Quincy News: Stop pretending Boston is something it’s not …

Just another day at Fenway?

Image via BaseballEssential.com

– News from elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News.

Police protection required at Fenway?
Image via The Boston Globe

“Racism is deeply embedded in the city’s culture.”

So wrote a Boston broadsheet writer given the recent racist heckling of a player on a visiting team playing at Fenway Park earlier this week.

Quincy Quarry can only properly support the following sentiments: heckling a player on a visiting team is one thing, but this beyond crass incident went so far past this as to be well beyond the pale.

From the Boston Red Sox being among the very last major league baseball teams to put players of African descent on its roster to the often vile fans in the stands, such are actually but symptomatic of endemic, however sublime, racism that pervades the Greater Boston area.

Dusty Baker, an all around great guy to have in the clubhouse
A Brett Davis/Associated Press image

Said baseball great and current Washington National’s manager as well as well-known all-around great guy in the clubhouse Dusty Baker:

“It doesn’t really surprise me too much because I’ve been called that word in almost every city that I’ve played in. Minor leagues, big leagues, letters. So it don’t really shock me too much. From L.A. to New York. It’s more apparent in some places than other places.”

Be sure to note that a lack of surprise or shock is not the same thing as not being offended, even if 50 years on the road in professional baseball as a player, coach and manager might otherwise inure one to – say – lumpy hotel mattresses.