Classy Yankees prospect George Lombard Jr. a product of his background

TAMPA, Fla. — George Lombard Jr., flashing the beaming smile that likely will have Madison Avenue calling someday if the shortstop reaches  his potential as the Yankees' top prospect, set about describing his unique background.

“I’ve always felt like I’m kind of a cultural smoothie,” Lombard told Newsday recently.

It’s as good description as any.

Lombard’s mother, Judy, was born to Cuban parents, Judith and Jose Carlos Prado. Both came to the United States from Cuba as teenagers.

His grandparents on his father’s side, Posy Lombard and Paul Williams, were white and Black, respectively. Posy came from some money in suburban Massachusetts; she was the daughter of George F.F. Lombard, a former Dean of Harvard Business School. Paul came from what George Lombard Sr. described as “a dirt-poor town from south Georgia.” They never married.

Added Lombard Jr., still smiling after the “smoothie” analogy: “A little bit of everything.”

Judith Prado passed away in late February. In games Lombard has played in since, he has quietly drawn “JP” in the dirt in his first inning in the field at whatever position he’s playing that day, whether it be third, short or second.

“They were really close,” George Lombard Sr., the Tigers' bench coach, said last week by phone from Houston, where he was serving as the first-base coach for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. “We never had babysitters; it was always Abuela and Abuelo [grandmother and grandfather].”

Ask anyone around the Yankees about Lombard Jr., the club’s first-round pick in 2023, and just about everyone mentions his “makeup” before his prodigious talent. That talent has just about every opposing scout assigned to the Yankees’ system predicting he'll make the majors sooner rather than later, perhaps as soon as this September as a call-up.

“His makeup is off the charts,” manager Aaron Boone has said multiple times since spring training last year, when Lombard was a part of big-league camp for the first time.

That makeup is a product, naturally, of his parents. And certainly of his grandparents, Judith and Jose Carlos and Paul. And other relatives.

But Lombard  also has been influenced, and “inspired,” by Posy Lombard, a woman he never met. She died 20 years before he was born.

“The kind of person she was, what she stood for,” Lombard said.

Posy Lombard stood on the right side of history as a dedicated civil rights activist when the movement was at its apex in the mid-1960s into the '70s. As a student at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and not too much older than Lombard is now, she headed deep into the Jim Crow South.

Posy Lombard went to Alabama to march in protest after the events of “Bloody Sunday” — March 7, 1965, when marchers were beaten by law enforcement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. She was among the roughly 150 men and women protesting inequal voting rights and segregation who were arrested in Natchez, Mississippi, and bused to the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. All of them, including Posy, were subjected to what amounted to torture in the ensuing days, and the situation eventually became known as “The Parchman Ordeal.”

Posy, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., was arrested “13, 14” times, George Sr. estimated, and was jailed multiple times. She was arrested on March 18, 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama, for a "failure to obey lawful police order," according to the Montgomery Police Department arrest report. Her mug shot spread across the South and made it back to Smith College.

There are at least three FBI files on Posy Lombard, one of which George Sr. has seen.  He and his siblings, Matt and Rosemary,  still are actively trying to view the other two.

“The sacrifices that she made for the betterment of people who didn’t have the opportunities that others had and trying to fight for equality is [inspiring],” Lombard Jr. said.

Posy Lombard, still involved in social justice issues and at the time teaching English at Georgia Tech, died in a car crash in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in August 1985 at the age of 41. Her son George was not quite 10 years old.

He was somewhat aware of his mother’s civil rights past but, given his age, obviously not the full extent. That changed after the 2020 quarantine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With a lot more time at home, and spurred by the social unrest in the country caused by the killings of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minnesota, Lombard Sr. — who played six years in the major leagues — wondered how his mother would have felt about it all. He dug into that history further.

Lombard Jr., then in high school and quarantined at home in Miami along with his mother, father and younger brother Jacob (a shortstop projected to be a top 10 pick in this year’s draft), learned much of that history along with the rest of the family.

“We started getting more of her story, meeting with people she knew, other activists, and just learning more about his mom,” Lombard Jr. said.

Lombard Jr., fully bilingual and proud to call Spanish his “first language,” has always moved easily in clubhouses, bouncing between conversations with his Spanish-speaking teammates and English-speaking ones. Starting in rookie league ball and through Double-A, where he finished last season, personnel at every level have talked about his skill level and professional maturity and, just as prominently, his treatment of people. And not just teammates and coaches. Clubbies, grounds crew members, cleaners, etc. receive the same level of courtesy.

“I’m as proud of that as anything he accomplishes on the field,” Lombard Sr. said. “Life is so much bigger than this game.”

Said Lombard Jr.: “It’s been a priority of ours. You treat everybody the same. Everybody has a soul, everybody deserves to be treated with the same respect and friendliness. And I take pride in that. I have friends and family from everywhere, everything along the whole spectrum. It’s something that’s definitely important to me.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.