Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston

Imagine Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Bobby Doerr, and Willie Mays all on the same team, playing for the Boston Red Sox during the 194Os and 195Os. Think of how different those epic battles with the New York Yankees might have been with these four Hall of Famers playing together at Fenway Park. Think of how different Red Sox history would have been.
It is not a dream, for it could have happened. It should have happened. Williams and Mays could have roamed the outfield together and formed a devastating offensive tandem. Robinson and Doerr could have turned double plays in the same infield.
It never came to pass, and racism is the only reason why.
The Red Sox chose not to sign Jackie Robinson, who was humiliated during a 1945 tryout, and also the great Willie Mays four years later. Not only did the Red Sox fail to seize the chance to build a baseball Dream Team, argues Boston native and journalist Howard Bryant, but also compounded the mistake by continuing a disturbing pattern of ignoring talented black players, a decades-old legacy the Red Sox now fight to unlearn under new ownership and stars such as Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra.
Controversial and gripping, Shut Out traces this haunting practice of racism - chronicling the policies and personality of the seventy-year dynasty of the Yawkey family as well as a conflicted press that wrestled with racial issues - against the backdrop of Boston's own difficult struggle with race. Once the crucible of abolition, the city of Boston would over time become a symbol of racial intolerance, highlighted by the shattering busing crisis of the 1970s. The duality of the city's historical ideals versus its bitter racial collisions, Bryant shows, is nowhere better exemplified than inside the front office, the clubhouse, and on the field at Fenway Park.

Howard Bryant is a journalist covering the New York Yankees for the Bergen Record. He previously covered the Oakland A's for the San Jose Mercury News and was an editorial writer and technology columnist for the Oakland Tribune. He grew up in Boston during the busing crisis of the 1970s and has written extensively on race and baseball. His pieces have appeared in the books Thinking Black, The Red Sox Century, and the forthcoming Yankee Century. He lives in New York City.