{"id":19434,"date":"2026-08-06T09:26:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T13:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/?p=19434"},"modified":"2026-08-06T09:26:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T13:26:01","slug":"boston-baseball-and-busing-david-fafliks-new-book-explores-the-making-of-red-sox-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/news\/boston-baseball-and-busing-david-fafliks-new-book-explores-the-making-of-red-sox-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston, baseball, and busing: David Faflik\u2019s new book explores the making of Red Sox Nation\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 6 \u2013 David Faflik<\/a>, professor of English<\/a>, has always been a New Englander at heart despite his origins in Ohio. From a young age, Faflik has been a Red Sox fan and has spent years studying the Northeast through nineteenth-century American literature, which naturally kept him in Boston\u2019s scholarly orbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His new book, Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation<\/em>, connects the intersection of US cultural and social history, and examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city\u2019s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of \u201cRed Sox Nation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’d say, I’m not exactly staying in my lane. I’m a specialist in the 19th century, but I also spent a lot of time thinking about the 19th-century Boston area, and I\u2019m personally invested in the Red Sox as an institution, but I’m also invested in the New England region and in public education,\u201d says Faflik, \u201cAnd the busing crisis is a way to bring my areas of expertise together.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 21, 1959, Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green made his Boston Red Sox debut, becoming the first African American ever to play for the Red Sox, the last team in the major leagues to integrate. There is no coincidence in the connection of this event to the Boston busing crisis in the 1970s; anti-Black racism was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt. At the time, it was a turbulent period of court-mandated school desegregation, marked by intense racial protests, widespread violence, and the \u201cwhite flight\u201d to the suburbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople are surprised to learn that this stuff was happening not that long ago. Including my students, many of whom are from Massachusetts and New Hampshire,\u201d says Faflik. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book emerged from early COVID-era research and was supported by extensive archival<\/p>\n\n\n\n

work across multiple Boston institutions, and funded by a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium grant. Faflik also conducted a dozen interviews with African American community leaders around Roxbury and South Boston, providing an insider\u2019s perspective that helped round out his archival findings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In pursuit of securing interviews for the book, Faflik reached out to the Red Sox via an internal gatekeeper who connects researchers with former players willing to be interviewed. Only one was willing to go on record; left-handed pitcher Bill Lee, notably the same player who publicly commented on busing in the 1970s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the publication of his new book, the Boston Red Sox already had a presence in Faflik\u2019s courses: Introduction to American Studies, a gateway course to the American Studies minor, and Red Sox Nation, a 400-level special topics course in New England Studies. Students are often surprised by this \u201cugly\u201d history and lean into the topic to learn more through archival resources. Faflik plans on assigning Segregation Games<\/em> as required reading in a spring 2027 honors course titled The Play Impulse in American Culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTalking about sports is seemingly a safe space that turns out to be quite rich in the kind of cultural lessons it can afford us,\u201d says Faflik. \u201cIt\u2019s good for them, it’s good for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Faflik does not consider himself a New Englander despite 16 years in the Ocean State, he certainly is an honorary \u201cYankee,\u201d if not of the New York variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI loved the Boston Red Sox early on, and I was a baseball card collector around the age of 9 years old. I think I was part of Red Sox Nation before it was a thing!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch Faflik’s appearance on WCVB CityLine: Boston sports books.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5153,"featured_media":19435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[375,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-profile","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19434"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19437,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19434\/revisions\/19437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}