Group Acts to Help Minorities Get Into Baseball Management

The Baseball Network, a group formed over the weekend by about 50 blacks with major league ties, will act as an independent agent to help minorities into baseball management positions, its organizers said Sunday.

“Our purpose is to facilitate the hiring, recruiting, promoting and upgrading of minorities in baseball, sports administration and all activities related thereto,” said Ben Moore, a former scout and the group’s acting executive director.

Frank Robinson, who with Moore, Willie Stargell and Ray Burris, organized the weekend meetings, said the Baseball Network will be an independent group that will seek to work with Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s affirmative action initiatives.

“We are not in competition with any of the programs the commissioner is running,” Robinson said. “We are a separate body.

“We felt like that by bringing a group of people together, exchanging information and setting up a network, we would be able to keep people more informed about what is happening in baseball, what is happening in the positions being filled in baseball, and trying to get them (minorities) into baseball positions,” he said.

“We know we can’t create miracles overnight. We’re not looking to accomplish any one thing. What we’re looking for is for people to come on board and we’ll go from there,” Robinson said.

The four men will meet today with Harry Edwards and Clifford Alexander, who were appointed by Ueberroth to formulate an affirmative action plan for baseball.

“We expect a dialogue from them. We’re going to go into the meeting and they’re going to talk to us. We’re going to ask them questions, but we’re not going to answer questions,” Robinson said.

Moore said he and the other organizers tried to contact as many minority active and former baseball players as they could in organizing the meeting.

“We tried to contact every name and every person that we and everyone we talked to could think of that was from an ethnic or racial minority,” he said.

Other executive committee members included Don Baylor, Jim (Mudcat) Grant, Dock Ellis, Deacon Jones, Dusty Baker, Donn Clendenon and Billy Sample.

“This has been long overdue,” Robinson said.