Did anyone notice who the managers were in this year’s World Series? More important, did any major league club owners and general managers notice? If anyone missed it, I’m happy to fill you in. The World Series managers were Alex Cora with Boston and Dave Roberts with Los Angeles.
To shed more light on these gentlemen, both were born in foreign lands. Not only were they minority managers, they were also the only minority managers in the majors last season.
That last statement could be disputed. Some people consider Rick Renterria of the Chicago White Sox and Dave Martinez of the Washington Nationals minority managers. I don’t, but I am ready to listen to a different view of what constitutes a minority manager or general manager.
These are excerpts from Wikipedia biographies:
“Richard Avina Renteria (born December 25, 1961) is an American former Major League Baseball infielder who is currently the manager of the Chicago White Sox of Major League Baseball (MLB).”
“Martinez was born in Brooklyn, New York to Puerto Rican parents. He lived at East 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. He then lived in Brentwood,, NY and played little league for BYA (Brentwood Youth Activities). At age 13, his family moved to Orlando, Florida, on the recommendation of an uncle.”
Despite their backgrounds, Martinez and Renteria are no more minorities than, say, Lou Piniella was when he played and managed. His parents were of Asturian descent, from northwestern Spain, but he was 100 percent American, born, raised, schooled and still living in Tampa, Fla.
Compare these backgrounds with those of Cora and Roberts:
“José Alexander Cora (born October 18, 1975) is a Puerto Rican professional baseball manager and former infielder. He is the manager of the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball (MLB). Cora led the team to the 2018 World Series championship in his first season as a manager, becoming the fifth manager to do so in MLB history and the first as a Puerto Rican manager.”
“Roberts was born in Naha, Okinawa. His African-American father, Waymon, was a United States Marine stationed in Japan when he met and married Eiko, Roberts’ Japanese mother. Roberts has a younger sister, Melissa. His childhood was spent moving from one military base to another before settling in San Diego, California.”
Cora and Roberts were the only 2018 managers who were genuinely minorities. Toronto added a minority manager for next season by hiring Charlie Montoyo, who awaited his chance by managing in the minor leagues for 18 years.
Commissioner Rob Manfred talks a lot about minority hiring. He has initiated a program that is designed to identify prospective minority executives and help them grow into major league jobs. That pipeline plan, however, doesn’t work for managers.
The Yankees might have hired Aaron Boone as their manager when he had no managing or coaching experience in the majors or minors, but he had played baseball professionally for 15 years.
Clubs need more aggressive encouragement to hire black and Latino managers. Manfred doesn’t seem to exert that aggressive influence. Three years ago Manfred strongly urged the Milwaukee Brewers to hire David Stearns, a young white man, as general manager because Stearns had worked for Manfred in the labor department of the commissioner’s office.
I have never heard of any black or Latino – or woman, for that matter – getting such strong support from Manfred.
The success of Cora and Roberts gave the commissioner the perfect opportunity to lobby owners and general managers to hire a minority manager. But with six managerial openings available, clubs have hired four white guys and one lone Latino. The sixth opening, in Baltimore, remains open and very likely will for another couple of weeks at least.
The Orioles also need a top baseball executive. They don’t call the person who occupies that position the general manager because owner Peter Angelos doesn’t like the title. I haven’t talked to Angelos for a long time, but when I used to talk to him with some regularity, if I referred to his general manager or anyone else’s he would yell at me and say, “Why do you guys say we have to have a general manager?”
He never explained his dislike of the title, but I assumed he had a different definition of it than most baseball people and the news media.
Dan Duquette, who was fired last month along with Manager Buck Showalter after one of the worst seasons a team could have, was the Orioles’ executive vice president for baseball operations.
A baseball executive familiar with the Orioles’ plans said Saturday they are not ready to select a manager and a top baseball official, whatever they call him. When they do name a top baseball official, it could be Brady Anderson, who played for the Orioles for 14 years, including the suspicious season in which he 50 home runs. He is the club’s vice president for baseball operations.
Manfred hasn’t done any better for general managers than he has done for managers, as far as minorities are concerned.
Counting executives with the titles of general manager and president of baseball operations, the National League is 2 for 17 (Michael Hill, Miami; Farhan Zaidi, San Francisco;) the American 1 for 17 (Al Avila, Detroit). Hill is black, Avila was born in Cuba and this is an excerpt from Zaidi’s biography:
“Farhan Zaidi (born November 11, 1976) is a Canadian-American baseball executive who is currently the President of Baseball Operations for the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball. He is of Pakistani descent.
Zaidi is one of two Muslim executives in Major League Baseball. He is the first Muslim general manager of any American professional sports franchise.”
Happy birthday, Farhan, and enjoy the birthday present the Giants have given you.
As far as I know, Manfred had nothing to do with Zaidi’s rapid ascent up baseball’s executive ladder, reaching the pinnacle in San Francisco last week at the age of 42 and replacing Brian Sabean, who spent 26 years as head of the Giants’ baseball operations and produced three World Series championships in a five-year period 2010-14.
MARTINEZ GETS AGENT’S VOTE BUT NOT MVP
It was a shocking development that no one could have foreseen. A player agent criticized baseball writers for not voting his client the American League most valuable player award.
The winner of the award, however, won’t be announced until this week, how did Scott Boras know J.D. Martinez won’t win it?
Until recently, the Baseball Writers Association, or BBWAA, announced the results strung out over four days.
But succumbing to the payment of a mere pittance from MLB TV, the organization agreed to give the post-season awards to the network for a show. And you can’t have a show without contestants. In this instance, the contestants are the top three vote getters for each award.
So last week the top three were announced, and Boras found out Martinez wasn’t going to win the m.v.p. award because he wasn’t one of the top three. Martinez will very likely finish fourth, but fourth place won’t win him anything, not even an m.v.p. bonus because Boras didn’t negotiate an m.v.p. bonus.
This year’s A.L. m.v.p. contest is reminiscent of the 1976 voting, which was probably my first. Thurman Munson and Mickey Rivers both had terrific seasons for the Yankees, and the great debate was whether the m.v.p. was the player who often got on base and scored runs (Rivers) or the player who drove him in (Munson).
The similarity to this year would be Rivers and Mookie Betts on one hand and Munson and Martinez on the other. Forty-two years later, I confess I have no clear recollection of the outcome of the debate in my mind, but I think Rivers was the winner.
Researching the voting results, I find that Munson easily won the award with 304 points and 18 first-place votes to 217 points for George Brett. Rivers finished third 179 points and 1 vote for first.
Usually, when two players from the same team are in contention for an award, they take votes away from each other and neither winds up winning. As the 1976 vote turned out, that didn’t happen. We’ll see later this week if that happened with Martinez and Betts. However it turns out, it’s too late to assuage Boras.