One day after Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was subject to a racist insult from a fan at Fenway Park, the Red Sox permanently banned a fan for using a racial slur during a separate incident at Tuesday night’s game.
The slur was reported by a man named Calvin Hennick, who was at the game with his son and father-in-law and relayed his experience to the Boston Globe. According to Hennick, a middle-aged man in a Red Sox hat and T-shirt leaned over to him and made a racist remark about the woman, a Kenyan, who had just performed the national anthem. From the Globe:
Surely, Hennick thought, he must have misheard. The Jones incident had made nationwide news Tuesday and revived public recollections of Boston’s painful history on matters of race.
So Hennick asked if he had correctly understood the man and then repeated what he thought the man had just said.
“Yes, that’s what I said, and I stand by it,” the other fan told Hennick.
Hennick then notified an usher, who took action and removed the man from the stadium. On Wednesday, Red Sox president Sam Kennedy entered the press box and told reporters about the incident, adding that the fan who used the slur had been banned from Fenway Park for life. “I’m here to send a message loud and clear that the treatment of others that you’ve been reading about here lately is unacceptable,” he said.