The unfurling of a banner from the stands of Fenway Park last week proclaiming “Racism is as American as baseball” have reminded the country of the Red Sox's long history with race. The event also serves to shine a light on the progress made by the team, including an historic first.
It was crisp and cool for the first game of the 1996 season at Fenway Park, as the Red Sox prepared to take on the Minnesota Twins.
Public address announcer Leslie Sterling's voice rang through the speakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park."
Sterling had been on the job for two years, having replaced the late and legendary Sherm Feller, who passed away after 27 seasons as the voice of the Boston Red Sox. His familiar guttural intonation was a hard act to follow,
“Because of Sherm, we still kept the 'ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,'” remembered Sterling. "We couldn’t get rid of that, because his signature became a signature of Fenway Park.”
Indeed, it was in keeping with long-established Fenway tradition. Sterling’s hiring was not. She was the first female, and the first African American, public address announcer in Red Sox history.
Some fans — even two years on — still were not used to hearing Sterling’s mezzo-soprano voice over the PA system.
A 1979 Harvard graduate, Sterling was a singer, a devoted baseball fan, and a freelance sports reporter. After a stint as an executive assistant at Harvard Business School, she — along with more than 100 others — applied for the position of public address announcer for the Red Sox. Sterling got the job,
“I personally felt my skin color was less of an issue than my gender," she said. "Major League Baseball was undergoing changes about women being involved in sportscasting, so that was much more of an issue, I think, than race for me at that time.”
Indeed, there was only one other female baseball announcer at the time. But public attention was also focused on Sterling’s skin color, especially in the context of the Red Sox historically — the last major league team to integrate.
“I know that other people had bad experiences at Fenway in terms of feeling uncomfortable," said Sterling. "Not very many black people in the stands, people had uncomfortable feelings about the Red Sox's racial past.”
But Sterling said she tried to set that aside, “because when, you know, you’re a pioneer, you’re trying to set a positive example for people," she said. "So, yeah, I had some things I had to go through that I never shared with anyone. But I did not let that get in my way of enjoying the ball park and enjoying the game.”
But 1996 would be Leslie Sterling’s last year as the Red Sox public address announcer. Some Red Sox insiders told WGBH that she did not catch on with significant numbers of fans. Others chalked that analysis up to sexism. Sterling says she was simply ready to move on. She entered Harvard’s Divinity School shortly afterward, and today she serves as rector at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge.
Sterling says in many ways her brief stint as Red Sox public address announcer prepared her for the pulpit.
“I was already discerning my call at the time, so it was already in the back of my mind," she said. "And I used to pray before the game that everyone within the sound of my voice ... would receive some of the some of the spirit, and some of the energy, and some of the vitality that I was trying to put forward.”
Sterling told WGBH that she rarely visits Fenway Park. Yet, she said, she remains a fan, watching and listening to games, even while acknowledging the Red Sox’s complicated racial history – and remembering when she helped move that history forward with ten simple words:
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park."
