'78 by Bill Reynolds

'78 by Bill Reynolds

Author:Bill Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group


The Red Sox went to the World Series in October of 1975 for the first time in eight years, a welcome diversion from the city’s problems. It had been a great team, full of many of the players that were now in this game with the Yankees, and in this divided city they were a balm.

They also were a study in race relations, at least in the sense that they got along. Reggie Smith was gone, had been traded to St. Louis two years earlier. Rice was a rookie, and the last thing he was going to comment on was Boston’s racial crisis. And maybe the most popular player on the team was Tiant, who had grown up in Cuba.

That was the great irony. Here was Boston going through busing hell and arguably the most popular athlete in Boston was a black Cuban, who was all but adored by both the Fenway crowds and the Boston press, because how could anyone not like Luis Tiant? But whatever Tiant thought about busing and what was happening in his adopted city was kept hidden somewhere in his jokes, his carefree personality, and the charisma he brought with him to the pitcher’s mound.

Not that he wasn’t aware of what was going on.

He had seen racism all his life. He had seen it as a child in Cuba. He had seen it as a young man in the minor leagues in the South in the sixties, where there were still places he couldn’t go, no matter what the law might have said. He had seen it in every country he’d ever been in, had come to believe that it was simply human nature not to trust people different than you, that it was simply the way things were. And for all his jokes and all his humor, he had come to look at the world through world-weary eyes.

“I was prepared for what was happening in Boson,” he said.

In many ways, Tiant dealt with race by not dealing with it. He was a baseball player, he was living in a new country, speaking a new language, and he felt it wasn’t his place to speak out. And if he was aware of the racial history of the Red Sox, he always liked Tom Yawkey, who always was great with him.

“I never got hung up with black and white,” he said. “I didn’t care. If I liked you I liked you, it didn’t matter what color you were. And I prefer dealing with racist people rather than people who treated you nice to your face, and then spoke behind your back. And the fans in Boston were the best. They always showed me respect. And I pitched my game, I did what I had to do. And the buses? That was a crazy thing. But I didn’t want to complain and tell people what to do.”

Rice was similar.

He had been only a rookie. He didn’t think it was his place to make a lot of pronouncements.



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