Just a week ago I determined that Commissioner Rob Manfred’s off-season minority-hiring batting average was .091. Days later the Pittsburgh Pirates hired Derek Shelton as their manager and Manfred slumped to .083.
With all major positions filled – manager, general manager, chief of baseball operations, club president – teams have hired 11 white men and a single minority, making Manfred 1-for-12 in minority hiring this off-season. The one-sided results of the off-season hiring have made a farce of any pledge or boast that Manfred made when he became commissioner six weeks short of five years ago.
What we have seen in the past few months has to make us wonder if Manfred understands what a minority is. Carlos Beltran, whom the New York Mets hired as their new manager, is a Puerto Rican, therefore a minority.
The Pirates’ club president, Travis Williams; Boston baseball operations chief Chaim Bloom, general managers Ben Cherington (Pirates) and Scott Harris (Giants) and Managers Joe Girardi (Phillies), Gabe Kapler (Giants), Joe Maddon (Angels), David Ross (Cubs), Mike Matheny (Royals), Jayce Tingler (Padres) and Shelton (Pirates) do not qualify as minorities.
Teams in at least some instances followed M.L.B. guidelines and interviewed blacks and Hispanics for critical positions. Ron Washington was reportedly a finalist for the San Diego job that Tingler got. However, not all minority interviews are legitimate. Sometimes clubs go through the motions, interviewing a black or Hispanic just to be able to say they did and to avoid possible discipline from the commissioner.
I don’t know, though, how quick Manfred would be to discipline a club for not interviewing a minority, considering the attitude he has shown toward hiring minorities.
But then there was this ray of light in the area of minority hiring. Just as major league clubs were doing a dreadful job of hiring blacks and Hispanic for decision-making positions, two news articles reported the hiring of women for positions as minor league hitting coaches.
Rachel Balkovec and Rachel Folden will not be the chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox or manager of the New York Yankees, but even Chaim Bloom and Aaron Boone started somewhere.
The Yankees hired Balkovec as a minor league hitting coach, The New York Times reported Nov. 22 in a freelance article by Lindsay Berra, Yogi’s granddaughter. (Not that this was a major article, but Berra achieved something rarely seen in the Times—an exclusive baseball story.)
Balkovec, the article said, is believed to be the first woman hired as a full-time hitting coach by a major league team.
Why did the Yankees hire a female coach?
“It’s an easy answer to why we chose Rachel for this role,” Berra quoted Dillon Lawson, the Yankees’ hitting coordinator, as saying. “She’s a good hitting coach, and a good coach, period.”
The same day the Balkovec article appeared Chicago Cubs executives announced the hiring of Folden and expressed similar views of Folden, who will run the organization’s hitting lab and be the fourth coach for their Rookie League Mesa team.
All of this talk about women in baseball got me thinking not about women in baseball but a young girl in baseball. Debbie was the first girl in the Paramus, N.J. youth league and one of the first girls in the country to play on teams with boys in youth leagues, and she was small but darn good.
“There are some guys who wouldn’t consider taking a girl into the major leagues,” Dick Schwartz, the manager, who not only considered but also took Debbie into Triple A, told me when I wrote about my daughter for The New York Times.
“There had been no response to anyone else, but when I picked her, the other managers said, ‘You picked a girl. Oh, the first girl. There’s a girl in Triple A’ Like it was a whole undertaking. Everyone else, including her manager last year, chose not to take her. But I’m thrilled to death with her. Debbie’s been a great asset to the team.”
Her male teammates did not resent her nor were they embarrassed by the 65-pound, 4-foot-5 second baseman.
“She’s better than some of the boys! She’s our best second baseman,” said Carlos Gandiaga, a 12-year‐old member of the team. “She covers her position well, she has a rifle arm and she’s a good, good, good, good hitter. I used to be opposed to girls playing, but when I saw how Debbie was, I changed my mind. Now it makes no difference to me if a girl plays. She just has to compete, show that she wants to do it. If she doesn’t, the boys would mock her out.”
Debbie’s presence on the team often confused spectators.
“Is that a girl?” one woman asked at a game, seeing Debbie’s short blonde hair peeking out from her green cap.
“I don’t know,” her friend replied. “A lot of boys look like girls today.”
“It’s a girl,” I said, walking by the stands.
“A girl!” the first woman exclaimed. “Golly gee whiz! And look—she plays the infield.”
And I can’t forget Dick Schwartz, the manager, who after a game in which Debbie got a timely hit lamented, “I can’t even pat you on the backside.”
Debbie has since moved on to other things, teaching for one thing, having children of her own for another. She has three grown children, one of whose names may be familiar to you. He is Zach Kram, who used to write for this website and currently writes for The Ringer.
