Baseball Remembers: Sam Jethroe

If the leadership of the Boston Red Sox hadn’t been a bunch of racists in the 1940s, I think it’s likely the Cleveland Guardians would currently have a streak of over 100 years without winning a World Series.

Let me explain.

In April, 1945, the Red Sox were under pressure from a local politician named Isadore Muchnick* to integrate the team. He sat on the Boston City Council, and voted against allowing the Red Sox and Braves to play on Sundays (which was against a city ordinance) as long as they continued to refuse Black players a chance to play for their teams.

(*Note: When you see this incident written about now, Muchnick is often portrayed as an opportunistic politician who represented a heavily Black district and was just grandstanding to get votes. That’s remarkably unfair to Muchnick, and also just plain wrong. Muchnick’s district didn’t have a large Black population at the time. He was simply a principled public servant who was trying to right a wrong. This has been covered by Howard Bryant in his book Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, as well as by Glenn Stout in the Massachusetts Historical Review, and each sets the record straight on Muchnick’s behalf. But I digress.)

Muchnick’s pressure resulted in the Red Sox granting a tryout to three Black players. It took place in Fenway Park on April 16, and was conducted by Red Sox coach Hugh Duffy. The three players at the tryout were Jackie Robinson, whose story is pretty well known at this point, Marvin Williams, who I’ve written about before, and Sam Jethroe, the fleet-footed outfielder of the Cleveland Buckeyes.