Racism- Part 2

 Part 2 

Another thing that was very big to me in the summers in west Texas was baseball.  I lived directly across the street from a wide-open park.  The park had two sets of swings and nothing else but acres of grass.  We had a great place to play baseball, football, fly kites and do many things kids love to do. Baseball was king in the summer. I really enjoyed baseball and my first year of organized baseball one summer was spent playing for the minor league Pirates.  We won all ten of our games because we had the best pitcher in the league. There were no black kids on our team. It never occurred to me there were no black kids on my team.   

I was selected to play my second year of organized baseball for the Little League level Red Sox. I was so excited. This was the team I had hoped to play on, and I was so thrilled to go to my first practice not far from my house. We practiced on a field that was all dirt. Hard dirt. The outfield did have a few well-placed weeds but we played on hard dirt and learned to enjoy the game on a field where every bounce of the ball was unpredictable.   

The team had won the Little League Championship the previous year and had many returning players. Three of the players on the team were the Parson brothers, C.J., Jack, and David.  Yes, they were the three black players on our team. C.J. played third base when he wasn’t pitching. He was our best player. Jack Parson was also a good baseball player and was catcher. He was actually a better at football player. David was in his first year on the Red Sox, no different from me, and was good but still learning how to play the game. I was a third baseman when I played minor league baseball for the Pirates, but I would be a right fielder for the Red Sox. I was just thrilled to be on the team; I didn’t care what position I played just as long as I got to play.    

As the season started and we began to win games, we would practice one day per week and have one game per week. I arrived for practice early in the season and went to talk with a couple of the Parson brothers before practice started. None of the Parson boys would talk to me. Until that day, I had no issues with any of the Parson brothers and did not see racial issues as part of the team. I was wrong and didn’t know it. I went to C.J. and asked him what the problem was. He looked at me and quickly said, “Someone on the team told us you called us ni----gs.”  He turned and walked away. I immediately denied it. I denied it because I had not called any of them by that name. I subsequently went to Jack and to David and told them I had not called them that bad name. Jack seemed to listen to me but David, just like C.J., had no more time for me.   

For the remainder of the season, there was no conversation between me and the Parson brothers.  I remember trying to find out who had told them I had used the term, but no one admitted to me they had told them I had said something I had not said.  Did I use the term referring to the Parson brothers? No. Could I have used that term in 1966. Yes. I was white boy and heard the word frequently by all the adults I knew and many of the kids I played with.  Many of my friends used the term freely. It was just a very common phrase used by whites in the 1960’s. But I did not remember any conversation about the Parson brothers where I so disrespected them.  The interesting thing was that I knew at that stage in my baseball development, all three of the Parson brothers were better baseball players than I was. I did not have any animosity toward them because they were better ballplayers than I was. I did not feel I was better than they were.    

My second year on the Red Sox started much as it had ended. We had won the championship that first year and none of the Parson brothers would talk to me. C.J. had moved on to a higher level of baseball but Jack and David were still Red Sox and did not talk to me. We played together as a team although we were not as good and did not win the championship that year. The Parson brothers had been insulted even though I still maintained I was not the guilty party.  I am not sure why someone would have told them I had used the term other than to create a problem. We were all ten and eleven years old.  Who knows what the motivation could have been but I learned a little more about what racism was and how wrong the phrase was that was so often used by kids, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Words do hurt. Words do mean a lot.