Tom Yawkey Marquee Hall of Fame 1980

Tom Yawkey owned the Boston Red Sox for forty-four years, a tenure that combined lavish spending with the last integration of any major-league club. Born in February 1903 and dead in July 1976, he appeared on three Hall of Fame ballots before the Veterans Committee elected him in 1980.

He bought the club at thirty, four days after inheriting a timber and mining fortune, and spent freely on it. Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice played their whole careers for him, and he was closer to his players than most owners were.

Boston did not field a Black player until 1959, twelve years after Jackie Robinson and later than any other club. It had held a sham tryout for Robinson and Sam Jethroe in 1945 and signed neither. That is the central fact about his ownership and it is not a matter of dispute; the street outside Fenway carried his name until 2018, when the club asked for it to be changed.