An idea that has been floated for many months might now be gaining some real traction, as the Boston Red Sox have filed a petition to have the Yawkey Way street name restored to its original moniker of Jersey Street.
The Red Sox have gotten the approval from all of the streets abutters — which include them as well as the ’47 Store across the street from Fenway Park — to change the name, according to The Boston Herald’s Michael Silverman.
Here is the full statement the team sent out, via WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford.
Red Sox filed a petition to the city to restore the name of Yawkey Way to Jersey Street. Here is a statement from the team: pic.twitter.com/5ILfEDeeoq
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) February 28, 2018
The idea of changing the street name has been discussed for some time now, with Red Sox principal owner John Henry expressing his particular displeasure with the name — which is a homage to late Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, whose Red Sox were the last team to integrate in 1959 — in August of 2017.
“The Red Sox don’t control the naming or renaming of streets. But for me, personally, the street name has always been a consistent reminder that it is our job to ensure the Red Sox are not just multi-cultural, but stand for as many of the right things in our community as we can — particularly in our African-American community and in the Dominican community that has embraced us so fully,” Henry
said to Silverman in August. “The Red Sox Foundation and other organizations the Sox created such as Home Base have accomplished a lot over the last 15 years, but I am still haunted by what went on here a long time before we arrived.”
Yawkey Way got its name in 1977, but to this day Jersey Street still exists, stretching from Boylston Street (where it meets Yawkey) to Park Drive.
