Business…last week’s column entry was on the Jigga/Kelly tour, and here’s a joint on the BSN celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Rumble in the Jungle. Also, my man Mark Anthony Neal serves up a big-league fastball this week in his column on AOL. Long time coming, ha, MAN?
It’s the middle of the night, and I woke up to find out the Red Sox are now World Series champions. That’s cool, I suppose. But it’s moments like this one that I wish Wiley was still around.

That’s Sensei Ralph Wiley. For the unfamiliar, Ralph wrote for Sports Illustrated for nine years and ESPN.com’s Page 2 for four more before unexpectedly passing away this summer. For more on his work, run a search for him on Google. To find out more about him as a man, click here (my contribution is seventh from the top).
Last week, I shared my joy with the Yankees’ defeat in the Series, and I hold on to that one. But while I have a lot of players on the Red Sox I really like–Pedro and his curl, Manuel, Papi, Pac-Man Pokey Reese–I can’t help but consider that Tom Yawkey is loving this, and that’s all bad.
Or is he? Lots of Negritude on this roster, even though most of them are native speakers of Espanol. I doubt Yawkey would bother with such a hair-splitting distinction, though.
Think Tom thought red and brown/black/anything-but-white matched? History scoffs at that possibility.
Yawkey is the former owner of the Sox, the man that helped to ensure that they would be the last team in the big leagues to integrate. And after integrating–more than a decade after Jackie Robinson’s debut–the Sox then took years before adding more than a small quota of black players.
And that’s the team I rooted for to beat the Yankees. Hatred put me in bed with devilish history.
Perhaps it’s been a long time since Yawkey, but that’s still not cool. When the Redskins won the title in ’87–and when it came to race, the ‘Skins were football’s Sox–they did it with Doug Williams, one of sports’ great ironies. However, I don’t recall being torn like I seem to be now. That may also be because I was seven years old, and Doug at quarterback was such an overpowering sight. History was easy to forget because the present was shone so brightly. Now that baseball’s racial makeup isn’t much different than that of the NHL, it’s really easy to jump in the time machine and think about how things used to be.
But to see all those brown faces leading the Sox to paydirt can’t help but make me wonder if what Ralph posited was correct–this wasn’t the curse of no Bambino.
(When you read the piece, you’ll see that Ralph only talks about Chicago’s curse and defers to ignorance about the Red Sox. What is known is the brief history I give above. So, call this a corollary to what Ralph wrote, one that he could appreciate. There’s also an unrelated corollary that could be written about Texas football using this same theory, but with a far more interesting twist named Switzer.)
In fact, much of the Sox’ problems could be attributed to the curse of Tom Yawkey, the thinning of their stock of potential players because of race and its companion absurdity. Bad field management had a big hand in things–shouts out to Grady Little, John McNamara, and others–but if they were willing to put more than a Negro or two on the roster for most of the twentieth century, this curse could have been lifted a long time ago.
But they didn’t, so it wasn’t.
Know your curses. For years, folks may have been blaming the wrong one.
Too bad the Sensei’s not here to say this. He’d be so much better with this than I am. At times like this, I miss his incredible mind and his unique talent for making readers consider these things without knowing what their internalizing, without knowing they’re being forced to put events like this in the perspective of a history about which it’s not comfortable discussing.
And it’s a shame you’re stuck with my inadequate imitation. My apologies.
***
Friday or Saturday, we’ll have a new update, I’m thinking. Pretty soon, the column will include bio information and all of that fun stuff (my editor’s idea, not an extension of this massive web of shameless self-promotion). And since my music machine’s still broken, this week’s recommendation is TI’s Trap Muzik. Underrated but still jumpin’ a year and a half after its release.