Editor’s Note: This is the 10th in a 10-part series commemorating baseball’s new commissioner with advice for his tenure. To read more about this series, click here.
Mariners’ manager Lloyd McClendon is MLB’s lone black manager at present. (via Eric Enfermero)
In that sense, they are risks. Yet none of the teams changing skippers this season was willing to take a chance on a person of color. Such has been the trend in baseball, despite the league having a better reputation overall for its attempts to diversify racially. MLB received a grade of “A” for its racial hiring practices in the most recent Racial and Gender Report Card, which the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport publishes every spring.
An endeavor created 22 years ago by Dr. Richard Lapchick at the University of Central Florida, his team’s report tries to answer the questions, “Are we playing fair when it comes to sports? Does everyone, regardless of race or gender, have a chance to play or to operate a team?” While the study gives MLB only a C+ for its gender hiring practices, that’s understandable (if not acceptable) by comparison because women don’t play professional baseball (yet). But Lapchick was expressly effusive in his praise for commissioner Bud Selig on overall matters of inclusion:
Now in his final season, Selig is recognized for his contributions of increasing diversity in baseball. MLB continues to make real progress in the areas of inclusion and diversity.
It is the sport of Jackie Robinson, after all. Robinson’s arrival in 1947 impacted not only the Brooklyn Dodgers, the National League and MLB, but also the entire country. Robinson’s inclusion, along with those who followed, helped to lay the groundwork for the growing civil rights movement. Martin Luther King even praised Robinson for being able to endure wrongs that King couldn’t see himself handling. On that note, Lapchick says:
In celebrating this 67th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, it is vital that we focus on the dream he set forth for baseball. Jackie wanted to see a diverse mixture of people participating in the sport through all levels: On the field as coaches and players, as well as those in the front office.
It probably would behoove incoming commissioner Rob Manfred to treat diversity in MLB not as a “problem solved” but instead one that probably won’t ever cease. Because what the Lapchick report doesn’t show is that, in the wake of Ron Washington and Bo Porter losing their respective jobs during the 2014 season, MLB is down to one black manager — Lloyd McClendon of the Seattle Mariners. And after the Chicago Cubs decided to replace Rick Renteria with Joe Maddon in the offseason, Fredi Gonzalez of the Atlanta Braves, a Latino, was the only other person of color managing a major league club.
As recently as 2009, there were 10 managers of color in MLB. Never in Selig’s tenure as commissioner had the number been lower than three. The last time the number of minority managers got that low — 1999 — Selig told the owners to do something about it, along with the number of minority general managers.
Although Selig is staying on in an emeritus capacity, Manfred will be the point man going forward. One person who should and probably will have his ear is Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall, who also has served on diversity committees under Selig. Hall says the Diamondbacks’ policy is to try to hire a person of color for any job, with all other pertinent details being equal, but he also acknowledges the league as a whole has fallen into a rut.
“We’ve hit a bit of a cold streak and we need to get back on track and trending upward with minority hiring,” Hall told The Hardball Times. “The thing we need to be careful with, and can’t get comfortable with, is people just going through the motions and checking off a box. They’ve got to be legitimate candidates we’re considering, and if we’re not bringing them to the interviews, shame on us — because they are out there.”
The D-backs made sweeping changes this offseason, including the hiring of Dave Stewart as general manager and DeJon Watson as senior vice president of baseball operations. Both are black, which makes them exceptions. Stewart is the only black GM in the majors, though Michael Hill of the Miami Marlins and Ken Williams of the Chicago White Sox also oversee baseball operations for their respective teams.
Stewart and Watson were put in a position — along with chief baseball officer Tony La Russa — to hire a manager, who turned out to be Hale, who happens to be white. Stewart, or any executive of color, is in a no-win situation when it comes to race. Hire a minority, and people will complain it’s a case of looking out for your own kind. Don’t hire a minority, and at worst you’re a hypocrite and part of the problem.
“I would never say to Dave, ‘You have to hire a minority,'” Hall said. “As I’ve said in conversations with him and others, ‘Our preference would be to hire a minority.’ All things equal, let’s go with a minority.”
Stewart declined to be interviewed for this story, but he made waves in 2001 after quitting the Toronto Blue Jays after they passed him over for the GM job, which went instead to J.P. Ricciardi. Stewart had been an assistant GM with the Jays. At the time, Williams was the only GM of color in the majors.
“They think the only people capable of doing these jobs are white people, not minorities,” Stewart said at the time. “The playing field is never going to be equal.”
Because ownership is almost all white. Even today, Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Paxton Baker of the Washington Nationals are the only black individuals who own even a part of a major league team. Arte Moreno of the Los Angeles Angels, a Latino, is the only person of color with whom the buck stops in MLB.
Stewart’s righteously angry reaction in ’01 came two seasons after Selig directed a mandate at MLB franchises to include minorities in the hiring process. Progress has not been linear in MLB, clearly. Selig expressed concern in September that the number of managers of color had dwindled, just like he did in 2006 when the number dropped from 10 to three. Three years later, it was back up to 10. The owners listen to Bud, generally.
“I can’t tell the clubs whom to hire,” Selig said at the time. “All I can tell them to do is increase the pool. And they have.”
The “playing field” still isn’t “equal,” but there are mechanisms in place to make a difference, as long as the commissioner prods ownership to make it a priority. The commissioner works for the owners, but it’s in the same way that a personal trainer works for the person trying to get into shape. It’s expected that you’ll get yelled at if you slack off. Hall also referred to a running list the MLB central office has kept that has the names of “up-and-comers, or those who were knocking on the door, or those who have been interviewed three or four times, but just weren’t picked for the job.”
“We all know, when we’re going through a hiring process — not just for managers, coaches and general managers, but also for other staff — to work with the central office,” Hall said.
The “Selig Rule” predates the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which was established in 2003 to help facilitate the same goals in football. Some say the Rooney Rule doesn’t work anymore, or at least not as well as it used to. As in football — as in any business — minority hiring programs are only going to work, really, if ownership makes it a priority. If the owners don’t think it’s important, it won’t happen. And it should be important, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it behooves MLB to make the product reflect its audience. Exclude part of the audience, and you cost yourself quality and, potentially, profits.
Considering that MLB is a $9 billion industry, it might be tough to convince the entire lot of ownership that having almost no managers or GMs of color matters. But it does, and MLB will feel the consequences of it someday because segments of its audience won’t be able to identify with the people they see running the game.
There have been numerous circumstances since 1999 where the “Selig Rule” has been flat-out ignored, but teams have been given exemptions or reportedly bought their way out of being penalized. And in many ways, all teams are on something of an honor system. It’s up to them.
“There’s nothing that I’ve been prouder of than changing the diverse feel and look of our organization,” Hall said. “It’s a work in progress, but I think a lot of us need to make our teams look more like the rest of America. Bud has said that he wants baseball to look more like America. I think Rob will pick up where Bud left off.”
Much has been made of the dwindling number of black baseball players, down to 8.2 percent of the MLB population by 2014, equaling the all-time low of 2007. It had been 19 percent in 1995. In the 1970s, it came close to 30 percent. The coaching ranks have dried up, too. Staffs were 19.2 percent African American in 2002, but had dropped to 10 percent in 2013, according to the most recent data Lapchick used.
The number of Latinos on coaching staffs fluctuates; it was 6.7 percent in 2014 but was 13.8 percent as recently as 2010. It might behoove clubs to keep that number higher, too, just so the teams have coaches who can communicate with rosters that have so many native Spanish speakers on them.
Regardless, so the logic goes: Fewer coaches of color in the pipeline means fewer aspiring managers of color, which means still fewer get the jobs. Hall says the reality isn’t as bleak if you dig deeper, looking not only at the number of minorities managing in the minor leagues, but the attention paid to all minorities in general.
“I think we’re about to see a pretty strong wave of minority hires coming,” Hall said. “Very shortly.”
The best advice to Rob Manfred: Jump on board and catch that wave.