Daily Archives: February 19, 2003

KEN BURNS INTERVIEW

Part II.

Bronx Banter: Jackie Robinson was a fitting choice as the hero of the “Baseball” series. Without taking anything away from his greatness, what about Larry Doby? He was the first black player in the American League. I don’t mean to single you out on this, but how come Doby has been so over looked, even neglected, by history?

KB: That’s one of those situations where when you are not the first, you get forgotten. It’s the John Adams syndrome. So maybe it’s going to take somebody of David McCollough’s caliber to rescue the Larry Doby’s of the world. The guys who end up in second.

BB: Nice guys finish last, right?

KB: That doesn’t make him any less courageous or any less heroic, it’s just that we focused our attention on the heroism and courage of Jackie Robinson, and that’s what we endow with all the symbolic importance that Jackie Robinson has for us.

BB: So it was more of an aesthetic choice rather than just saying, ‘Oh, Doby’s story just isn’t all that interesting.’

KB: It’s just a question of first, it’s not even a question of aesthetics. It’s just Jackie was first, and Jackie also happened to display this incredible courage and heroics and really wore it. And Doby, of course, had to go through much of the same thing, it’s just because our attention was on Jackie, we didn’t have the time to do Doby as well.

BB: What about Minnie Minoso? He was the first black Latino to play in the majors, and he was a popular player who put together a Hall of Fame career, certainly comparable to Doby’s. Bill James, Rob Neyer and Allen Barra all have him high on their list of players most worthy of the Hall of Fame. Considering how dominant Latin players are in the modern game, why hasn’t their been more of an outcry about Minoso NOT being in the Hall?

KB: I don’t know. Maybe you’ll start one. Or perhaps there already is one and you’ll be joining in the cause. It just has to do with the wave of people’s attentions and concerns. I think the great effort of the last 20 years in the Hall of Fame has been to redress the incredible wrongs done to the Negro Leagues. Now that they have added a number of Negro League players, taking on a little bit of an act of faith their statistical accomplishments, thanks to the work of Buck O’Neill and others. Maybe now is the time to talk about the Latin thing. I mean baseball does mirror the waves of immigration, and now we are talking about Asian superstars, so maybe there will be a time when they are even coming to the Hall of Fame.

BB: Are you still in touch with Buck O’Neill?

KB: Yes, in fact I just wrote him a letter today. He’s 92 and never looked better. He is as handsome as ever, and is, you know, one of the greatest human beings that ever walked the earth.

BB: I don’t know if there is any player who is more compelling to me than Curt Flood. He was great in the interviews he did for “Baseball.” What were your impressions of the man?

KB: I loved him. He and I hit it off in a really intense way. You know, you meet some people, and do a lot of interviews, and you come across a Buck O’Neill and you know you are going to know him for the rest of your life. The same thing happened with Curt, and I’m just so sorry that his life was so short. We did speak many, many times after the series was out, and sort of conspired to do things I saw him a couple of times afterwards. I found him an incredibly sensitive person. And I don’t mean that in a clichZd way. I mean there are some people whose vibrations a little bit finer. I think that was true with Curt Flood. And I think it made it more susceptible to the pain that the world is inevitably going to doll out. Perhaps, it even shortened his life, I don’t know. But one sensed an emotional fragility in him that was interesting and attractive, particularly for a ballplayer of such extraordinary importance in the game.

BB: Was he bitter in the last years of his life?

KB: No, I think it was a more complicated emotion than that. You can look at Buck O’Neill and say, ‘There’s someone free of all bitterness,’ right? And you can look at others who might have a chip on their shoulders, not to name any names. And I think Curt was somewhere inbetween. I don’t think that’s what animated him. I think that he knew that he came at a particular time. He performed a function. I’m sure he wished that he had been on the other side of the great largess that was bestowed on the players, after his, and Messersmith, and NcNally’s contributions. But Flood was really a pioneer, and he is a sacrificial lamb, and I think somewhere along the line he had come to peace with it, although I think it was also eating him as well. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. You know Flood paid the price for the time he came along. But he will always be an important person. He was the first one over the top of the fort.

BB: Do you have any idea what Flood did in the last years of his life?

KB: Well, I think he did what a lot of baseball players do. He was an “ex-ballplayer.” And that means a variety of things. You should talk to his widow. Judy is an amazing human being, and they raised a family together. I remember meeting a couple of the kids, and they really had their head on straight. And I think that’s what he really focused his attention on. I think he had some business interests, and he was doing charitable work, and of was of course, still connected to baseball.

BB: Thanks for taking some time out to talk.

KB: It was my pleasure.

THE CURSE OF PUMPSIE GREEN

The Red Sox are the winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award when it comes to horseshit race relations. There isn’t a town that has had a tougher time accepting black players than Boston, which is strange because of the terrific liberal history the city enjoys. Still, the story of black players on the Red Sox is a sad one, especially considering they have had their share of talents: Reggie Smith, Cecil Cooper, George Scott, Jim Rice of course, as well as Ellis Burks, Oil Can Boyd and Mo Vaughn. Rice had the best career as a Red Sox, but he’s remembered as a sour bastard, as well as a super-hitter: admired more than adored. Smith, Cooper and Burks all had their best years after they left Boston, and Mo Vaughn never should have left Boston, plain and simple. He was the first black star who enjoyed being a black star in Boston.

But did you know that according to Howard Bryant, the Red Sox didn’t sign a black free agent until they signed Andre Dawson in 1993? That’s almost twenty years after the birth of free agency. The Yankees do not posses a good history of race relations themselves, but when it came to free agency, at least George Steinbrenner was color blind.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that once again the scarcity of black players on Boston’s roster is a reminder of a disturbing past:

”I think this is just an unfortunate anomaly,” [GM, Theo] Epstein said yesterday. ”Obviously, we do not consider a player’s race in our evaluation of the player.

”Believe me, I’m very aware of the Red Sox’ terrible history of race relations. Our goal as an organization is to reverse that history, to become a trailblazer for diversity.

”This does not always manifest itself on the field because race is not a factor in our player personnel decisions. But there are plenty of other ways to make a difference, and this owership group is off to a great start in those areas.”

Former GM Lou Gorman first initiated a change in the redneck climate, beginning to hire African Americans to front office jobs during the early 1990s. But, according to Howard Byrant in his book on racism and Boston, “Shut Out:”

With so many years of perceived slights, what existed between the club and the city’s blacks was nothing short of a cold war.

Gorman, frustrated by the lack of response to his inroads by a bitter black community, threw up his hands in despair, convinced that even his best efforts would be fruitless. For years, the Red Sox were attacked for ignoring the black community. Now, when the club attempted to create a bond in minority neighborhoods, they were rebuffed with distrust. What, Gorman wondered, was he supposed to do? It was one thing to be aware of one’s own actions and treat people accordingly, quite another to change the entire culture and perception of a team, which had been in place since the turn of the century.

There were legitimate reasons for this retrenchment. The first was the lack of tangible results. Despite positive talk, little about the Red Sox organization had changed publicly. The second reason was even more severe: The consequence of the team’s history finally seemed to have caught up with it. Black players, who because of free agency now could control to a great degree which teams they played for, now did not want to play for the Red Sox. And they were voicing it.

It was one of the great unforeseen consequences of the free agent era. Saddled with the blemishes of the past, the Red Sox now found themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage. The price the Red Sox would pay for Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, and Pinky Higgens would not completely be paid during that era, but now in the free agency era, in which players could decide not only what teams they wanted to play for but also which ones they did not. Hall of Famer Dave Winfield once said that he would never play for the Red Sox for any amount of money, thanks to an ugly incident during the mid-1980s where a bottle was thrown at him from a moving car while he took a morning jog. Joe Carter, the great outfielder, would always be wary of Boston’s reputation. Time Raines, the longtime Montreal Expos great, was bitter toward Boston because of an ugly incident at Logan Airport when police detained he and his wife while connecting through Boston to a vacation in the Bahamas. The authorities said Raines fit the description of a wanted cocaine dealer. To Raines, it was an example of the mistreatment that came with being black.

In addition to free agents choosing to avoid Boston, players with tenured status in the game chose another strategy that indicted the Red Sox: They would include language in their contracts to prevent them from being traded to the Red Sox. Two high-level black stars, Marquis Grissom and David Justice, inserted language into their contracts that prevented them from ever being traded to the Red Sox .When he was to become a free agent in 200, Peter Gammons told Ken Griffey, Jr. that he should consider Boston. A play of Griffey’s immense talent along with an effervescent playing style would be revered in Boston, Gammons reasoned. Griffey’s response was cool and incredulous. He would never consider Boston, the racist city, the place where he could get lynched. “I told him that he would own the city if he came here,” Gammons said. “He looked at me like I was nuts. The city still has a racist label. It’s very sad.”