to even watch the young Willie Mays, another Hall of Famer
who was Boston's for the taking, but would instead break in with the New
York Giants. The thought of Robinson and Mays playing on the field with Ted
Williams is enough to give any Sox fan chills. When in 1959 the Red Sox
finally do break the color barrier with Elijah "Pumpsie" Green, it is Ted
Williams who shows the most solidarity with the black rookie.
On a personal note, as a lifelong Red Sox fan growing up in the 1970s, the
realization of just how few black players have made the team is
disheartening. We learn of the struggles of more recent players from Reggie
Smith, to Jim Rice, to Ellis Burks, to Mo Vaughn- playing and living in
Boston. Now that the past has been publicly stated, perhaps things could
change for the future of the franchise. Let's just hope the city doesn't
hold them back for they are truly New England's team.
-Jonathan Colcord

Everyone in Boston knew this story for years, but until Howard Bryant decided to do the work and get it it down, it went basically untold. Top-notch reporting on a difficult subject makes this book special. It should be painful for Red Sox fans and it is, but it's also an indictment of the game - more than fifty years after Jackie Robinson baseball still has a long way to go. The truth hurts, but it shall also set you free.

His chapter on the role the media, particularly the Globe played in the story is particularly notable, as are the voices of so many of the affected Red Sox players, i.e. Earl Wilson, Pumpsie Green, Jim Rice and Ellis Burks, among others. It would have been easy to write a screed that could be easily ignored, but Bryant painstakingly pins the story to the ground, step by step. Anyone serious about baseball, fan or insider, should read this.

My rating of four stars is based on my interest level while author Howard Bryant deserves five stars for his in-depth effort on the subject of the Boston Red Sox and the racial problems that have cast a cloud over the storied franchise. The author relates the story of the farcical tryout of Jackie Robinson at Fenway Park along with two other blacks in 1945 with the Red Sox using the excuse they couldn't sign Robinson since he would have had to report to a minor league team of theirs located in the south where he would have had to deal with a segregated society. The same held true for Willie Mays who could have been patrolling center field for the Sox. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey purchased the team in 1933 and surrounded himself with a trio of cronies and drinking buddies named Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, and buffoon racist Mike "Pinky" Higgins. It is certainly true that racism was not limited to the Red Sox during the 1950's, but they were last in integrating their team with the signing of Elijah "Pumpsie" Green in 1959, and as long as the specter of Collins, Cronin, and Higgins were involved nothing was going to change. Yawkey, as owner was certainly no leader, as he entrusted his franchise to these three men and passively accepted their beliefs. Author Bryant also goes into detail on the experiences of Reggie Smith, Jim Rice, Ellis Burks, Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, Luis Tiant, and Mo Vaughn during their stays in Boston. Some of the book covers non-baseball racially related incidents over the years, and how the team has suffered in trying to get free agents to sign with the Red Sox. When Pumpsie Green joined the club in '59 Ted Williams sent a strong message to teammates and other bigots by warming up with Green prior to the games. Seemingly little things like this can loom large when someone is trying to gain acceptance. Green, himself, summed things up quite well in the year 2000 by saying, "Sometimes when I think of the things people like me had to go through, it just sounds so unnecessary. When you think about it, it is almost silly, how much time and energy was wasted hating." This is not simply another baseball book, but one that provides a look into the Boston Red Sox' role in race relations involving their storied ball club. You need not be a fan of the Bosox, I'm not, to enjoy the book.

As a fan of baseball and local history,I found the book to be both informative and entertaining. No fan of the Red Sox can deny that the organization's view on race has cost the team on the field. More importantly, Mr. Bryant points out that the city of Boston and the inability to deal with race has also played a part in the team's checkered history. I found that Mr. Bryant, a native of Dorchester, to be fair in assesing the team and the city's history. This book is very well researched, and it also serves as a great oral history of Boston and the baseball team.

This book will not bring back memories of the Red Sox you knew as a kid growing up. I became a Red Sox fan right around the time that the Sox brought Pumpsie Green up to the big leagues and became the last team in MLB to integrate.

I had no perceptions of race and sports at the tender age of 9 and the misty memories of youth are shown a touch of reality of how the team was insulated from the integration of the sport.

While we can run around and spout about "The Curse", this book explains where the true curse lies and how the team may have had the opportunity to wave a few more pennants and maybe a World Series victory after 1918 if the right social decisions had been made.

But, the sometime Calvinistic instincts of Red Sox fans would be taken away and we wouldn't be able to wallow in our misery of having someone (the Yankees) or something ("The Curse") to blame for the drought of a World Series victory.

Buy or read this book for some real history and not for some nostalgia of a myth.

Howard Bryant wrote the best baseball book I read in 2002, a fascinating look at the history of the Red Sox, the city and the Boston media since 1945 as regards race relations. Great research, homework was done on the interviews, and this holds up even better now that new ownership seems to have embraced its message.

Howard Bryant combines the research skills of a first-rate journalist with the eyes and ears of a skilled novelist to tell the sad story of institutional racism and the Red Sox. This is a book that is not limited to looking at just sports, though, he captures the mood of the city and its troubled times, often beautifully weaving in colorful anecdotes concerned with busing, the controversial Charles Stuart murder case, the prejudices of the media and the bottom line of big business.

He raises some fascinating points: Ted Williams paid a verbal tribute to the Negro Leagues when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Willie Mays still regrets that he and Jackie Robinson were never able to hit in a lineup with Teddy Ballgame at Fenway and Celtics superstar Bill Russell would often drive Red Sox utilityman Pumpsie Green (the first black to play for the Sox) around Boston, making acid comments about a city that found it so hard to accept African Americans.

This is a nicely done piece of writing. Give it a chance.

No student of racial history and hostility should pass up this book. Brave and forthright.

If Howard Bryant?s book, ?Shut Out: Race and Baseball in Boston? were simply about the failure of the Boston Red Sox to integrate their team, it would have served a great purpose. This book not only creates in painstaking detail but also painful scenarios that have affected the life of not only the Red Sox fandom but also citizens of this misunderstood city.
Boston. Liberal? Perhaps. Tom Yawkey and the Red Sox. Racists? Perhaps. Bryant makes no judgement but presents the stories of many who have passed though Boston?s corridors of school systems, judicial systems and sports teams. The sum total are a damning and deserving indictment of a city slow to respond to equality but quick to jump to persecution of minorities.
The failure of the Red Sox to integrate and the lack of comfort felt by athletes playing and sometimes living in the Cradle of Liberty is painful and sad but true. This book is well written, doesn?t waste words and doesn?t let a clearly emotion inducing story shade the author?s opinions.
This book should serve as a textbook at high schools and colleges who want to bring a sense of history along with a primer of how journalism should be undertaken.

Shame on you Boston. The City and the Sox.

This book is a painful reminder that not all Red Sox disappointment and frustration can be blamed on the "curse of the Bambino." Some is due to blatant racism. Bryant tells the story well, and with amazing restraint and balance. The fact that the Red Sox could easily have had several black stars, including Jackie and Willie, is a blot on Boston and a blot on baseball. Another new book, by outspoken liberal Bill Lee (The Little Red Sox Book) provides a glimpse of what might have been if Yawkey had seen the light - he brings Willie and Jackie and Aaron together in Boston. If only it weren't fiction...