Red Sox fan reports another for racial slur at Fenway Park
Calvin Hennick wanted to make sure he heard the man right. The man was sitting near Hennick's family at Fenway Park on Tuesday night, spewing the same sort of racist language that Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones had heard the night before.
“I asked him to repeat himself and he did,” Hennick told Paste BN Sports. “I asked him again, and he said, ‘That’s right. I stand by it.’”
The man, whom Hennick described as a middle-aged white male, used the N-word as he opined about the national anthem performance by a Kenyan singer before the game. The slur got the man banned from Fenway for life, and Boston police are investigating the incident, the team announced Wednesday night.
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"I feel more a sense of sadness and just deep remorse that these things happen in our society," Red Sox owner Sam Kennedy told reporters on Wednesday. "But it’s the reality of the world that we live in, and it’s incumbent upon those of us in leadership positions to deal with them, tackle them head on, address them and work together to try and stamp them out so they don’t happen again."
Hennick, a white male, attended the game with his interracial son and black father-in-law. Hennick said he’s “grateful” his 6-year-old son didn’t hear the slur.
“I didn’t want that to be his first experience at a baseball game,” Hennick said.
Despite the man’s assertions that he stood by his racist slur -- which Hennick said the man repeated multiple times -- the man backtracked when he was confronted by an usher after Hennick reported the incident.
“The man accused me of making it up to get better seats,” Hennick said. “He said he stood by his words and then acts like a sixth-grader when they get caught in a lie.”
Added Kennedy: "I want to thank the fan who raised this issue, who did exactly what we asked the fans to do yesterday while all this was going on. As soon as they felt uncomfortable, they heard inappropriate and offensive language, they went right to an usher and to our security, Boston police, and this issue was dealt with swiftly and effectively by our team here."
This wasn’t the first time Hennick has heard --- and acted --- when fans use insensitive language at a ballpark. When he lived in New York, he recalled confronting a couple of fans who were yelling homophobic slurs at a Mets player at Yankee Stadium more than a decade ago.
“These fans were willing to fistfight me over wanting to call Cliff Floyd an (expletive),” Hennick said. “I’m not sure if the ballpark brings out the worst in people or the worst people."
Hennick, in views first posted on his Facebook page and also to The Boston Globe, said that the timing of Tuesday’s incident was no coincidence.
“It’s hard for me to say that (Boston) is better or worse than anywhere else, because I’m not a person of color,” Hennick said. “I experience life as a white man and have the privileges that come along with that. What I do think is that there is something about the national political climate recently that is bringing this sort of thing to the forefront. People are emboldened in ways they have never felt before.
“At first I wondered why this man would say this to me of all people as I was sitting with my black family the day after Adam Jones made news being taunted with slurs. Then I realized that that was the whole point. He wanted to prove that he could say whatever he wanted. It was a finger to the eye. It wasn’t a white guy thinking another white guy was on a racist team with him.”
Contributing: Maureen Mullen