Rating: 
Summary: And poor Babe Ruth gets all the blame!
Review: "Reverse the Curse" is a mantra in Boston to encourage the Red Sox on to victory -- but perhaps just WHO cursed the Red Sox and put them on the downward spiral is not that clear. Babe Ruth did not put some hex on the team, but rather management that refused to spend adequate time recruiting and cultivating African-American baseball players such as Willie Mays (WHO turns away Willie Mays???? Apparently the Red Sox did back in 1946!) There are many examples of this throughout the 20th century: the racist belief that separate races fare better in separate leagues, booking the majority of the team in a hotel that would not accept an African-American so he had to stay 17 miles away from his teammates in anothert city -- in fact, Tom Yawkey was apparently so racist that the would not even allow for a minority to work ANYWHERE in Fenway Park, even as a janitor (the only other people I have heard who did that was the Three Stooges.) Bryant rounds out the book with history of Boston itself -- how it is the cradle of liberty and at one point was heralded as a place for African-Americans as a place where things were a little more equal, but has quickly degenerated into quite the opposite (Boston was one of the first cities to desegregate its schools in 1855 de jure, but it was still separate de facto in the 1970s, resulting in riots.) It's a very interesting and worthwhile book, whether you are a baseball fan or not.
Rating: 
Summary: NOT BAD BUT VERY REPETITIVE
Review: "Reverse the Curse" is a mantra in Boston to encourage the Red Sox on to victory -- but perhaps just WHO cursed the Red Sox and put them on the downward spiral is not that clear. Babe Ruth did not put some hex on the team, but rather management that refused to spend adequate time recruiting and cultivating African-American baseball players such as Willie Mays (WHO turns away Willie Mays???? Apparently the Red Sox did back in 1946!) There are many examples of this throughout the 20th century: the racist belief that separate races fare better in separate leagues, booking the majority of the team in a hotel that would not accept an African-American so he had to stay 17 miles away from his teammates in anothert city -- in fact, Tom Yawkey was apparently so racist that the would not even allow for a minority to work ANYWHERE in Fenway Park, even as a janitor (the only other people I have heard who did that was the Three Stooges.) Bryant rounds out the book with history of Boston itself -- how it is the cradle of liberty and at one point was heralded as a place for African-Americans as a place where things were a little more equal, but has quickly degenerated into quite the opposite (Boston was one of the first cities to desegregate its schools in 1855 de jure, but it was still separate de facto in the 1970s, resulting in riots.) It's a very interesting and worthwhile book, whether you are a baseball fan or not.
Rating:
Summary: Shut Out: A story of Race and Baseball in Boston
Review: As a baseball fan and a student of local history,I found the book to be both informative and entertaining. No fan of the Red Sox can deny that the organization's view on race has cost the team on the field. More importantly, Mr. Bryant points out that the city of Boston and the inability to deal with race has also played a part in the team's checkered history. I found that Mr. Bryant, a native of Dorchester, to be fair in assesing the team and the city's history. This book is very well researched, and it also serves as a great oral history of Boston and the baseball team.
Rating:
Summary: Shame on you, Boston..The CIty and the Red Sox
Review: If Howard Bryant?s book, ?Shut Out: Race and Baseball in Boston? were simply about the failure of the Boston Red Sox to integrate their team, it would have served a great purpose. This book not only creates in painstaking detail but also painful scenarios that have affected the life of not only the Red Sox fandom but also citizens of this misunderstood city.
Boston. Liberal? Perhaps. Tom Yawkey and the Red Sox. Racists? Perhaps. Bryant makes no judgement but presents the stories of many who have passed though Boston?s corridors of school systems, judicial systems and sports teams. The sum total are a damning and deserving indictment of a city slow to respond to equality but quick to jump to persecution of minorities.
The failure of the Red Sox to integrate and the lack of comfort felt by athletes playing and sometimes living in the Cradle of Liberty is painful and sad but true. This book is well written, doesn?t waste words and doesn?t let a clearly emotion inducing story shade the author?s opinions.
This book should serve as a textbook at high schools and colleges who want to bring a sense of history along with a primer of how journalism should be undertaken. Shame on you Boston. The City and the Sox.
Rating: 
Summary: Should've been a home run. It's a foul out instead.
Review: My rating of four stars is based on my interest level while author Howard Bryant deserves five stars for his in-depth effort on the subject of the Boston Red Sox and the racial problems that have cast a cloud over the storied franchise. The author relates the story of the farcical tryout of Jackie Robinson at Fenway Park along with two other blacks in 1945 with the Red Sox using the excuse they couldn't sign Robinson since he would have had to report to a minor league team of theirs located in the south where he would have had to deal with a segregated society. The same held true for Willie Mays who could have been patrolling center field for the Sox. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey purchased the team in 1933 and surrounded himself with a trio of cronies and drinking buddies named Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, and buffoon racist Mike "Pinky" Higgins. It is certainly true that racism was not limited to the Red Sox during the 1950's, but they were last in integrating their team with the signing of Elijah "Pumpsie" Green in 1959, and as long as the specter of Collins, Cronin, and Higgins were involved nothing was going to change. Yawkey, as owner was certainly no leader, as he entrusted his franchise to these three men and passively accepted their beliefs. Author Bryant also goes into detail on the experiences of Reggie Smith, Jim Rice, Ellis Burks, Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, Luis Tiant, and Mo Vaughn during their stays in Boston. Some of the book covers non-baseball racially related incidents over the years, and how the team has suffered in trying to get free agents to sign with the Red Sox. When Pumpsie Green joined the club in '59 Ted Williams sent a strong message to teammates and other bigots by warming up with Green prior to the games. Seemingly little things like this can loom large when someone is trying to gain acceptance. Green, himself, summed things up quite well in the year 2000 by saying, "Sometimes when I think of the things people like me had to go through, it just sounds so unnecessary. When you think about it, it is almost silly, how much time and energy was wasted hating." This is not simply another baseball book, but one that provides a look into the Boston Red Sox' role in race relations involving their storied ball club. You need not be a fan of the Bosox, I'm not, to enjoy the book.
Rating: 
Summary: An important book.
Review: This book examines the story of race and sports in Boston, the last major league city to have an integrated baseball team. The author seems to make a case that racism played a strong role in big time sports in boston and seemingly offers up a lot of evidence to support his theory. Certainly, Boston has been known for having racial problems and I think some of this certainly did carry over into professional sports but I do not think that there is ay evidence of there being a "conspiracy", so to speak, to keep teams in the city segregated or to keep minority players down. This well-written and well-researched book does examine an important subject in an interesting way but seems to overstate the case a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Shame
Review: This book takes on an important topic: the shameful legacy of bigotry that has, and continues to, beset the Boston Red Sox baseball franchise. There is an important sense, however, in which the book itself is shameful. Its subject still matters, and it chronicles the sad, singular history of the races, the Red Sox and Boston: Tom Yawkey's myopic personnel decisions, culminating in Jackie Robinson's 1945 tryout, the impact of busing and housing integration on the team. But the conclusions are banal platitudes, and little new is revealed about the characters that are central to the theme of the Sox's awful history of racism and its connection to the team's chronic lack of success. We already knew Jim Rice was a tough interview. We already knew Bill Russell was the prophet who was without honor in his own country. We probably had a good idea that Peter Gammons was a fortunate son, and that Will McDonough was a sometimes cranky defender of Boston's well-known political and social order. We may have learned from this book a little more about how tainted "Morgan Magic" was, but I wish we learned more about Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd. His story, as much as that of Rice or Ellis Burks, may be the best illustration of the author's premise that the Red Sox franchise missed chances to succeed because they could, or more likely would, not accommodate a passionate, unorthodox approach to the game. Even greater than the tragedy of the Red Sox is the tragedy of this book, which is so flawed in its telling of an important story that it almost invites readers not to take it seriously. It contains errors of usage and syntax that ought never to appear in a published work: Charles Stuart, for example, was the beneficiary of his late wife's insurance policy, not the "benefactor." Errors of fact also appear: Cabrini Green is on the North Side of Chicago, not the South. If the author and editors cared as much about this topic as they would have readers believe, they owed us a better effort than this. That's the real shame.
Rating:
Summary: A Dose of Reality to Red Sox Nation
Review: This book will not bring back memories of the Red Sox you knew as a kid growing up. I became a Red Sox fan right around the time that the Sox brought Pumpsie Green up to the big leagues and became the last team in MLB to integrate. I had no perceptions of race and sports at the tender age of 9 and the misty memories of youth are shown a touch of reality of how the team was insulated from the integration of the sport. While we can run around and spout about "The Curse", this book explains where the true curse lies and how the team may have had the opportunity to wave a few more pennants and maybe a World Series victory after 1918 if the right social decisions had been made. But, the sometime Calvinistic instincts of Red Sox fans would be taken away and we wouldn't be able to wallow in our misery of having someone (the Yankees) or something ("The Curse") to blame for the drought of a World Series victory. Buy or read this book for some real history and not for some nostalgia of a myth.
Rating:
Summary: NOT BAD BUT VERY REPETITIVE
Review: THIS IS AN INTERESTING BOOK AT TIMES AND VERY TRUE. THE AUTHOR SEEMS TO KEEP TELLING US ABOUT THE WORKOUT JACKIE ROBINSON HAD WITH THE RED SOX THAT WAS STAGED TO COVERUP THE TRUTH ABOUT PREJUDICE ON THE RED SOX. I GOT TIRED OF HEARING THE SAME THING TIME AFTER TIME IN THIS BOOK. ON THE GOOD SIDE HE MAKES A LOT OF POINTS WITH BILL RUSSELL, PUMPSIE GREEN, JIM RICE ETC. HE TRULY SHOWS HOW THE RED SOX HAD MANY OPPORTUNITIES SLIP THRU THEIR HANDS BECAUSE OF THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD BLACKS. WORTH READING.
Rating:
Summary: Could have used an editor
Review: While the topic is fascinating, and his use of primary sources (especially the Boston media) is laudable, the writing itself is occasionally brutal. It reads like a first draft. He repeats stories multiple times, and makes assertions that he does not back up. I agree with his thesis and his conclusions for the most part, but he dismisses evidence that doesn't fit his view, and he doesn't really try very hard to determine motives. I was hoping for a "smoking gun" in the long debate about who (probably plural) amongst Cronin, Yawkey and Higgins is responsible for this black mark in Red Sox history. Its mainly just he-said, she-said. If you are interested in the topic, as I am, I recommend the book. There are a lot of interesting stories and first-hand accounts. But you might have to cringe a few times while you are reading.
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