Sunday was the anniversary of a momentous event in baseball history, as it marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first major league game.
Players and coaches across Major League Baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson Day Sunday, as over 200 of them donned Robinson's old number 42 on the backs of their jerseys. The entire rosters of the Dodgers, Cardinals and Brewers wore the number, while numerous other representatives from all over baseball did the same.
All over baseball, that is, except on the East Coast, where rain put festivities on hold in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York and Boston. In those cities, Jackie Robinson Day was moved forward one day, as Monday was slated for 10 more teams to pay tribute to the legendary breaker of baseball's color barrier.
And somehow, I doubt that anyone sitting in Fenway Park Monday afternoon saw the ironic value of Mother Nature's actions.
Incidentally, Monday was the anniversary of another significant event in Jackie Robinson's career. Unbeknownst to many, the first time Robinson set foot on a major league baseball field was not on April 15, 1947 - the date was actually April 16, 1945.
That was the day that three Negro League stars - Robinson, Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams - showed up at Fenway for a tryout with the Boston Red Sox.
A future Hall of Famer, Robinson was in his prime at 26 and just two years away from beginning a major league career that brought him the first Rookie of the Year honor ever awarded, a batting title, an MVP award, six All-Star selections and the only World Series title ever won in Brooklyn. In short, Jackie Robinson was a stud.
And yet his appearance at Fenway on that Monday afternoon in 1945 earned him little more than a "we'll call you" from the members of the Red Sox front office.
Needless to say, they never did.
This was the same Red Sox organization that had the first crack at signing Willie Mays years later and passed. The same organization that was the last Major League Baseball club to integrate, finally promoting little-known middle infielder Pumpsie Green to the major league roster in 1959. And the same organization that, for 86 years between 1918 and 2004, failed to win a single World Series championship.
If anyone out there is still na've enough to believe in curses, then that's just fine. But truth be told, I think there's another explanation out there for the Sox' storied championship drought, and it's one that makes much more sense.
The real reason the Red Sox went so long without winning the World Series is that Tom Yawkey, the longest-tenured owner in Red Sox history at 44 years, was a bigot.
That may sound harsh, but let's face the facts. You show me someone who doesn't think a 1-2-3 punch of Robinson, Mays and Ted Williams constitutes one of the great dynasties in baseball history, and I'll show you a liar. That team would've made the 1927 Yankees' "Murderers' Row" look like a bunch of six-year-olds on a tee-ball field.
Fast forward 60 years, and all has been forgiven and forgotten. Jim Rice has hit 382 home runs in a Red Sox uniform (which alone should be enough for a plaque in Cooperstown, but that's another issue for another column), Mo Vaughn has made himself a hero to a generation of Red Sox fans, and Dave Roberts has been immortalized for recording the most memorable stolen base in Sox history. While Boston hasn't always been the land of racial equality, at least there have been several accomplished black players in that first-base dugout at Fenway.
And yet I can't help but feel that there's still something missing.
Today, the only African-American player on the Red Sox' active roster is center fielder Coco Crisp. Two years ago, Jay Payton was the only one; in the early nineties, it was Ellis Burks; and in 1959, it was Pumpsie Green. Boston seems so committed to having its "Token Black Guy" that I often wonder whether I'm watching a Red Sox game or an episode of South Park.
On Monday, the Globe's Nick Cafardo wrote a feature on Crisp, who donned Robinson's number 42 that afternoon as the Red Sox took on the Angels in their annual Patriots' Day game.
Cafardo mentioned that Crisp referenced Robinson's performance in the Dodgers' 1955 World Series win over the Yankees, including his famous steal of home plate. When Cafardo asked Crisp if he would try to steal home Monday in honor of his idol, Crisp responded by calling the idea "amazing." "If someone could do it," he said, "I think that's the best thing you can probably do."
Tragically, Crisp never got a chance.
Instead, he watched from the bench as Wily Mo Pena made his first start of the season in center field, going 0-for-3 at the plate and leaving his batting average at the nice round figure of .000. While number 22 stunk up the joint, number 42 did nothing but watch.
I'm not trying to say that Terry Francona is racist - he's obviously nowhere near being in the same league as Yawkey was six decades ago. But Tito's decision to bench Coco Monday afternoon was at best a case of terrible timing, and at worst, could be considered insensitive and tasteless.
Having an African-American take the field Monday to celebrate Jackie Robinson wouldn't have, in the grand scheme of things, made much of a difference. But for a team like the Red Sox, a team that's done as little as it has over the years for the black community, it would have been a nice gesture.
Yes, Coco is in a slump, and yes, Wily Mo was due for a day in the starting lineup. But what happened Monday was more important than one game. I'd have started Coco, slump be damned - anything to help Boston forget what happened 62 years ago.
