Baseball Strikes Out

Player trades usually draw the most attention at major-league baseball’s winter meetings, but this year the dearth of minorities in top jobs finally shared the spotlight. The picture looks a bit better than it did at this time a year ago, but, as with the outlook for the Dodgers, the only place to go is up.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth was able to report that 10% of baseball’s 1,500 front-office jobs are held by minorities--up from 2% when the season started. Of 59 total employees in baseball’s central office, six are black and three are Latino. And 230 of baseball’s coaches, trainers and scouts are members of minorities.

But there’s a hole as big as center field in the statistics on managerial jobs. Major-league ball bats zero in that department. Below zero, actually. Former catcher Pat Corrales, who is of Mexican descent, started the season as manager of the Cleveland Indians but was replaced last summer.

“We’re doing a good job; we just need more time,” Ueberroth said. Better, maybe, but still not good enough in a sport with 25% blacks on major-league rosters.

“Baseball should never deal in tokenism,” the commissioner added. “It should never hire anyone it doesn’t believe in. We should always hire only the best people.” Judging from the performances by some teams this past season, the best people are not necessarily those now employed.

It was just last April when former Dodger vice president Al Campanis made his unfortunate remark on national television about the suitability of blacks to manage baseball teams. Since then, Ueberroth has named as his special troubleshooter University of California sociologist Harry Edwards, a former athlete with a long record of focusing on the problems facing blacks in sports. That appointment and Ueberroth’s report offer hope for change. But, next April, will any blacks or Latinos make up the lineup cards for the big leagues’ opening-day games? So far the answer is no, and that is not progress.