A giant banner that said “Racism is as American as baseball” was draped over the Green Monster during the Red Sox-A’s game at Fenway Park on Wednesday.
Security removed the banner and the people holding it “about a minute” after it was hung, per MassLive‘s Jen McCaffrey. Several inning later in the ESPN broadcast, it was reported that the banner hung for “a few minutes” and that Boston Police got involved.
This comes after fans yelled racist slurs and threw peanuts at the Orioles’ Adam Jones at Fenway Park in May. Boston fans gave Jones a standing ovation before his first at-bat after the troubling incident.
Additionally, last month, Red Sox owner John Henry said he wants to get the street name Yawkey Way changed because of the racist past it represents. Henry told The Boston Herald
“The Red Sox don’t control the naming or renaming of streets,” Henry told the newspaper. “But for me, personally, the street name has always been a consistent reminder that it is our job to ensure the Red Sox are not just multi-cultural, but stand for as many of the right things in our community as we can – particularly in our African-American community and in the Dominican community that has embraced us so fully. The Red Sox Foundation and other organizations the Sox created such as Home Base have accomplished a lot over the last 15 years, but I am still haunted by what went on here a long time before we arrived.”
By: Alysha Tsuji