Son of Havana by Luis Tiant

Author:Luis Tiant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2019-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

13

Race and Reunion

TWO TOPICS DOMINATED THE BOSTON headlines, airwaves, and just about every water cooler and worksite conversation in the city during 1975: Busing and baseball.

The first was a byproduct of the court-ordered desegregation of Boston’s public schools a year earlier and threatened to tear the city apart along racial lines. The second was the result of a fantastic season by the hometown Red Sox—led down the stretch by a pitcher whose own status as a man of color seemed to have no bearing on the respect and adulation fans of all backgrounds held for him.

How could these two situations coexist? Such was the magic of Luis C. Tiant.

At the same time that Tiant was getting the ’75 season underway with an Opening Day start against the Milwaukee Brewers at Fenway Park, Boston was nearing the end of a school year in which the city had dramatically addressed decades of discrimination in educational opportunities for minorities. Thousands of children across the city, by court order, were now required to board buses and travel to schools miles away from their own neighborhoods to create more racially-balanced classrooms. This did not sit well with some residents. In white, largely Irish-Catholic South Boston, angry teens and parents met incoming buses from predominantly Black Roxbury with racial epithets and rocks.

By September, as Tiant and the Red Sox were routinely filling Fenway Park during a stretch-run battle with Baltimore for the American League East title, the second year of the busing crisis was underway. Many high school classrooms in South Boston and Charlestown remained empty due to student boycotts, and there was backlash against Black and Latino residents of all ages—even those far from the front lines. Fenway, meanwhile, rocked with chants of “LOO-EEE! LOO-EEE!” as advocates for and against busing found one subject they agreed upon: their love for the darkest man on the diamond.

Playing minor league baseball in the Deep South of the early 1960s as a man with Black skin and limited English, Tiant had experienced racism and isolation on a grand scale. His father had encountered the same challenges while traveling the dusty Jim Crow roads of the Negro Leagues a generation before, which is why he attempted to dissuade his son from following in his footsteps as a ballplayer.

Thankfully, Luis did not listen.

A decade later, when he emerged as a pitching ace with the Red Sox, he was embraced by the city at a level afforded few athletic heroes before or since. Everybody seemed to love Luis, from Southie to Roxbury and all the spots between and beyond. One of the most popular players in team history, Tiant also served as a role model and inspiration to non-white fans who had long felt the occupants of Fenway Park were not really their team.

And as all fans—and teammates—learned more about the years of forced separation between Tiant and his aging parents in Cuba, it further bonded him with the public. Diplomatic intervention in 1975 opened the possibility of the family being

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