Here’s what I was worrying about earlier today:
That’s a notification on the lockscreen of my phone. It came across awhile before tonight’s game started. It shows the odds for the game. I don’t remember signing up for these, but I like getting the reminder that a game is coming up.
The bad thing is, as lousy as Boston’s start has been this season, up to the last few days, they were still being shown as likely winners. But not now. Not against the Yankees. Not after last night’s game — which was at Fenway, and the first of the season between these ultimate rivals.
Then, about an hour later, I saw this update:
You’ll note that was just in the first inning. Dare I watch the game?
Before I decided, I thought I’d take a glance at my email, and encountered this from The Boston Globe:
I went to the story, and it seemed to be about this tweet:
Our nation and our people are worth fighting for. pic.twitter.com/D6zw3r4dhU
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 21, 2026
ICE, a wholly owned subsidiary of DHS, is not terribly popular in Beantown, and that prompted this from one of my fave local pols, Seth Moulton:
“This is our [expletive] city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom,” Representative Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat, wrote on his repost of the DHS meme. His comment echoed David Ortiz’s famous declaration in the first Sox game at Fenway after the 2013 Marathon bombing.
“They’re trying to get under our skin, and they’re trying to poke us to see if we’re willing to stand up,” Moulton told the Globe Wednesday. “And we need to show that we as a city and as a community are not going to take this [expletive]. We’re going to stand up.”
But if you think that’s bad news, check out what appeared on the Red Sox’ own Twitter feed before the season started:
Tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/JHs7eblKDp
— Fenway Park (@fenwaypark) April 3, 2026
Hey, y’all know I love baseball, and am fond of history and nostalgia as well. Those two things feed into why I love baseball. But you can imagine the stir that video clip caused in our troubled times:
Ahead of the Sox home opener, a team account on X posted a reel of old footage from Opening Day in Boston in the 1950s, presumably to invoke fond nostalgia at the timelessness of America’s Pastime.
Instead, the clip went viral among right-wingers for a different reason: the all-white crowd at Fenway, representative of the idealized country they want to “return” to through mass deportations and curbing immigration. Some made explicitly racist comments about how much more diverse the country and Boston have become since…
That’s the thing, see. I was wondering whether Seth and the rest were overreacting to the DHS post — although I didn’t like it, either. But I guess they had the context of knowing about the reactions to the previous post.
All I know is that America really doesn’t need this stuff right now. And the Red Sox — the team I love, the team of people like Willson Contreras, Cedanne Rafaela, Andrew Monasterio, Wilyer Abreu and, going back a bit, David Ortiz — really, really don’t need it.
We REALLY don’t. As I sign off, here’s the score:
Screenshot
I don’t know exactly what year that video was from. They just say 1950s.
But after seeing those all-white crowds and players, I thought, that’s weird. Didn’t Jackie Robinson break the color barrier back in the ’40s, down in Brooklyn?
Yes, he did. But I did a bit more Googling, and saw that Boston didn’t have a black player until 1959. You know, kind of like Brown v. Board being handed down in 1954, and South Carolina not really integrating its schools until 1970. (Alas, the Sox were the LAST pre-expansion team to integrate.)
Race is one thing; immigration is another.
Then I looked up the 1950 roster. I don’t see a single Gonzalez on that list. I see some great names, though — Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio. (At least they were letting the Italians in, huh?)
But no Ortiz. And no Yoshida, not back then…
Let me add that I was not a Red Sox fan back in the 1950s, so I have to look this stuff up. I liked Mickey Mantle, but I’m happy to say I didn’t follow the Yankees, either. Hey, I was a preschooler until the fall of 1959…
And I’m guessing the person who put up the video for the Sox wasn’t alive back then.
That said, I don’t condemn the ballplayers who played in the majors before Jackie Robinson (except maybe Ty Cobb, and I’m still in awe of him as a ballplayer).
I don’t even look down on Pee Wee Reese, who objected to Robinson joining the Dodgers. He got over it, and they became friends.
Having come to some awareness of social and political awareness in the 1960’s, I thought America had outgrown that crap, too. And I was proud of that. Then came this past decade…
I think you meant 1970 as the year South Carolina finally integrated its schools.
Dom DiMaggio. Ah, the irony, since Massachusetts is where the Sacco-Vanzetti trial took place in 1921.
Yikes! Hey, look! SC was WAY ahead of the rest of the South!
Yes, I meant 1970. I’ve fixed it now. Thanks.
I was surprised to learn, when I came back to SC in 1971 to go to USC (for one semester), to find out that the schools weren’t integrated when I had been in Bennettsville four years before.
I’m pretty sure I’ve told this before, but I’ll tell it again in this context…
I had attended BHS (yes, I was a Green Gremlin!) for the 9th grade, the year of 1967-68. I thought the school was integrated then, because I had black classmates — at least in P.E. and probably homeroom. And there was one black guy on the JV basketball teamm (and one on the varsity too, I think), which I served as manager and scorekeeper — Coach offered me that job because he said I ALMOST made the team, and probably would make it next year. I guess he thought I’d grow some, and get more coordinated. What he didn’t know, and I did, was that I wasn’t going to be there the next year. We were only there because my Dad was in the Delta in Vietnam doing his year, so we were staying with my grandparents. (The next two years I’d be in Tampa, and my senior year was in Honolulu with our old friend Burl).But no worries. I enjoyed being manager/scorekeeper, and Coach let me do one-on-one drills with the smallest guy who DID make the team. So I was learning.
Anyway, I only thought it was “integrated” because, being a kid, I was unaware that Marlboro County was majority black, and that most of my black contemporaries were still attending the all-black school.
These were the days of Freedom of Choice. That meant all the kids in the county had to fill out a form each year saying where they wanted to go the next year. I had to do it one morning in homeroom. I wrote down BHS, even though I knew I’d be somewhere else the next year.
Anyway, what that system meant was that only the very bravest black kids who were so determined to get a better education put it in writing that they wanted to go to be in the tiny minority at the white school. I wish I’d known that at the time. Kids can be so clueless.
After I graduated in Hawaii, I came to USC for that one disastrous semester. And I learned the truth from some of the kids I’d known back in the 9th grade in Bennettsville, and some others from Marboro County, who were also freshment at USC in that fall of ’71.
In fact, some of those who had been in the public schools — BHS and others in the county — had graduated from the seg academy that had opened to deal with the white flight rush created by the REAL integration the year before.
Kind of blew my mind. Of course, where I had graduated high school, Burl and I — as haoles — had been in the minority…
The following phrases were projected on the side of the Old North Church, April 17, 2025:
Let the Warning Ride Forth. Tyranny Is At Our Door
One If By Land. Two If By D.C.
The Revolution Started HERE And It Never Left
Speaking of one if by land, two if by sea…
My linguistics prof sent us this post he had seen on Facebook:
Chai if by land, and tea if by sea.
I love stuff like that. It’s why I decided to take some linguistics.