really good piece by Jeff Passan
more at the link
The Selig Rule is a sham, a mandatory decree to promote minority hiring that conveniently ignores the mandate part, and the active disregard of it by Major League Baseball teams reached its nadir Monday when the Miami Marlins followed the path of their brethren and hired another white guy with zero managerial experience without bothering to interview another candidate.
That the Marlins were involved in a farce of one variety or another came as no surprise. By naming general manager Dan Jennings their field manager, they copied the trend pervading baseball: handing important jobs to novice candidates while the commissioner’s office continues to rubber-stamp a systemic snuffing-out of minorities.
View
With every trip to White Guys ‘R’ Us, baseball reinforces a dangerous idea that, even if not rooted in truth, lives understandably in the subconscious of every minority inside the game: The glass ceiling still exists, and it seems to get lower by the hire. Used to be the fear was not getting the job or being a sham candidate. Now, teams don’t even bother with an interview process, and baseball somehow finds this acceptable.
Such railroading would be problematic in any other industry. For baseball, which champions itself as a bastion of diversity, markets itself through the prism of Jackie Robinson’s legacy and hails its place in history, it’s disingenuous bordering on hypocritical. When Selig sent a memo in 1999 requiring teams to interview a minority candidate for top positions in baseball operations and on the bench, he sought 12 years after Al Campanis to prove baseball a post-racial profession that complements its on-field talent with management that resembles it.
Nearly 30 percent of major league players are Latino. Three percent of managers – Atlanta’s Fredi Gonzalez, all alone – are the same. As scant as African-American players are these days, at just 8.3 percent, the percentage of black managers is even lower. Seattle’s Lloyd McClendon is the one and only. Among executives, the numbers aren’t much better. There are two black presidents of baseball operations (the Marlins’ Mike Hill and the Chicago White Sox’s Kenny Williams) and four minority GMs: Farhan Zaidi, Dave Stewart, Jeff Luhnow and Ruben Amaro Jr.
This is not a call for teams to hire minorities just to hire minorities. That would be counterproductive and wrong. It is a reminder that whether intentional or unintentional, baseball’s actions in allowing teams to subvert the intent of the Selig Rule scream exclusion. Baseball’s audience already skews far too white for its tastes. What sort of message does it send to minorities grinding their way through the game, or considering pursuing a post-playing career in the sport, when front offices settle on a candidate and weasel their way out of the interview process with loopholes that keep getting exploited?