Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston

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.

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.

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

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

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.