Now that Bud Selig has struck a blow for minority hiring by adding a 14-year-old female to MLB.com as a youth reporter, maybe he’ll turn his attention to his crumbling efforts to induce teams to hire adult minorities for significant positions, general manager and manager, for instance. Teams don’t seem to be doing that these days.
The results of this year’s off-season hiring practices are appalling, abysmal, astoundingly poor, and couldn’t be worse if the clubs had set out with a joint policy to shun completely the addition of a member of a minority as a general manager or manager.
Richard Lapchick, who scrutinizes sports for their diversity in hiring, has recently applauded Major League Baseball for its improvement in hiring minorities, but he’s talking about mid-level and low-level positions, not significant jobs like general managers and managers.
Lapchick believes it’s important to get minorities in the pipeline so they have opportunities for bigger and better jobs. What he apparently doesn’t know is that baseball’s pipeline has a built-in detour for minorities.
There’s a directional sign that points to a path that proclaims “whites only.” It’s reminiscent of the drinking fountain signs in the old South that said “whites only.” The way baseball has acted in recent years it wouldn’t be surprising to see another sign: “Colored need not apply.”
This is what I’m talking about:
This off-season teams hired seven new general managers and an eighth executive as president of baseball operations. All eight are white American males. None is a member of a minority.
Teams hired five new managers. Four are white American males; one, Ozzie Guillen, is Hispanic, and he moved laterally to the Marlins from a similar position with the White Sox.
Perhaps worse was the small number of minority candidates for the jobs. The eight executive openings drew 18 interviews; three of those 18 were members of minorities. The five managerial vacancies produced 21 interviews, six for minorities, including one candidate, Sandy Alomar Jr., twice, and one, DeMarlo Hale, who was interviewed by telephone.
Is this any way, to run a minority hiring program? Is this any way to encourage clubs to consider members of minorities for those major jobs?
The commissioner apparently thinks so. When I asked him last month, while the job searches were proceeding, what he thought about them, he said he was satisfied that the clubs were conducting themselves properly. It obviously doesn’t take much to satisfy Selig.
At the start of the 1999 season Selig issued an edict saying that clubs had to include minorities among the people they interviewed for decision-making positions. He didn’t say how many blacks or Hispanics, or women for that matter, clubs had to interview. Nor did he say clubs had to hire minorities for the jobs; he explained at the time that he didn’t feel he could tell clubs whom to hire.
Early on, Selig took credit for the policy, especially because it preceded the National Football League’s Rooney Rule, which deals with teams’ interviewing minorities for coaching positions.
But Selig created his policy at the urging of Leonard Coleman, who was baseball’s last National League president and an ardent advocate of minority hiring. Coleman, in fact, wrote the guidelines on which Selig’s policy is based.
Despite all of his positive efforts on baseball’s behalf, Coleman made one fatal mistake, and it cost him. In the early 1990s, after the owners ousted Fay Vincent as commissioner and baseball was seeking his replacement, Selig repeatedly and loudly said he was not interested in the fulltime job.
Foolishly, as it turned out, Coleman took Selig at his word and quietly let it be known in baseball circles that he was interested. That was the end of Coleman in baseball. Of course, Selig wanted the job, and no one dared to try to snatch it from him.
Coleman, however, remained an influence on the commissioner, who could use his help now to deal with the debacle minority hiring has become.
Since the Phillies named Ruben Amaro Jr. their general manager in November 2008, clubs have hired 11 new general managers, all white American males.
In that time, a Hispanic general manager (Omar Minaya) and a black general manager (Tony Reagins) lost their jobs and were replaced with white American males, leaving Amaro and Ken Williams of the White Sox as the lone minority general managers.
During the same period, two clubs named team presidents; they’re white, too.
Also in the same period 21 new managers were named, including this off-season’s quintet, and only four of them have been minorities. Three of that quartet were recycled, Guillen, Fredi Gonzalez and Manny Acta, leaving Edwin Rodriguez as the only new manager, and he resigned from his job with the Marlins part-way through last season.
The minority population among managers is down to Dusty Baker, Ron Washington, Guillen, Gonzalez and Acta.
The minority population of either of these jobs won’t likely climb as long as teams interview as few minorities as they have. Thirty-nine candidates were interviewed for 13 positions this off-season, 30 white males and only 10 Hispanics, blacks or women (all right, you can’t expect women to be interviewed for a manager’s job, but general manager; why not?)
That’s a ratio of 3 to 1. That is not the ratio of white American players to non-white players in the major leagues. Of the 846 players on major league rosters or the disabled list on opening day last season, according to various sources, primarily Major League Baseball, 306 were foreign-born or African-American.
That total computes to 36 percent. Using that ratio for this off-season’s job interviews, clubs should have interviewed four more minorities.
Certainly, without looking too hard, clubs could find non-whites worthy of consideration. Look at the job Amaro has done with the Phillies. Note the job Washington has done in Texas.
Yet five, or just one shy of half, of the teams involved in hiring general managers and managers this off-season, ignored the commissioner’s rule altogether and interviewed no minorities.
“I’m quite satisfied that all the clubs have done what they’re supposed to do,” Selig said when I raised the issue with him last month. But he declined to offer specifics on this off-season’s interviewing process. “We don’t talk about it,” he said.
That apparently is Selig’s current policy: do nothing, say nothing.
Has Selig disciplined teams for their deliberate oversight of his interviewing requirement? He doesn’t discipline; he excuses. Undermining his own authority, Selig has not held clubs accountable to his 1999 edict.
Worse, he has not recognized that minority hiring is in full-flight reverse. Selig has squandered the gains he made in the initial years of his plan to enhance minority opportunities, and he is doing nothing to reverse the farcical trend.
Far be it for me to tell the commissioner what he should do – he makes far too much money for anyone to have to tell him what to do; $22 million a year was the last figure I heard – but he apparently needs help.
For one thing, he has to put teeth into his 1999 edict, whacking teams with sizable fines for ignoring his directive, no excuses accepted. For another, he has to beef up the interviewing process. He cannot allow clubs to interview a token black or Hispanic. If necessary, demand that for every white guy interviewed, a club has to interview a minority.
A new system might not result in any more minorities being hired, but if more minorities were interviewed, a club might actually stumble across a candidate it likes for the job it has available. What a thought.
Make the interviews meaningful. No more sham telephone interviews as DeMarlo Hale had with the Cubs. Treat the black or Hispanic candidate with the same decency and respect as the white candidate gets.
There are other steps the commissioner could take if he is serious about the issue; he could use the weight of his office to influence club decisions, for example. He doesn’t want to tell clubs whom to hire? The time has come to change that policy, too.
GUILTY VERDICT PRECEDES BRAUN APPEAL
If Ryan Braun is guilty of having used a performance-enhancing substance banned by Major League Baseball, let him be treated like any other violator, whether it be Manny Ramirez or Rafael Palmeiro or Mark McGwire. Before we condemn Braun, though, shouldn’t we find out if he is guilty?
Almost before he had a chance to appeal his positive test, Braun was lynched by the news media, loudly pronounced guilty for his alleged transgression.
Some people, including some baseball writers, thought the Baseball Writers Association should strip him of the National League most valuable player award it had voted him only days earlier. The BBWAA invited its members to comment on its Web site.
Even if he is acquitted on appeal, the Milwaukee left fielder will likely never be able to overcome the overwhelmingly negative impression the media created.
The reaction was so swift and damning that it compelled the union leader, Michael Weiner, to issue an unusual statement calling for calm and common sense.
“Our Joint Drug Agreement is designed to protect a player from a rush to judgment before he can challenge a reported positive test result,” Weiner said in a statement issued while he was in Venezuela meeting with players. “Fairness dictates that Ryan Braun be treated no differently. I urge all to reserve judgment on this matter until the JDA’s process has played itself out.”
Union officials rarely speak about drug developments because the joint program is confidential. Weiner wasn’t claiming innocence for the National League most valuable player; he was saying wait until his appeal is heard. It was a fair and sensible request but didn’t necessarily stop the media frenzy.
One day last week, for example, The New York Times, published a piece about players always being unsuccessful in their appeals of positive tests.
“About a dozen players have appealed their positive test results,” The Times reported, “and all have failed to get the results overturned, according to a person in baseball with knowledge of the process.”
As the Times later explained to me, the article referred only to major leaguers, but there was a case the Times, had it done its homework and learned about it, could have used to demonstrate otherwise.
Just the day before on MLB.com, Carrie Muskat detailed the successful appeal of Brendan Katin, a minor league outfielder, in 2007 after he had tested positive for having too high a testosterone level, the same crime with which Braun is charged.
Later that season his appeal cleared Katin, whose experience could bode well for Braun, his teammate at the University of Miami.
BONDS BEATS BOTCHED CASE
Once again Barry Bonds has escaped the hangman.
For his obstruction of justice conviction, the seven-time most valuable player received no jail time but was sentenced to two years’ probation and a whole 30 days of house arrest, which he would spend in his Beverly Hills mansion. We all should be so lucky to have that kind of house arrest even if we aren’t guilty of anything.
The best part of the whole deal is Bonds doesn’t have to do anything until his appeal of his sentence is disposed of. That would include paying a $4,000 fine and a $100 assessment fee, though why he was assessed $100 wasn’t clear. Maybe it was for the use of the courtroom.
But there was one aspect of his sentence that really makes a lot of sense. Bonds was ordered to perform 250 hours of youth-related community service. Community service is always a vague concept, but given Bonds’ background with steroids, even though he has not been convicted in connection with their use, he would be in great position to teach youngsters how to use them and get away with it.
He could tell them that flaxseed oil is the way to go. It worked for him both on the field, where he hit all of those home runs, and in the grand jury room, where he explained that that’s what he thought his trainer had given him. Bonds never explained the effect the flaxseed oil had on his home run production.
But he got away with it because the government botched the prosecution, spending many years and many millions of dollars to nail him for 30 days house arrest.