Edwards Says It Would Be ‘Stupid’ Not to Use Campanis to Help Blacks

Harry Edwards, the baseball commissioner’s special consultant to bring minorities into management, said Friday he asked former Dodger executive Al Campanis to join him because it would be “stupid” to keep him out of baseball.

Edwards, a sports sociologist, delivered a fiery speech blasting the “plantation system” in sports, which he said is a reflection of an “occupational apartheid” in American society.

But he decried any efforts to ostracize people such as Campanis, who touched off a controversy when he said on national television that blacks often lacked the “necessities” to be managers or executives in baseball.

With Campanis in the Commonwealth Club audience, Edwards said Campanis’ statement “represents the conscious or unconscious sentiments of literally millions of Americans.”

Edwards added: “We cannot demand open and honest dialogue about race and racism in this society and then bureaucratically lynch and socially ostracize those who say things openly and honestly about which we disagree.

“To slam the door in his face, that is not only cruel, it is stupid. I look forward to the day when Mr. Campanis can go back on ‘Nightline’ and say with just as much honesty, ‘Not only have I met many black people who have all of the necessities, but I have helped many of them to get jobs in major league baseball.’ That is the way that story should end.”

Campanis, 70, said he is writing a book about his career and has just finished the “Nightline” chapter. He said he was nervous and unsure when he was speaking on the ABC-TV show, and his “phraseology was not good.”