Both John Henry of the Red Sox and Donald Trump of the presidency are cut from the same cloth. They are, we are told, business men. Some people like business men. Others look at them with a more jaundiced eye. But they do have a common characteristic: they like to hate people and they like to make money. One thing they really hate is the idea that they may be compared unfavorably to their predecessors.
To anyone paying a little attention it is obvious that Trump is obsessed with wiping anything that puts Obama in a favorable light. He continually denigrates the prior president and extols his own self. I never understood why he could not let his work stand on its own merits without having to tear down prior presidents.
We see the same thing playing out with John Henry. In December 2001 he purchased the Red Sox from the Yawkey Foundation. Like Trump he seems intent on doing everything in their power to eradicate the good the prior person did and to malign the person’s name by falsifying facts. Henry says he is bothered by the “racist practices of the former owner.” What were they? He notes he was the last one to hire a black player. That hardly meets the criteria “practices.” He is reported as saying Yawkey did not hire a black until “after it had become common practice” in MLB. By 1959 if was far from a common practice.
In 1950 blacks made up 1.7% of players in Major League Baseball (MLB) according to this chart here. In 1955 blacks on team rosters totaled 5.2% and in 1958 they were 7.4%. It wasn’t until 1968 that their percentage rose above 15%; it basically stayed there until 1997 rising as high as 18.40 in 1981.Since 2012 it has been 7.2% or under, less than at the time the Red Sox hired its first black in 1959. In 2012 Marlon Byrd was the only black player on either of Chicago’s two teams.
Are we to think because of the low percentage of blacks playing MLB that the owners like Henry are racists? How do you explain a Chicago MLB team with no blacks? In baseball there are a multitude of reasons why things are done. Very often owners do not take any steps without input from their general managers, managers and coaches. Have you heard anyone say that the Chicago White Sox were racists because they had no black players or MLB is racist because of the declining number of black players?
As for Henry he is a business man and his interest is in selling a product. In this case he owns the Red Sox. Henry seeks to get the highest price possible for consumers of his product. Fenway Park is now the first or second most expensive ball park visit in MLB. Who can afford to go except those with connections to the corporations that buy the season tickets? A 2016 Fortune article estimated the cost of going to a Red Sox game for two people was $157.50. The next highest cost going to a MLB game was $116.06.
Why Henry finds any mention of Yawkey offensive is not because of the alleged racisim but because Yawkey was not a business man. He lost money owning the Red Sox during some years because he wanted to keep a visit to his park affordable for the common man. He made the Red Sox into what they are today.
The year he purchased the team its attendance was 268,000; the next year it leaped to 610,000. It steadily increased hitting about a million and a half between 1946 to 1949. Thereafter it was around a million or less up to the magical year of 1967 with the Impossible Dream team. During all that time bleacher seats were open and inexpensive. Yawkey was not a gouger trying to bleed people of their last cents. Kids could afford to go to the bleachers and watch a game.
In Yawkey’s time going to the Red Sox game was a treat. It wasn’t expensive. It wasn’t inconvenient. The Red Sox were not a mechanism for making Yawkey rich. Henry wants us to forget that.
How about this family at Thanksgiving dinner having a civil discussion on the qualities of photons (after the game of course):
Granpa–The photon is a particle-I have my awards to prove it
Son–Screw you, its a wave, I have my awards that prove it
Grandson–You’re both crazy old bastards, it is both a particle and a wave. I have my awards to prove it.
This is a real family. I forget their names (Bill C. probably knows.) What happened to a spirited card game after dinner? Sheeesh!
Yes , Bill … Well , here it is old shoe … The powers that Be In Deep Blue Space have heard your claim that the Physics community cannot agree on a fixed constant for the speed of light . You , Gideon with his Trumpet , apparently started shouting from the Haydn Planetarium Dome that the speed of light had been measured at different velocities in different places and spaces and that the Astrophysical Community had put out a fatwa on any physicist disputing the uniform number of 299 792 458 m/s !
Never mind your Holy Crusade against the Federal infidel !
You are wrestling with the fundamental forces of State Government here !
You Magnificent Bastard !
This day I am sending a Public Documents request (state equivalent of FOIA request) to Secretary of State Bill Galvin, a good man from Brighton, asking him to send to me any documents relating to the visit to my Linked-In page on or about March 14, 2018 by the Massachusetts State Police and the Massachusetts Attorney Generals Office. I am asking if this “visit” had anything to do with my “Prosecute the Prosecutors” campaign began about December 14, 1017, and with my book I’ve been working on these last several months, now at the publisher, “Three Billboards outside, Boston, Massachusetts; Prosecute the Persecutors who abuse Federal Prosecutorial Power” which was also highly critical of State Police Officers deputized as Federal Agents by Federal Prosecutor Fred Wyshak.
Can’t imagine why the State Police and Attorney Generals Office would suddenly be interested in “visiting” one of my web pages, LINKED-IN. Anyone have any ideas?
By the way, Graham Greene’s the Power & the Glory, better told man’s fate v. state. As did the Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
But here’s the key part of Queen of Diamonds/Manchurian Candidate Tale . . . one man is correctly, perhaps unsuccessfully in the show, but correctly in real life, realizing, insisting the brainwashing/intimidation/psycho-babble CAN Be Beat. We are better than the Big State Prosecutorial Persecutors (is what it says to me.)
[Shaw has been conditioned to obey when seeing the queen of diamonds; Marco has brought a special deck of all queens of diamonds]
Raymond Shaw : They can make me do anything, Ben, can’t they? Anything.
Bennett Marco : We’ll see, kid. We’ll see what they can do and we’ll see what we can do. So the red queen is our baby. Well, take a look at this, kid…
[fans deck and keeps holding up the cards]
Bennett Marco : 52 of them! Take a good look at ’em, Raymond, look at ’em, and while you’re looking, listen. This is me, Marco, talking. 52 red queens and me are telling you… you know what we’re telling you? It’s over! The links, the beautifully conditioned links are smashed. They’re smashed as of now because we say so, because we say they are to be smashed. We’re busting up the joint, we’re tearing out all the wires. We’re busting it up so good all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men will never put old Raymond back together again. You don’t work any more! That’s an order. Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell ’em sorry, buster, the ball game is over.
THE BALL GAME IS OVER: BIG-GOV PERSECUTORIAL BULLY-BOYS ARE EXPOSED AS LYING DOG MANIPULATORS, COWARDLY ABUSERS OF POWERS, AS THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN . . .PROBABLY GOT BEATEN UP IN A FAIR FIGHT BY A KID FROM SOUTHIE, SAVIE OR OAK SQUARE WHEN THEY WERE TEENAGERS AND VOWED THEY’D GET EVEN WITH THOSE IRISH KIDS OR ITALIAN KIDS OR POLISH KIDS OR LITHUANIAN KIDS WHEN THEY GOT POWERFUL AND COULD STEP ON ORDINARY FOLKS AND INCARCERATE INNOCENTS ON TRUMPED UP CHARGES AND SPIT AT THEM WHILE THEY WERE HELD BEHIND BARS THEN BRAG TO THEIR BUDDIES IN THE MEDIA HOW THEY WERE BRINGING JUSTICE TO BOSTON . . .all the while while We the People see the Federal Prosecutorial Bully Boys and their Cohorts and Co-whores in the State Government selling their constitutional souls . . .for what? . . . .for Power.
Gut the Deep State and its Power-Abusing Prosecutorial Bully-Boys.
Up the Republic!
It happens and it “unhappens.”
In addition to Science not knowing what Dark Energy and Dark Matter are, Science has no clue what Consciousness is. Scientists know cats and human beings are conscious and computers are not. Mind-control, like propoganda, has its severe limits and one stout hearted man can resist, and turn the tables on The Grand Inquisitors, the FEDS, the Wall-Street-Big-Gov-Psycho-Bullies who’re trying to cower us, make automatons of us, make us non-humans. LIve Free or Die. Fight the Orwellian Big Gov Rat-Trapped Mind Wrap. Think for yourself.
Besides having no clue what Consciousness is, Science is baffled by what seems to be Cosmic Consciousness.
Remember, Einstein initially scoffed at Catholic Priest Father LeMaitre’s (?) discovery of and enunciation of the Big Bang Theory . . .all created from a point-of-light . . .then Einstein did more work and became convinced.
But the Prophets and Psalmists and Old Testament writers intuited it long before Science itself was in vogue (Galileo, Luther’s-time, the scientific method) and they intuited. “God said, “Let there be Light!” So Light was not first, that pin-point of light, Sound was first: God said:
The word came first . . .The Word
No amount of Manchurian-DeepState-Bullying-Brainwashing will defeat the Human Spirit, inspired . . . . .Say the Word, and you’ll be free . . .speak Truth to Power . . . .”Give me ten men who are stout hearted men and I’ll soon give you ten-thousand more . . .”
Beat the living daylights out of intrusive Big Gov, the Federal Persecutors, the Prosecutorial Bully Boys and their henchmen in Academia and the Media/Press
Well , Scoffington … Tell it to the Church Committee . Ever hear of PAPERCLIP ? … We got all the Nazi dark projects scientists , as well as superstars like Werner Von Braun . Research the subject . You just don’t seem to get the nexus . MkUltra has a long and well documented history . Its claims for production of ” Super Soldiers ” with, among other highly coveted military attributes , telepathic abilities on the battlefield , bear examining . But this program had its precursor in Nazi Germany , its rival in Soviet Military efforts , and a well documented history of clinical achievement, if not what we might term success . Hypnotism is nothing new. When tens of millions and the energies of the Defense Department and the CIA are expended on a decades long concealed government project to explore the military application of hallucinogenics in efforts to effect behavioural changes , you have to figure some things out .
Stirring appeals to the Logos have nothing to do with MkUltra , Jimmy Bulger’s involvement with the program , and NC’s salient observation that … should the dam break somewhere along the Federal Levee system and exculpatory info was withheld …. then the Bulger conviction would be overturned . Stranger things have happened .
This is the end game .
Now …. Five …..Four ….Three ……Two ……. And on One … FULLY AWAKE !!!
Now that is hip in any room . Great ref.
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE : Phone rings . Hypnotic subject Laurence Harvey picks up receiver … Listens …. ” Raymond , why don’t we pass the time playing a little solitaire .” …Click …. A rapt subject picks up deck … Plays … Gets to Red Queen of Hearts … Stops ( trance initiated by anonymous caller with post- hypnotic trigger ” Solitaire” now deepens with production of another earlier installed trigger … The Red Queen ! …. The assassin is given further instructions …
It happens !
Beware of the Red Queens–Lawrence Harvey ignored them at his peril.
Jimmy knows !
We know it is not science fiction . The idea of a hypnotic subject with post- hypnotic triggers installed , operating as an assassin who could be charged with a task in hypnotic space , ” Forget ” everything until an agent in the target’s country gives the post-hypnotic command to ” Wake ” them to their task , as well as a command to then ” Forget ” all …. was irresistible to the Nazis , to the Soviets and to US !
This is MkUltra .
Always thought the best defense for Whitey in his trial was the MK Ultra program. No one knows the doses administered. There are no killings before the experiment. Had the defense hired Dr. Quakenbush, a top psychiatrist to opine that an individual exposed to large doses of LSD could not possibly have the mens rea to commit a crime it may have been persuasive.. 2. We know Wyshak withheld exculpatory evidence from Connolly in his Florida trial. Mueller may have withheld it also. Did the Feds deprive Whitey of required exculpatory evidence? Mueller and Wyshak’s prior practices would suggest they did. If so he may have been wrongly convicted. 3. Noticed that the lawyer from Skaden Arps got thirty days for lying to the FBI in the Mueller probe. Connolly got ten years from a very dishonest judge for the same offense. A gross miscarriage of justice. 4. If the Mexican authorities can stop the migrant caravan could Trump hire them to stop the useless demonstrations we see in this country e. g. the women’s march and the students march or would the 1st Amendment preclude that? Today is the start of baseball in Boston. Perfect conditions. 35 degrees and a howling wind. Feels like January.
This Trance will be reinforced later this month when the Frank Salemme Sr. murder trial commences and the criminally most unusual suspect Steve Flemmi will vault into the stand and take us on a merry circuit around a well worn track . Yes ! Steve … Happened …. to walk into a murder in a home in Sharon one sunny afternoon . Frank Salemme’s home !
Why no nap ?
Why isn’t Frank Salemme taking a nap , post homicidal orgy ( Frankie Jr. allegedly doing the heavy lifting ) , the way the buffoonishly incredible Flemmi alleges Jimmy Bulger did after an exhausting afternoon of strangling Stevie’ s unfortunate girlfriends while Stevie sucked his thumb ?
A nap indeed . They want you kinda sleepy . Language is magical . It is trance inducing ….. Sleepyhead !
Trancey …. Not … Trippy , Bill . This is better .
Trance is a deep subject . There are individual trance states and collective ones . It takes a collective trance state to ” ignore ” that the Universe is bigger than we are and that we are not alone in it .
It is a collective trance state for the Public to accept the Bulger Trial as aught but a sham .
Steve Flemmi is a trance object . How else could his incredible bs be countenanced .
It is a deep trance . Its artificers are Professionals . The Mystery Director can bring US out of it , but he is presently occupied with a good book .
And , how therapeutic would that be ?
What is the end game ?
It has got to trouble a good Catholic . But that is not our concern .
Look it’s a bird .
It’s a plane .
It’s a fleet of UFO’s tracked on Fleet radar on and off previous two weeks , and engaged ( with camera footage ) by two of the Navy’s absolute Top Gun pilots fifty miles off San Diego in 2004 .
These craft were performing aerodynamically like nothing human technology comes near to , or human physiology can stand .
Nice Ta’ Meet Ya ‘ !
For the love of God , Bill . THAT is the entire comedy premise .
Trippy ?
It has been called worse .
Yes, John, it is the entire Divine Comedy premise: What fools we mortals be!
Bill , You know that feeling you get when you take a deep breath and then just breathe it out as if you are pushing out all the breath in your lungs , which you are ? It is akin in quality to a horse doing that sort of snuffling exhalation that is then followed by a whinny of relief it almost seems . It is a surrender . One is at peace with letting that breath dissolve a boundary . One just lets it go . There is a feeling you get .
The Sanskrit word, Nirvana , much ballyhooed in the West means ” blowing out .” Most have interpreted it to mean that the ” Flame” of human desire gets extinguished in the person and this being the case that person becomes an “Enlightened ” being .
Alan Watts’ hermeneutics on the Divine exhalation I like better . He thought Nirvana directly describes the state of that exhalation ; that “blowing out ” of the breath , achieved Nirvana .
Wow ! Whoosh ! Here it is ! Here I am !
What a fucking relief !
It is funny , meditation . You can spend years doing it and then one day you get that you don’t have to think of …. That … or This … or That …or be in thought anywhere but where you are . You can just take a deep breath and let it go …… Thank God .
Trippy . . .I think Abe was referring to McClean Virginia, home of Langley, home of the CIA . . .anyway,
95% of the stuff in the universe is dark matter or dark energy, and scientists do not know what dark energy and dark matter are, but they know they are in space, Hence 95% of everything is UFOs
Hey …. We’re riffin’ Jerry !!! …. Abe. you can be catechised on your Seinfeld , so you get that reference .
Janet Uhlar wrote a book . She was compelled by circumstances and conscience to write it .
MkUltra and UFO’s .
Our capacity to blithely whistle past irrefutable proof of the latter as in …. We all know there are craft such as those tracked by two Navy pilots recently that are as Commander David Fravor , one of those pilots , said ” Not something from this world .”
We know Mk-Ultra’s progenitor was the Nazi MONARCH mind control program . James Bulger was indoctrinated into its craft . This involved training in hypnosis .
To suggest Mk-Ultra is a tough nut to crack sounds somewhat glib … And glib is fine … Yet glib is also a way of facetiously fencing oneself off from realities that are uncomfortable .
Jim Braude asked a superb question in closing , of Juror # 12 : What is your end game in all this ?
What a long strange trip it has been .
That is … McLean’s … btw , not McLean , Abe .
Are you in Belmont ? …. That is a great hospital , Abe . Robert Lowell of the Cambridge red sock wearing branch of that line spent some therapeutic time there .
Down here in McLean I have found that MK ULTRA is a tough nut to crack.
★ Janet Uhlar
Well …… …….. …………….. Hmmmmmm!
With more reasonable cause than others , considering the cosmological imponderables of being a winner in the great famous trial jury lottery , Janice Uhlar has added a tome to the times and the tombs and everything that sells a story Bulger .
TRUTH BE DAMNED is its vigorous title.
Caught her on the liberal searchlight Braude’s Greater Boston PBS sinecure . She said that given another take she would have nullified rather than verified , so to speak .
This is a soul baring admission that must be conceded as such , as well as conceding the moral fibre it displays .
Juror # 12 also spoke of the Mk-Ultra mind control program , a CIA Clockwork Orange adventure into psychedelia and homicide that pre-dated Haight-Ashbury by twenty years, easy . It was a Manchurian Candidate scopolamine holiday and The Jimmy was a volunteer psycho-naut in it at the age of 26 .
She looked damn skippy in blue .
She continues to surprise .
Very resilient type !
Henry should look around his beloved Fenway Park when a team like the Yankees is in
town. He won’t see any black kids unless they are sitting in the bleachers waving a
Dunkin Donuts sign courtesy of that corporation. How many black or brown faces are
sitting in the corporate boxes,or out at the Monster or the new platform in right field.
Henry,Warner et al are the faces of corporate greed who aren’t “haunted” by the largely
Lily white,over the top expensive venue that Fenway has become since they arrived in
Boston.Bostonians aren’t always discerning about their choices in sports and politics but they know a faker right away.
Right on, Paul. You hit the nail on the head.
P.S. I like it when Trump attacks the Press, the Media, the muckety-mucks and higher-ups in Academia and Government . .
Go after the bullies who abuse power
But advice to Trump . . .lay off twittering bad stuff about ordinary folks, a comedian or actress who may take pot shots at you
Take down the bullies in the FBI/Federal Prosecutors Offices/Media and Academia . . . give them a healthy dose of their own medicine they’ve been wrongfully dishing out for decades
Remember how the whole perverse Probation Officers’ case began? (Federal Appeals court tossed it a sentence saying there’s no such crime as “failing to hire the most qualified person” . .and invented Fed Crime out of Sterns, Wyshak and their successor’s offices)?
It began with a Boston Globe article. And the gist of the article was that the Probation Department (headed by O’Brien, of course a conservative Irish-Catholic with roots in Dorchester/SouthBoston no doubt (he went to CM, from St. Gregory’s Parish, probably voted for conservative pro-life pols like Paul White, a friend of Bill Bulger in Senate) . . .anyway the Globe accused O’Brien of hiring a “recovering alcoholic/drug abuser” . . Horrors of Horrors . . .O’Brien’s office was trying to give a deserving qualified young man a second chance in life . . . .and worse, O’Brien hired something like 40% of the persons who had letters of recommendations from Senators, Reps, Govs . . .”politicians” . . .the scandal
The Globe started it . . .their henchmen in the Federal Prosecutors continued the persecution
Do these bastards ever think that inflicting mental stress on persons/families is a cause of disease, including heart disease and cancer? Or don’t they care?
Matt,, put your article with all its facts and statistics in the Wall Street Journal. Let the people begin to see the real facts, the light.
Matt, a superb, excellent article.
Abe, a great remember when . . . .sports used to be fun and affordable . . .
Matt is right comparing Trump to Henry . . . both in a mean-spirited attack predecessors and critics . . .and I am a Trump supporter, a conservative, traditionalist politically, against the neo-cons and big gov libs
this “racism” charge is Democratic Party leftist hype, Boston Globe hype, it’s the same false charges that were the basis of the Federal Prosecutors abuse of prosecutorial power for decades in Boston . . .going after Political Foes of the DEMS . . . .foes of the Leftists. . . foes of Dershowitz . . .impugning the integrity and character of Bill Bulger and anyone associated with him
It is a malignancy that infests Politics, Sports, the Judiciary and the Prosecutor’s Offices in Boston, D.C. and America at large
And Henry, owner of the yellow journal Boston Globe, and money-grubbing owner of the Red Sox, is a leading proponent of politicizing the prosecution and persecution of innocents and the wholesale character assassinations of good people (mostly conservatives, like Bill Bulger, the people of Southie, the Probation Officers, Boston Police Officer Kenny Conley, the young genius Aaron Swartz who wanted more info made publicly available, and who federal prosecturs and their malicious cohorts in Boston’s leftist press drove to suicide.
It’s all part and parcel of putting politics and money over principles . . .today’s it is the Leftists exemplified by the Boston Globe and Federal Prosecutors . . .yesterday it was fascists . .yesterday its was Stalinistic leftist Communists . . .yesterday a Frenchman named Emile Zola wrote J’Accuse condemning an entire society . . .press, academia, prosecutors, judiciary, businessmen . . .today Henry and the Globe and Federal Prosecutors and Howie Carr and Allan Dershowitz and others in the media and academia and government stand accuse
And Trump stands accused of vilifying his opponents with crude unnecessary twitter comments
Where are the two-fisted leaders with class like Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan (at least we got Mike Pence) . . .at least Jimmy Carter had high character and good morals, and I don’t care about Howie Carr’s malicious vicious slanders, the Kennedys . .. .all of them . . .were great public servants, war heroes, lifelong public servants, not in it for the money . . .and only the small minded like Carr and evil man consumed by Schadenfruede who delights in persons’ suffferings, who mocks the dead and dying, who befriends brute vicious serial killers, only a person like Howie Carr a draft dodger who never served anything or anyone but his own pocketbook casts stones at lifelong public servants . . .Carr is the malignancy at the heart of American society . . a grotesque, money-grubbing character assassin, who’ll assail anyone’s character to put an extra penny in his own pocket or to make himself feel superior
These are the lowlifes running America . . .what morals/values constrain them?
Your post can stand on its own without the mention of Trump. I’m just sayin’.
My mother would give me the ‘go’ sign and off to Fenway I would head with a brother or a friend. Five bucks in my pocket would get me to the ball park on the T. Then it was $1.25 or so for the bleacher seat. Two dogs and a root beer and the T back to Mattapan and I would have a little change in my pocket from my fiver. Those were the days.