https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/sports/baseball/bianca-smith-red.html

I grew up with her family. Dated her aunt in HS. Had no idea when I first read the headline on ESPN because she doesn’t have the same last name as her mom.

When Bianca Smith landed a job as a minor league coach in the Boston Red Sox organization, becoming the first Black woman to coach professional baseball, she thought about her mother.

Her mom died of cancer in 2013 and would have been proud of her daughter’s achievement. But also furious. Dawn Patterson had particularly strong feelings about the Red Sox.

She despised them.

Patterson was a lifelong Yankees fan and hated their rivals so much that when Smith won tickets to Red Sox games while in college at Dartmouth — awarded to students who attended the most varsity sporting events — she would get angry that her daughter would even consider the trip.

“Mom, but these are, like, free baseball tickets,” Smith remembered saying, emphasizing that the offer was too good to pass up...



its too long for me to swipe on my phone but the story is amazing