A few decades back, a Los Angeles Dodgers executive named Al Campanis got into a heap of trouble for opining that African Americans might be good ball players, but they lacked the “necessities” to be field managers or executives.
Apparently, the spirit of Al Campanis has returned and is now haunting the suites of the white men who own baseball. And it raises this question:
Has America’s national pastime become a game for whites only?
Yes, I know: African Americans have larger worries, like not getting shot by police or in church. Still, pro sports reflect society, and the reflection from pro baseball could make you snow blind.
The sport that once defined America seems to be slipping back into the old racist ways that have plagued it from the beginning.
I say this for several reasons, including the fact that many African Americans who follow baseball have been saying it, with alarm and anger.
The chief evidence, in my view, is the way those who own pro baseball teams are hiring managers—the most visible leadership role on the baseball diamond.
Take a look around the managerial ranks. Forty years after the first African-American baseball manager—Frank Robinson—took over a club, only one remains, despite a stream of openings in the past few years. That’s Lloyd McClendon, manager of the Seattle Mariners.
This is in stark contrast to America’s other major sports, football and basketball. Yet I see no sign that it’s going to change.
The most recent examples took place in recent weeks when Craig Counsell became manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, Dan Jennings took over the Miami Marlins, and the San Diego Padres appointed Pat Murphy as manager.
Jennings is a bizarre outlier, a general manager who never played pro ball, nor coached or managed a pro team. Murphy was a Padres minor league coach.
Counsell is more significant. He is a young, white, recently retired baseball player. That is the boilerplate these days.
Consider who has snagged the managers’ jobs in the past couple of years: Mike Matheny, Walt Weiss, A.J. Hinch, Brad Ausmus, Paul Molitor, Ryne Sandberg, Robin Ventura, Chip Hale, Kevin Cash, Don Mattingly, Counsell.
Ausmus and Hinch are especially aggravating. Ausmus, with no experience, was handed the job of managing arguably the best team in baseball at the time, the Detroit Tigers. And Hinch, a failure as a player in Oakland, a manager in Arizona, and an executive in San Diego, got the Houston Astros job.
Hinch replaced the next-to-last black manager, Bo Porter, who, I guarantee you, is not going to get all the second, third, and fourth chances Hinch got.
Neither are other minority managers who got one shot, like Rick Renteria of the Cubs, who was jettisoned after a year on the job.
These young guys join such other old-school white managers as Mike Sciosia, who still runs the Angels even though he has not taken his high-payroll team to the World Series since 2001.
Meanwhile, Dusty Baker, who is 16th on the all-time managerial wins list with 1,671, can’t get a job managing a pro baseball team. Ditto Cito Gaston, who won two World Series, more than any of the other managers mentioned in this column.
The Oakland A’s just hired Ron Washington—the most successful manager in Texas Rangers history—as an infield coach. What, no manager job for Wash?
These hires give the lie to the sentiment permeating the comments on the Internet that team owners hire the best people.
It’s not just proven winners like Washington, Baker, and Gaston who are shut out. Guys who have as much or more experience than the men who get hired, like veteran coach DeMarlo Hale, don’t get a bite at the apple. Young retired African American players like Chris Singleton get nowhere.
And it’s not just African Americans: Hispanics are generally not given a shot either.
Watch any baseball game on the tube and look at the coaches, at first or third or on the bench. Why hasn’t Omar Vizquel been offered a manager’s job? Roberto Alomar Jr.? Why Matheny over longtime coach Jose Oquendo?
Why is Tony Pena, a successful manager with Kansas City a decade ago, confined to being a Yankees coach? What about Ozzie Guillen, who led the White Sox to their first World Series title in a century? Why did Mattingly get the Dodgers gig over Davey Lopes, an iconic Dodger.
Well, you get the point, and if you don’t, members of America’s minority communities do.
Why is this happening? It’s hard not to conclude that the zillionaires who own baseball teams simply feel comfortable with these young, white whiz kids. Hinch, for example, is an articulate Stanford grad who can talk sabermetrics.
Does anyone care about this? It’s hard to say. Sports writers delight in going after Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and other players for their “cheating” transgressions—exonerating team managers, owners, and trainers, who surely knew, as did the sports writers themselves, about steroid use.
But they have ignored this story. On the other hand, would you really expect Ken Rosenthal, Brian Kenny, Tom Verducci, Jon Heyman and the others who dominate the baseball media to deal with a racial issue in baseball? They have one in their own profession.
McClendon’s team has been struggling, and if the team doesn’t turn it around, he is probably going to get the sack, leaving no black managers in baseball. Maybe then someone will pay attention. Or not.
Contributor Bob Cuddy voices his opinion from Arroyo Grande. Contact him via the interim editor at [email protected].
