This seems like a good thread to throw in a recommendation for Peter Schilling's recent novel, "The End of Baseball" - an alternate history where Bill Veeck is telling the truth about buying the WWII-era A's and stocking them with the best Negro Leagues players. A solid page-turner, with only a few clunkers (the "speedy" Lou Boudreau?).

If that's what Schilling wrote, it's an alternate alternate history. Veeck wanted to purchase the Phillies during the war (I don't recall whether this was before or after the short-lived Cox ownership), or so he told it; the A's, of course, were owned by the Mack family. Either Schilling wasn't doing his homework, or he had some ulterior motive to switching leagues for the story.

#66 Yawkey wasn't precisely a spectator though. He was in a position to hire and chose an incompetent racist (Pinkie Higgins -- it's not hard to document this)

He also signed off on attempt to derail integration on economic grounds.

"a situation might be presented, if Negroes participate in Major League games, in which the preponderance of Negro attendance in parks such as Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Comiskey Park could conceivably threaten the value of Major League franchises owned by these clubs."

(Written by Larry MacPhail but signed by Yawkey, Sam Breadon and Phil Wrigley)

EDIT: To #97 This was written directly after Robinson was signed but before he made the majors. It was part of an attempt to keep MLB segregated.

I'm surprised that Veeck had nothing but good things to say about him.

If we mention the names Wendell Smith, Sam Lacy, and Lester Rodney, even a large percentage of readers here are going to say "Who?"--and that is part of the reason that concentrating all of the attention on Jackie Robinson for one day is simply insufficient. MLB may be a monopoly, but it needs to resist the seductive appeal of continuing its "plantation" mentalities. The unsung heroes of racial integration deserve to have their voices heard, and should part of a more comprehensive program to honor those whose sense of social justice outweighed mere fandom.

Nice to see a mention of Wendell Smith, Lacy and Rodney (who, as I'm sure you know, was white). I just ordered Chris Smith's new book on the role of both the black and the white writers in integrating baseball (Conspiracy of Silence), and I'm really looking forward to reading it. Lacy's Fighting For Fairness is pretty good but not great, but OTOH Irwin Silber's bio on Rodney, Press Box Red, is absolutely essential to an understanding of the forces that put the pressure on the owners to integrate. I'm hoping that Smith's book expands on that, and also deals with the definitely mixed role of J. G. Taylor Spink and The Sporting News, which at first resisted Robinson's signing but then was won over by the level of his play.

I know a lot more about Jackie Robinson than I do about Larry Doby, but as I recall, Doby felt his role in baseball was underappreciated. (I don't know if he was bitter about it; I simply recall him saying that anything that Robinson went through, he went through, given that their ML debuts were just ~80 days apart.)

Is there an accepted history on this? Is it considered a given that if things went poorly with Robinson either on or off the field, that Doby's debut would have been delayed or preempted?

I'm surprised that Veeck had nothing but good things to say about him.

Veeck did not suffer fools and hated Topping and Webb, for example, but admired and respected Yawkey. O'Malley said, at Yawkey's death, that he did not have an enemy in baseball. Ted Williams loved Yawkey. Yaz loved him, and broke down in tears at mention of his name several times including in his HOF speech. Reggie Smith loved him. These are facts. I have researched Yawkey quite a bit, and you'd be hard pressed to find something bad about him personally from people who knew him.

This is not everything, but it can not be dismissed either.

If that's what Schilling wrote, it's an alternate alternate history. Veeck wanted to purchase the Phillies during the war (I don't recall whether this was before or after the short-lived Cox ownership), or so he told it; the A's, of course, were owned by the Mack family. Either Schilling wasn't doing his homework, or he had some ulterior motive to switching leagues for the story.

Fair points all. He was solid otherwise; that's why that one felt like it clanked so hard.

105:

Again, Veeck has a lot to say about this. Seems Doby carried a lot of resentment with him, some real bitterness. He felt his role in integrating MLB had been unfairly slighted in favor of making Jackie seem to be some sort of lone heroic figure. He wasn't the only one. I don't think Monte Irvin was too crazy about Robinson. Many players, many of his black player contemporaries, too, considered him a prima donna #######. See Durocher's book. Most of the negative feeling about Robinson stayed under wraps because of what he was made to represent to the general public.

My memory is that Monte Irvin thought he should have been the first black MLBer, because he had more experience than Jackie (which he did). Josh Gibson thought he should have been the first because he was the best NgLer at the time (which he probably still was). Doby got more and more bitter as the whole integration thing became just a story about Jackie Robinson (which is a pretty fair assessment); his bitterness may also have been related to not getting into the Hall of Fame for so long (I agree with him on that). But Branch Rickey, I think, had two primary criteria, none of which apply to Irvin, Gibson, or Doby. He wanted a WWII veteran, so his choice could not be accused of being less than a "real" American. And he wanted someone who could hold his temper and not explode, no matter how provoked. That's the exchange you so often see quoted in one form or another - "I want someone who has the courage to NOT fight back." He may have actually thought that Irvin and Gibson were TOO established, as baseball players, to hold their tongues - or their fists.

Rickey may also have had a third criterion, which I haven't ever seen mentioned: He may have wanted, specifically, a young guy. Rickey, remember, thought that the proper response to a 30-year-old superstar (like Josh Gibson) was to trade him. You know, the more I think about it, the more that may have been the reason why Robinson and neither Gibson nor Paige. Bill Veeck, who was chomping at the bit, would doubtless have hired Josh Gibson in 1948 if he hadn't had that pesky medical issue (death).

My memories of this stuff, just for everyone's info, date from the mid-50s, close to a decade after Jackie got in, and are mostly from my father. I was born in November, 1947, so I've never known segregated major leagues. - Brock Hanke.

It's hardly surprising that Yawkey had few enemies in baseball, since he was a hands-off owner who overpaid his players and regularly invited his friends to his hunting lodge in South Carolina. If the issue were only his affability within the context of his own closed circle of employees and colleagues, he's a first ballot HoF all the way, a mediocre ballplayer's dream owner. Too bad that this isn't really the issue.

Under the reign of Eddie Collins and Joe Cronin, Yawkey put his two major farm teams in Louisville and Birmingham, and then used their location as excuses when the Sox were pressed on the integration issue---even though they also had a team in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

And then there was the famous "scouting report" on Willie Mays by an openly racist scout (Larry Woodall, hired by Cronin) who didn't even bother to stick around to watch Mays play after a rainstorm greeted him in Birmingham, and who said during the rainstorm that he "wasn't going to wasty [sic] my time waiting for a bunch of niggers." This sort of attitude permeated the Red Sox organization from top to bottom, and it began at the top with the "affable" Yawkey.

It was mentioned above that Boston started signing black players in 1953, but in fact the year was 1950. The pioneer in question was a 34 year old player named Piper Davis, Mays' former Negro League manager who was announced by Cronin as a "26-year-old sleeper". Davis got $7500 and was promised another $7500 if he remained on the Scranton roster until May 15th. On May 13th, when he was leading the club in BA, HR, RBI and SB, he was released for the announced reason of "economics". The whole charade was just that from beginning to end, and if it was merely a matter of "incompetence", it was an incompetence that produced some rather curious racial results.

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My memory is that Monte Irvin thought he should have been the first black MLBer, because he had more experience than Jackie (which he did). Josh Gibson thought he should have been the first because he was the best NgLer at the time (which he probably still was). Doby got more and more bitter as the whole integration thing became just a story about Jackie Robinson (which is a pretty fair assessment); his bitterness may also have been related to not getting into the Hall of Fame for so long (I agree with him on that). But Branch Rickey, I think, had two primary criteria, none of which apply to Irvin, Gibson, or Doby. He wanted a WWII veteran, so his choice could not be accused of being less than a "real" American. And he wanted someone who could hold his temper and not explode, no matter how provoked. That's the exchange you so often see quoted in one form or another - "I want someone who has the courage to NOT fight back." He may have actually thought that Irvin and Gibson were TOO established, as baseball players, to hold their tongues - or their fists.

Rickey may also have had a third criterion, which I haven't ever seen mentioned: He may have wanted, specifically, a young guy. Rickey, remember, thought that the proper response to a 30-year-old superstar (like Josh Gibson) was to trade him. You know, the more I think about it, the more that may have been the reason why Robinson and neither Gibson nor Paige.

You're probably right about the specific objections Rickey may have had about those other choices. His overriding concern was that he felt that he needed a player who had almost no chance of failing in any way. And given the reaction by the other 15 owners that greeted Robinson's signing in 1945, you could hardly have blamed him. Rickey wanted someone who was both better-"spoken" than the great majority of the existing Major Leaguers, and whose talent upside was greater than any of the other potential choices. He also was acutely aware that if Robinson failed, no amount of historical "inevitability" would have prevented the other owners from using that failure as an excuse to stall on their own integration. It's worth noting here that even Bill Veeck waited until eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson's Major League debut to sign Larry Doby, at a time when Jackie was hitting .313. "Inevitability" aside, it's impossible to overstate how much the cause of baseball integration depended on the near-perfection of Jackie Robinson's performance both on and off the field. Branch Rickey was a great gambler, but he wasn't under any sentimental illusions about what he and Robinson were going to be up against.

"10 years after Robinson's debut."

12 years, but who's counting?
Robinson was retired for a couple of years before the Red Sox had their first black player.
Even Larry Doby's last game was a month before the Red Sox integrated.

BTW if anyone's not working at 4:00 this afternoon, TCM's running The Jackie Robinson Story, a 1950 movie with Jackie playing himself and Ruby Dee playing Rachel Robinson. It's more than a bit hokey to be sure, but it's not as bad as those godawful Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth movies that are running now on TCM**, dripping with bad history and violin music every step of the way. And it's kind of neat to see Robinson as a 31 year old in the prime of his career, with his distinctive voice and mannerisms. Too bad that Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth couldn't have likewise played themselves, as it might have rescued those two clinkers from the ashcan.

**It's Baseball Day on TCM, but unfortunately the three best movies (Joe E. Brown's comic trio of Fireman, Save My Child, Elmer the Great and Alibi Ike) have already come and gone. After Lou and the Babe, there's the Kelly / Sinatra Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the Robinson movie, and finally Angels in the Outfield, a typical piece of enjoyable fluff with Janet Leigh and Paul Douglas as the manager of the Pirates. The real highlights of the day are actually a pair of shorts, Babe Ruth on the Keys (starring Ruth himself, playing at 2:03 PM) and a terrific Robert Benchley short called Opening Day, which is running right after the Robinson movie at 5:18. No Eight Men Out or Death on the Diamond, but it still beats their recent obsession with Doris Day and beach movies.

These are facts. I have researched Yawkey quite a bit, and you'd be hard pressed to find something bad about him personally from people who knew him.

Mark, have you read the Howard Bryant book? I have not, but isn't part of the story that the Sox never hired any non-white employees (front office, scouts, coaches, etc) until basically the 80's?

Anyone who reads the Bryant book (Shut Out) will never suffer any illusions about Tom Yawkey, or argue that it was only "incompetence" that kept the Red Sox lily white for as long as they were. It's not as if those "incompetent" racist scouts and other racist personnel exactly hired themselves.

The whole charade was just that from beginning to end, and if it was merely a matter of "incompetence", it was an incompetence that produced some rather curious racial results.

Davis never made the big leagues. Other than that season, his only great-hitting years in the minors came in the PCL. That one 1950 season, that one small sample you cite, happened the same year Walt Dropo emerged as the Rookie of the Year, signaling that Davis would have been blocked at 1B for who knows how long. They found themselves with the decision to keep him - and pay him higher than the average major-league salary ($13,300) at that time to sit in the minors - or get rid of him before the deadline passed. They chose the latter. And that's racially curious?

Again, Yawkey might be racist. Your example is weak, even for you.

I still wish they never retired #42. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it when players choose numbers to honor players who have come before them. Seeing Mariano or Mo Vaughn wearing #42 every day was a bigger tribute than Jackie Robinson Day presented by KMart.

Hey Andy, I don't have cable – can you please meet me at the abandoned K-Mart in Hagerstown, Maryland with copies of those movies? I will bring a satchel of cash and, like, totally no FBI or Interpol agents.

The only ones of those I've seen, in fact, are The Jackie Robinson Story (I agree with your assessment), and Take Me Out to the Ballgame (not really much baseball in that). One of the nicer trivia items I've found as a would-be baseball filmographer is the 2000 kids' film Finding Buck McHenry, not bad of its type. Ossie Davis plays an ex-Negro-Leaguer trying to live down his past, and naturally, Ruby Dee plays his wife ...

The whole charade was just that from beginning to end, and if it was merely a matter of "incompetence", it was an incompetence that produced some rather curious racial results.

Davis never made the big leagues. Other than that season, his only great-hitting years in the minors came in the PCL. That one 1950 season, that one small sample you cite, happened the same year Walt Dropo emerged as the Rookie of the Year, signaling that Davis would have been blocked at 1B for who knows how long. They found themselves with the decision to keep him - and pay him higher than the average major-league salary ($13,300) at that time to sit in the minors - or get rid of him before the deadline passed. They chose the latter. And that's racially curious?

Again, Yawkey might be racist. Your example is weak, even for you.

Yes, JOSN the racebaiter, persecuting an affable gentleman who was being manipulated by his racist underlings, none of whom he hired himself. They instigated a putsch one day and there wasn't anything he could have done about it.

So the Red Sox, under pressure to sign a black ballplayer after their hired racist scout blew the Willie Mays tryout, decide as a makeup to offer a contract to a 34-year old veteran, pass him off as a "26-year old sleeper", and promise him $7500 if he's still on the roster after May 15.

Come May 13th, this player is leading his team in the three triple crown categories, plus stolen bases. And they cut him, citing "economics" as their reason. They didn't even offer him his train fare back to Birmingham. This from the multi-millionaire Tom Yawkey, the most profligate money waster of his era.

From beginning to end, from the age falsification to "economics", if that wasn't a crudely designed farce to stall the people who were pressuring the Red Sox on the race issue, I'd like to know what you'd call it.

If anyone wants to check the numbers, Piper Davis's full name is Lorenzo Davis. BB-ref has his minor league and his Negro League stats. For this, once again we should all thank SABR and Sean Forman.

As to some of the things being argued:

1. Davis played 1B, 2B, and outfield in the minors, so Walt Dropo blocking him does not mean he has no path to the big leagues.
2. He doesn't look like a major league prospect in any case. His stats are pretty underwhelming, not much power, few walks, an OK batting average but not nearly good enough to stand out in the PCL.
3. Failing to keep him around or promote him is not the big issue. The big issue is they didn't sign anyone better than him.

3. Failing to keep him around or promote him is not the big issue. The big issue is they didn't sign anyone better than him.

Right, but the other issue is since he was a 32-year old (almost 33)** with no ML prospects, why did they even sign him in the first place? And why did they tease him with that patently fraudulent offer of a $7500 bonus if he stayed on the roster, if not to con people into thinking they were making a serious attempt to scout black players?

**Going by the BB-Ref. birthdate.

I wonder where the idea that he was a 26 year old came from. I didn't know about Davis until today, but players have been known to lie about their age to get signed, and checking it in 1950 would not have been easy.

I'm not arguing that the team made a bad faith PR-based signing of a player they had no intention of letting get to the big leagues. But unless there's more to the story than you've posted so far, it seems quite possible they believed he was 26 at the time.

#121 As an example from a few years later, Rollie Sheldon knew he would be of little interest at his real age, so he left a 3 year stint in the Marines out of his life story. Could easily have been something like that going on with Davis.

I wonder where the idea that he was a 26 year old came from. I didn't know about Davis until today, but players have been known to lie about their age to get signed, and checking it in 1950 would not have been easy.

I'm not arguing that the team made a bad faith PR-based signing of a player they had no intention of letting get to the big leagues. But unless there's more to the story than you've posted so far, it seems quite possible they believed he was 26 at the time.

Yeah, right. It took about two seconds of googling to discover this:

Lorenzo Davis was born in the little town of Piper, Alabama, a coal mining community in the hills around Birmingham. As a teenager he attended a public high school for colored boys located in the town of Fairfield, just up the road from Piper. There he excelled in high school basketball and earned a basketball scholarship to Alabama State University in Montgomery. After a single year starring on the Alabama State basketball squad Davis was forced by family financial circumstances to drop out of college and seek employment.

Davis found employment in a Birmingham steel mill and shortly thereafter joined the mill's all-black team in the Birmingham City League. Here he gained experience playing against barnstorming professional black clubs and realized that his baseball talents might be good enough to land him a spot on a traveling team. In 1936 he signed on to play with the barnstorming Omaha Tigers (a Negro team that traveled through the Midwest) and had his first taste of life as a traveling ballplayer. When the team encountered financial difficulties at the end of 1936 seasons Davis once again found himself in Birmingham playing on industrial teams.

Davis' reputation, built on Birmingham's City League diamonds, earned him an invitation to join the Birmingham Black Barons in 1942. Winfield Welch, manager of the Black Barons at that time, was also the head coach of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. Recognizing Davis' roundball skills, Welch signed Davis to play with the Globetrotters during baseball's off-season. Davis remained associated with the Globetrotters throughout his baseball career.

Davis teamed with Ed Steele and Art Wilson in the Black Barons lineup to produce one of Negro baseball's most powerful squads during the 1940s. The Black Barons won the Negro American League pennant in 1943 and took the Homestead Grays to the seventh game before losing the Negro World Series. In 1944 the Black Barons repeated as NAL champions, but were again unable to overcome the Homestead Grays in the World Series. In almost a repeat of the 1944 season the Black Barons again took the NAL crown in 1948, but ultimately left the World Series trophy with the Homestead Grays.

During the Black Baron's reign as the premier team of the Negro American League during the 1940s Davis was recognized as the team's leader and most impressive player. Four times during the 1940s Davis was selected to represent the West at the East-West All-Star Classic. In each game he pushed through at least one base hit, usually contributed an RBI and scored a total of 4 runs in as many games.

In 1948 Davis added to his field responsibilities with the Black Barons by taking on the team's managerial duties as well. Continuing his all-star career at second base, Davis guided the Black Barons to a NNL championship while maintaining his .300+ average at the plate and earning an All-Star game berth. But, despite his impressive records posted as a player-coach, Davis' tenure as manager of the Black Barons was most highlighted by his signing a 16-year-old Willie Mays to a Black Barons contract.

The Boston Red Sox ended their era of racial exclusion in 1950 when they signed Davis to a minor league contract with their Scranton, Pa. Class A affiliate. After a difficult season of adjustment Davis returned to the Boston camp in 1951, but was not retained for the season. For the next five seasons Davis starred in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League with the Oakland Oaks. In 1955 Davis traveled down the California coast to join the Los Angeles Angels where he played three seasons with Gene Mauch and other west coast luminaries. From Los Angeles, at the age of 41, Davis was promoted to a management position in Double-A ball and joined the Fort Worth Cats as a player-manager. Age, the inevitable enemy of all athletes was catching up with him, and after a single season with the Cats, Davis was ready to call it a day.

Of course there's no way on Earth that the team known as "The Millionaires" could have ever afforded to pay someone to learn any of this before signing Davis. But funny, as soon as he was cut from Scranton over the outraged objections of his manager, the Red Sox issued this statement that was quoted in The Sporting News:

"At 33, the Negro first baseman was not considered a major league prospect."

The only way to square the "26-year old sleeper" with the "At 33..." statement is to believe that the Red Sox had somehow just learned of Davis's real age at the very point when his $7500 bonus was about to kick in, and further, that they were so gentlemanly that they didn't blame Davis for deceiving them. Absolutely nothing about that benign interpretation passes any serious smell test.

Oh, and BTW the genius who signed this over-the-hill prospect was the same scout who couldn't even bother to outlast a rainstorm and watch Willie Mays play. And when faced with the pressure of signing a black player in order to take the heat off his bosses, he figured that the easiest thing was to sign the manager who'd recommended Mays in the first place. Makes perfect sense.

Yeah, strictly "incompetence" from top to bottom. Can't be bothered to even look at the 16-year old Willie Mays, and can't be bothered to figure out that his manager was more than 26 years old. That whole incident pretty much describes the Yawkey Red Sox's approach to black players back then.

This just in: People are complicated. Some of them were known to do things that are now interpreted as being wrong. It happens.

Generally speaking, most people will tend to do the right thing if it doesn't cost them money or take them too far out of their comfort zone. Heroism is something to be admired from a distance; being a pioneer/crusader is mostly a pain in the @$s.

This just in: People are complicated. Some of them were known to do things that are now interpreted as being wrong. It happens.

Of course "it happens", but it doesn't just "happen" by itself.

And now interpreted as being wrong? Do you think that nobody back then knew it was wrong? Is it that the opinions only of those who agreed with Yawkey's policies are relevant? What about the opinions of those who could see through his transparent game all along, and were letting their voices be known?

Generally speaking, most people will tend to do the right thing if it doesn't cost them money or take them too far out of their comfort zone. Heroism is something to be admired from a distance; being a pioneer/crusader is mostly a pain in the @$s.

So it would have taken "heroism" for Tom Yawkey to integrate his team before every other owner in the three major professional sports had done so**, nine years after the other Boston baseball team had done so? That's a rather curious concept of the word.

**with the sole exception of the infamous George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins

Yawkey began his ownership and re-building of the Red Sox by spending a whole lot of money, and he continued to do this until the hard times that came with the '50s. The entire '50s was a retrenching period across the board. I guess he should have taken after Rickey and raided the Negro League without giving those Negro clubs compensation. But, hell, it wasn't just black players. The Red Sox quit spending and developing in a big time wholesale way in the '50s. Yawkey even got Cronin to ask Ted Williams to take a cut in pay around 1951. You might say that Yawkey became in the '50s the opposite of what he had been when it came to investing in the team. I get the feeling that the entire organization was at a lost, directionless, which was a reflection of the state of the owner.

So the Red Sox, under pressure to sign a black ballplayer after their hired racist scout blew the Willie Mays tryout

Were they under any such pressure? How can they be so racist as to disallow a black player in the majors - and suffer whatever negative PR they get from that - yet be willing to pay damn good money in those days to someone in the minors in the wake of "pressure"? You're using public pressure as an overwhelming factor only when it fits the narrative, and discarding it when it doesn't. It helps if you don't define the narrative first, then try to make things fit it.

From what I recall reading, there was indeed pressure - in 1945, two years prior to Robinson's debut.* But it had nothing to do with Mays. Their scout blew off the Mays tryout in 1949, yet Mays wasn't signing with anyone until he graduated high school in 1950 nonetheless. The Red Sox had not yet blown the Mays opportunity, and they certainly hadn't blown it publicly. Besides, Cronin already had a deal with Davis as of August 1949, 10 months before Mays signed with the Giants. (Piper's signing wasn't announced until spring training 1950, but there's written documentation of the deal dating back to 8/13/49, cited here on p. 214.)

So, again, you're assuming pressure that fits your chosen narrative but doesn't really fit the facts. (Technically, you're citing Howard Bryant's chosen narrative that doesn't really fit the facts.)

And I'll emphasize again that this isn't being offered as a defense of Yawkey nor the rest of the Red Sox front office. I'm just saying if you have to rely on stretching the evidence to fit the narrative, the narrative is worthless. There should be (and, IMO, is) enough evidence to defend your narrative; you're just focusing on the wrong data points.

* How much of that pressure was real, and how much is self-serving revisionist history by the Boston Globe writers who subsequently claim they were applying pressure, I honestly don't know.

Come May 13th, this player is leading his team in the three triple crown categories, plus stolen bases. And they cut him, citing "economics" as their reason.

You do not deny there was an actual economic incentive tied to it. You just use scare quotes to make that incentive seem irrelevant. If your argument needs scare quotes to work, your argument sucks.

1. Davis played 1B, 2B, and outfield in the minors, so Walt Dropo blocking him does not mean he has no path to the big leagues.

Bobby Doerr. Ted Williams. Dom DiMaggio. In retrospect 60 years later it's easy to argue Davis wasn't necessarily blocked by Al Zarilla, but at the time it wouldn't surprise me if they were committed to the player they'd just acquired by trade the prior year. That notion is strengthened by their career paths after 1950, FWIW, but it's not really determinative. Regardless, with the Red Sox going into 1950, Davis was clearly blocked at LF, CF, and 2B. There was a potential opening at 1B, as it wasn't clear Dropo would succeed in the majors, which is why I brought up 1B. But Dropo performed (in 1950) beyond their wildest dreams. Once Dropo took off, the additional investment in Davis wasn't worth it.

Two years earlier, the Browns wanted to sign Davis, and have him start in the minors. Davis insisted he'd only sign if he was on the big-league club, so they passed on him. Given this, it's plausible Davis was reluctant to sign with a team if he wasn't going to be on the MLB roster. Boston's terms - essentially, start in the minors at a decent salary at the time, and after we see you play for a month we'll either pay you better than the average big-leaguer or we'll let you go - seems sensible in light of Davis' demonstrated preference. Their cutting him prior to the raise also seems economically obvious.

Oh, and BTW the genius who signed this over-the-hill prospect was the same scout who couldn't even bother to outlast a rainstorm and watch Willie Mays play.

The genius who signed him was Cronin. The scout who brought him north to meet with Cronin was the same guy who was indignant that he had to scout Mays, and he generally seemed indignant to have to deal with Davis, too.

The book I cited above seems to speculate that the reason Cronin signed Davis was in order to lure Mays to sign with them; that Cronin sent Woodall to "scout" Mays so other teams would think the Red Sox weren't interested; and that one of the reasons Mays didn't sign with them was because Davis had been cut only a couple of weeks before Mays' high school graduation. Although it's possible, I'm not sold yet either way. I'm more sold than I am on Bryant's book, which seems written at arm's length from the available facts. Both books cite racism among specific people in the Boston chain of command - Woodall, Eddie Collins, Pinky Higgins - and I've yet to see any evidence that would exonerate any of them. The two books differ on Cronin and Yawkey in that regard, and I can see merits to both arguments.

Couple of minor points first:

Come May 13th, this player is leading his team in the three triple crown categories, plus stolen bases. And they cut him, citing "economics" as their reason.

You do not deny there was an actual economic incentive tied to it. You just use scare quotes to make that incentive seem irrelevant. If your argument needs scare quotes to work, your argument sucks.

I can use scare quotes with the best of them, but in this case the word was the one given by the Red Sox themselves, as reported in The Sporting News. Leaving out the quotes would have left it open to the interpretation that it was my take rather than theirs.

1. Davis played 1B, 2B, and outfield in the minors, so Walt Dropo blocking him does not mean he has no path to the big leagues.

You responded to that, but that wasn't my quote, and I made no such argument. That was AROM's paraphrasing of a point raised by someone else.

The best explanation for what the Red Sox did with Davis is that they cynically signed him to a contract in 1949 in order to pretend that they were actually interested in Mays, and once that ruse had served its purpose, they discarded Davis in order to avoid paying him his well-earned $7500 bonus. Funny how Davis aged so quickly right at the moment that his $7500 was about to become due.

If the Red Sox had really wanted Mays to begin with, they obviously would have commanded Woodall to stick around Birmingham and file an honest scouting report. They then would have done what the Giants did, and courted him like the diamond in the rough that anyone who watched him play could tell that he was.

Or if the Woodall non-report was really only a ruse to throw the other teams off the trail, they could have worked behind the scenes to counter the efforts of the Giants, who were working closely with the owner of the New York Cubans in order to get him to get the Birmingham Barons' owner to steer Mays in their direction. They might not have been able to get Mays in the end, but at least they would have been in a position to claim that they'd made a credible offer---and in 1950, with the Red Sox just coming off a year when they set an all-time attendance record, there was no "economic" reason for not making such an offer to such a certified prospect.

Needless to say, there's no evidence in support of any such good faith effort on the part of Team Yawkey.

I'm sorry, but no matter how you view the sequence of events surrounding Davis and the Red Sox, there's no benign explanation for it. If it was anything other than a cheap ruse to pretend that they were interested in signing black players who had the upside ability to make the Majors, the evidence isn't there to back it up. You can't possibly think that the Red Sox believed that Willie Mays's "26-year old sleeper" manager was a better Major League prospect than Mays himself---an 18-year old 5 tool player who was burning up the Negro Leagues, and touted by that very same manager who'd seen him play every day. It doesn't even begin to add up to a credible scenario.

And while the chronology of this particular case doesn't in itself have a smoking gun, it certainly fits with everything else we know about both the racial attitudes of the top Red Sox personnel management and the actual results of their efforts to integrate the Red Sox. It doesn't mean that a few other teams (the Phillies, the Tigers and the Yankees in particular) weren't nearly just as bad, but it certainly puts Yawkey's ownership during this period in the lowest possible echelon, both from a racial and a business standpoint.

P.S. A "new" copy of that "Willie's Boys" book you cited is available on Amazon in its original hard cover edition for the lofty sum of one whole penny, plus shipping. I'm glad I'm out of the book business, but I don't mind taking advantage of those good old market inefficiencies.

And now interpreted as being wrong? Do you think that nobody back then knew it was wrong?

Sure they did, but baseball owners in mid-century were arguably the most conservative group of men imaginable outside the clergy. They thought baseball was just fine the way it was; why bring in black players, who could conceivably turn off customers and thus cost them money, when they didn't have to? Let somebody else hoist the banner of progressiveness; we've got a business to run here.

See, everybody today thinks integration in baseball was instantaneous: Jackie joined the Dodgers in '47, and the gates were flung open. No. It was a process, a slow learning curve that took the better part of two decades. Yawkey was on the wrong side of that curve. And it wound up costing him, on the field and in fans' hearts.

And now interpreted as being wrong? Do you think that nobody back then knew it was wrong?

Sure they did, but baseball owners in mid-century were arguably the most conservative group of men imaginable outside the clergy. They thought baseball was just fine the way it was; why bring in black players, who could conceivably turn off customers and thus cost them money, when they didn't have to? Let somebody else hoist the banner of progressiveness; we've got a business to run here.

That's a good description of ownership as a whole, but it doesn't take into sufficient account the differences between those who reacted quickly to Rickey / Robinson (like Veeck) and those who dawdled for years after those two showed the way (like Yawkey, Briggs and Carpenter).

See, everybody today thinks integration in baseball was instantaneous: Jackie joined the Dodgers in '47, and the gates were flung open. No. It was a process, a slow learning curve that took the better part of two decades. Yawkey was on the wrong side of that curve. And it wound up costing him, on the field and in fans' hearts.

I know you're not attributing that first sentiment to me or anyone else here on this thread, and of course your conclusion is absolutely true. My original point was, and remains, that Yawkey's place on that curve fully justifies his current fall in reputation. It's not that he was George Wallace or Ross Barnett.