Why Not Tony Pena?

Are the Sox ready for a minority manager? You bet they are. Hiring a Hispanic or African-American skipper should put to rest the last vestiges of the team’s reputation of racism.

When younger fans hear about the “good-old-boy” image of the Sox, they probably think of the 40’s and 50’s and the presence of alleged racists like owner Tom Yawkey, GM Joe Cronin, and perhaps the worst of the lot- manager and later GM Mike Higgins. But according to Howard Bryant’s famous book Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, racism  again reared its ugly head in the 80’s. Dick O’Connell, a fairly progressive GM and architect of the 67 and 75 World Series teams, was pushed out after Yawkey’s death by his widow Jean, a woman who sometimes appeared clueless in baseball matters. The result was that under the GM regime of Haywood Sullivan, a Southerner who seemed unaware or uncaring concerning the team’s previous image, the number of African-Americans on the Sox dwindled to two in the late 80’s-Jim Rice and Ellis Burks. The organization again became largely white.

There were stories of discrimination in bars at the team’s Winter Haven spring training spot. It is well documented that after Boston’s 70’s busing crisis, hardly the team’s fault but well known all over the country, black free agents like Tim Raines and Kirby Puckett weren’t even considering the city. A series of Globe articles by part-time writer Steve Fainaru about the treatment of minority fans at Fenway caused a great deal of controversy.

Thanks to GM’s like Dan Duquette and Theo Epstein, the Sox racial reputation is much better today. But old images die hard. When the team was on top in the mid-2000’s, it didn’t seem to matter. But with the squad’s recent demise, the caliber of free agents has again become very important. Bringing in a Tony Pena, who played four years in Boston and has made many stops in his long career, not only should erase the last hints of racism but also could mean the difference in signing valuable free agents.

I am not pushing for Pena only because of his skin color.  Unlike the ill-fated Bobby V, his recent years have been spent in dugouts rather than TV booths. For a number of reasons, Pena should be very high on the Sox lists.