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The Red Sox and Boston officials are moving forward with plans to rename the stretch of Jersey Street just outside of Fenway Park currently known as Yawkey Way.
It was named that in 1977 to honor Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, who died the year before.
Yawkey controlled the Sox from 1933 until his death. Under his ownership, the team was the last in Major League Baseball to integrate—in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson pioneered the process with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Yawkey himself is said to have screamed a racial epithet at Robinson during a tryout at Fenway in 1945.
Calls to rename Yawkey Way arose last summer following the deadly mayhem in Charlottesville, Virginia, that white supremacists sparked over a statue of Robert E. Lee and the subsequent imbroglio over Confederate monuments.
On January 18 of this year, Red Sox President Sam Kennedy told a press conference that the renaming seemed imminent. The team and the city just have to tie up some loose ends, including what the stretch’s new moniker would be (if any—it could just end up as “Jersey Street”).
That brings us to this week’s open thread: What do you think Yawkey Way should be renamed? Sound off in the comments section below.
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