MLB Must Maintain Its Minority Hiring Advances

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)

Mariners’ manager Lloyd McClendon is MLB’s lone black manager at present. (via Eric Enfermero)

Six teams in major league baseball will have new managers in 2015, and all of the skippers are white. Four of them — Chip Hale of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Paul Molitor of the Minnesota Twins, Jeff Banister of the Texas Rangers and Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays — enter with no major league managing experience.

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.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

“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.


Dave Brown recently joined Fangraphs and CBS' Eye on Baseball after seven years writing for Big League Stew at Yahoo Sports. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and young daughter — who appears to be a left-hander. Follow him on Twitter @AnswerDave.
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Jeremy Losak
9 years ago

I hate that we look at percentages when determining diversity in the workplace. Look at your managers: most of them are former MLB players. Well what percentage of MLB players from let’s say 1970-2000 were of minority? I’ll give you the answer: not a high one. The applicant pool for available minority coaches just simply isn’t that high. So lets say that 80% of your applicants are white, you’re much more likely to have THE MOST QUALIFIED APPLICANT (and that should be the one and only basis for hiring) in that pool of %80 white applicants then in the 20% minority pile. Again I’m not saying whether whites or minorities could do the job better, rather I am examining the reason why there are so few minority coaches. It is not that the hiring practices are poor, just that the applicant pool itself skews towards white former players.

Rally
9 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Losak

If your pool is 80% white and 20% minority, and you have 30 positions, you’d expect 6 of them to be minority.

Recently baseball has a lower percentage of black players (though I think the white % has been constant, with Hispanics making the difference), compared to say, 1970-1980.

Some of this may actually be caused by less racism, not more. For example I was reading about Vida Blue. Incredible pitcher early on. Had he been a high school prospect in 2010 instead of the late 60’s though, he probably would not have played baseball. Instead, he would have been a quarterback. Football was his preference. He choose baseball because of the reality that back then, nobody was going to give a chance to a black quarterback.

Tomston
9 years ago
Reply to  Rally

We’d assume 6 would be minority if we also assume equal skill level (in terms of managing and whatnot). But I agree that the current round of front office staff was born in the 70’s and 80’s in the mlb, and that the most qualified applicant, regardless of race, should be hired. One solution the commissioner should consider is mandating at least one person of color be interviewed for positions. Doesn’t force any hiring of colored persons, which would ruin the sport, forcing hirings of a less qualified applicant: if they were more qualified, they’d be hired by now in all these teams that have been hiring staff. But by giving them opportunities to be seen and interviewed, a diamond in the rough can be found as well as in the future more colored coaches will appear. If they know they’re guaranteed an interview, the colored coaches could prepare better and work harder and strive to be a manager and down the road, be hired more prevelently.

Chuck2a
9 years ago
Reply to  Rally

Tomston,
There is no quota nor a mandate to hire. Just a mandate to give a fair chance by interviewing qualified applicants (and not just be a sham).

It is understandable that LAD wanted Torre. He is a special case due to his prior accomplishments. So, MLB have then a waver from interviewing minority candidates unnecessarily. But, in the case of Tigers hiring Garner without ever considering anybody else, it is not justifiable. Garner is nothing special. MLB policy is to simply provide the opportunity to be hired.

Dennis Bedard
9 years ago

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that every man should be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. Look how far we have come. ‘Our preference would be to hire a minority.’ All things equal, let’s go with a minority.” WOW!!! I believe in diversity too. I think we should start with the NBA and college basketball. The racial make up of these teams does not in any way reflect the diversity of the student body of which they are a part or the city in which they play. Maybe we can start with Duke and demand that they increase the number of white high SAT scoring Jewish kids on their roster or that the Knicks do the same. Maybe the Miami Heat can be pressured to unload Wade and Bosh for some Hispanic players so that their roster can look like the demographic make up of South Florida. But why stop at classifying by skin color? Gay managers and players need to be recruited too and included in the “diversity scorecard.” It is really sad that the practice of judging people and hiring them on the basis of their skin color has become so ingrained in the elite portions of our cultural institutions.

Chuck2a
9 years ago
Reply to  Dennis Bedard

You win the most asinine post in this thread. Nobody claims that players are not fairly represented. The qualification to be a player is objective, and those inn the available pool that make the cut are playing.

For managers and GMs, the judgment is quite subjective. How can you judge that Ricciardi in Toronto is better qualified that Williams? (BTW, I think he was, but this is my subjective view). There is no objective test. With the lack of any objective test, the only thing that you have to go by is looking at ratios. It does not mean quota, but just a warning system that something may not be running as intended, and owners need be more vigilant.

Also, that does not mean that the owners and the people hiring are racists. Although, there are racists out there, these things tend to be less nefarious. People tend to flock to other people that look more like them intentionally. It just is, including in hiring, and in the process, are not taking advantage of the complete pool of talent. This is not just baseball, it is with any company. Our idea of the ideal candidate is always seen through our own glasses, and referring or own experience. In the process, we miss on a lot of opportunities. Smart companies force themselves to seek out diversity in their work force because diversity guards against group think and promote variety of thoughts. And without seeking hiring diversity, inertia will always arrive at a uniform workforce.

Tomston
9 years ago

The biggest problem with trying to have a “less white” workplace is skill level. The BEST you can do for your sport is to mandate that teams interview someone of color. To force them to hire one would ruin the league and their teams: if blacks and Latinos were there most qualified managers, every team would have them. Sure, there’s probably a few racist GMs and owners out there, but NOT all 30 teams’. The nfl had the same problem, colored coaches overall did worse than white ones but the nfl forced teams to consider them in interviews anyways. Now, slowly, more and more qualified colored coaches are showing up and being hired. Cause and effect.

Canuck
9 years ago
Reply to  Tomston

Colored? Really?

Will
9 years ago

What MLB “needs” to do is ensure all qualified candidates have an opportunity to interview for open position and then encourage teams to hire based on ability, not skin color. Unless there is a reason to believe there is systemic bias in baseball with regard to hiring practices, trying to fill quotas is counter-productive at best. So too is the notion that “all else being equal, I’d prefer to hire a minority” because it introduces reverse discrimination into the process. These are dubious practices that should only be considered as a last resort in an environment where fairness is deemed unachievable. I don’t think that’s the case in MLB (and certainly not with the Diamondbacks).

The fact that MLB’s minority hiring profile has fluctuated is a good thing because it demonstrates that decisions are being made based not on quotas, but quality. As others have noted, the hiring pool for coaches and managers is almost exclusively former professional players who, based on the average age of managers (53), began playing in the 1980s. According to SABR, in 1985, white players made up 70% of the league, so, if we used that as a basis for fairness, we’d see MLB has achieved (even if it hasn’t maintained) that rate at various points over the past decade. Of course, there are other variables to consider, such as the positions played by future managers/coaches as well as the types of players who gravitate toward these jobs (for example, what was the racial makeup of journeyman infielder and catchers in the mid-1980s)?

MLB, and all institutions, should be vigilant when it comes to ensuring equal access to opportunity, but judging fairness by quotas isn’t the answer. The best advice to Rob Manfred would be to continue to preach equal access for all, even when “all else is equal”.

jimmer
9 years ago

‘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.’

“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.”

The above quotes are disturbing. At some point, we should just be about hiring the best person qualified, period, whether that means hiring a minority or not. In the above statement, he clearly has a preference on who to hire and if he instead said, ‘All things being equal, I’d hire a white person’, he’d get HAMMERED for it. In fact, the league would figure out a way for him to get ousted.

Hale seems like his goal is to be the poster child, and to be KNOWN as a poster child, which makes one wonder what his true motives are. I say this because of the following quote:

‘“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.’

Maybe he should be more concerned with how bad his club is and just hire whomever he thinks is best qualified to get them back to respectability.

Yoster
9 years ago

I bet none of the commenters were a person of color. Get real. GMs and Owners–all things being equal–will hire the white guy.

Chuck2a
9 years ago
Reply to  Yoster

You are absolutely right. And I am not accusing them of being racists. Some of them may be, but the vast majority are just hiring who they think is the best qualified, but always end up with people like them. It is just human nature.
In a hiring process where there is no objective measure, we all look at the prospective hire through our own prism, and judging by our own experience. That’s why we always end up with similar candidates. And that why MLB (and any other organization) must keep such policies promoting (of course, but mandating) minority hiring.

Yoster
9 years ago

For anyone to think that it is an issue of qualifications just shows how incredibly ignorant Americans are in general. I guess the commenters here think that choking a guy and killing him or shooting a 12 year old, or killing an unarmed person is_________________. Only a white person (and yes I am white) would say stuff like, the white guy got the job because he was the most qualified. How do I know this? i know this because I got my job yet I wasn’t the most qualified; it was the black guy but they did not hire him because he was BLACK. Don’t kid yourself folks and think that GMs and Owners hire the most qualified; they hire the guy that looks more like them. That looks more like the fan base–White.

james wilson
9 years ago

The issue that separates out blacks from managerial positions is intelligence. Period. One in forty American blacks have an IQ of at least 115, one in six of whites, and almost one half of American (Ashkenazi) Jews. of whom we see many in baseball. This translates into a pool of over thirty million to reach the minimum “necessity” for a complex task (as Al Campanis was fired for saying) only 800,000 of which are black. At the 130 level, there are a scattering of blacks only, and a lot of Jews. And this is exactly what we see. GM’s are more likely to be 130’s, managers not so much, but the average black IQ of 85 is nowhere near being in the game regardless of what he has done on the field.

Canuck
9 years ago
Reply to  james wilson

Racist garbage. Glad you don’t pick your presidents based on this pseudoscience.

Dennis Bedard
9 years ago

James Wilson raises an interesting issue by accident. The relationship between a successful sport manager/coach and IQ. Here is a random and non exclusive list of successful or winning baseball managers:
1. Casey Stengel
2. Billy Martin
3. Earl Weaver
4. Dick Williams
5. Danny Ozark
6. Ralph Houk
7. Jack McKeon
8. Charlie Manuel
You can make your own list but you get the point. Now ask yourselves, how many of these managers was known for his ability at quantum mechanics. Zero. And most of them were not that smart at anything other than baseball. You can say the same about successful presidents and CEO’s. It is their instinct and ability to get along with other people and motivate them that determines success. IQ wise, Ronald Reagan and FDR were two of the most mediocre students ever elected president. FDR flunked out of law school. When teams select a manager, the last thing they want is a Rhodes scholar/MENSA type.

james wilson
9 years ago
Reply to  Dennis Bedard

Wrong. Stengel, Martin, and Weaver were highly intelligent. Stengel invented the platoon system, five man rotation, and disdained the bunt. BTW, Williams in particular was never known for his ability to get along with anybody, and Martin was loathed by many more. And I never said Managers had to have exceptional IQ’s, but 85 is a non starter.

The GM must have an exceptional IQ, more so today than ever. The best GM in baseball was hired away from Wall Street with zero baseball experience.

Joe Pilla
9 years ago

If one doesn’t believe that hiring a qualified person of color for a management position of a MLB team is simply the right thing to do, fine. Note again please this part of David’s essay:

“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.”

If one is in a global entertainment business in the 21st Century, it is simply good business to hire members of management who reflect the business’ workforce AND its audience. Folks will not want to play for or patronize organizations that do not value their communities. Sensitivity to diversity is an advantage in today’s economy, and MLB ignores that to its peril in its competition with the NBA, NFL, and other global sports brands.

james wilson
9 years ago
Reply to  Joe Pilla

MLB has no black fans. This is suddenly an issue? That already happened uon integration, and rapidly. The best way to lose fans is to have a crappy franchise. Half of all ML franchises will be below average at any one time. Hiring the most crucial executives according to skin tone is not the path to becoming above average. But by all means put your money into a franchise that chooses that business practice.

DiamondZDog
9 years ago

I Love it , in your own words you said about the hiring of Dave Stewart as GM of Dbacks ..And their selection of Hale.. Stewart is in a no win situation, when it comes to race , hire a minority and people will complain , its a case for looking out for your own kind, Well that is what this article is someone complaining that these white GMS are only looking out for their own kind……..give me a break todays must win attitude its hard to believe these GMs are only hiring white managers , because they are “looking out for their own kind”..Plus Mr. Losak comment is 100% accurate , a story a few years ago on these very pages , about the lack of African / Americans in baseball.. The well is running dry..

Tommy p
9 years ago

I like your website but I don’t want to read about politically correct bullshit on it. Please stop. Baseball, please. Not politics.