Campanis Incident: 1 Year Later : Minorities Making Gains in Baseball, but Not at the Top Levels

It was a year ago tonight, in a darkened and virtually empty Houston Astrodome, that Al Campanis sat in a chair near home plate, stared into the solitary eye of a television camera and awkwardly began a process that may eventually change the face of baseball.

In response to questions posed by Ted Koppel on the ABC show “Nightline,” Campanis said that blacks “may not have some of the necessities” to be field managers and general managers. He said, “ . . . how many (black) quarterbacks do you have? How many pitchers do you have that are black?” He said black people don’t make good swimmers “because they don’t have the buoyancy.”

The remarks came as a shock to those who had known Campanis during his 46-year career as player, manager, scout and executive with the Dodgers.

Amid the firestorm that followed, Campanis said he had merely made a mistake in semantics, that he was attempting to say that in many cases blacks had rejected opportunities to manage in the minors and, thus, lacked the necessary experience to qualify for major league jobs.

He said his record as a scout and major league executive showed that he was anything but racist. He said that he was disoriented by the eerie conditions in the Astrodome, frustrated by the Dodgers’ loss to the Astros in that night’s season opener at Houston, tired at the end of a day that had begun with an early morning flight from Los Angeles. He said he was flustered by his inability to hear Koppel clearly and surprised by the line of questioning considering that he thought the show was to honor former teammate Jackie Robinson on the 40th anniversary of his major league debut, breaking the color barrier.

Under pressure from civic and civil rights officials and organizations, the Dodgers fired Campanis as vice president and director of player personnel. The red light of the ABC camera became a full-scale spotlight that illuminated the sport’s hiring pattern and the absence of minorities in virtually all roles.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who had already dedicated the 1987 season to Robinson and already expressed concern for the lack of minorities and urged the owners to correct the situation in a meeting Sept. 27, 1986, had a series of meetings with civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and NAACP executive director Dr. Benjamin Hooks.

Ueberroth responded in the following manner:

--He hired Clifford Alexander and Janet Hill of the Washington consulting firm of Alexander and Associates to work with the 26 clubs on the development of affirmative action programs.

--He appointed Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociology professor at Berkeley, as a special consultant to develop a pool of former minority players interested in baseball employment.

Now, a year after Campanis’ appearance on “Nightline,” it is generally agreed that there has been widespread progress and improvement in the hiring of minorities, but a lingering lack of change at the top--in the decision-making roles of general manager and field manager.

There is also some resentment among former players that many of the hirings have involved people with no baseball experience, particularly on the field.

“Anyone can hold a stopwatch and speed gun and measure the tangibles,” said Dusty Baker, now first base coach with the San Francisco Giants, “but do they know the intangibles like a former player would?”

According to statistics compiled by the commissioner’s office, which has filled 7 of its last 9 openings with minorities, 542 people were hired by the 26 clubs for front office and on-field positions such as scouts, managers, coaches and instructors at both the major and minor league level since April 1 of last year.

Of the 542 hirings, 180 or 33% were minorities. Breaking it down further:

--Of the 282 front-office hirings, 125 were women and 102 were minority men.

--Of the 262 on-field hirings, 78 or 30% were minorities--all men.

One year after only 2% of all front-office positions were held by minorities, the figure is now more than 10%. There are now minority vice presidents of administrative personnel, communication and finance. There are minority controllers and broadcasters, as well as minority directors and assistant directors of community relations, community services, data processing, financial and tax accounting, human resources, marketing and public relations.

But at the more visible, pivotal and news-making levels, the door remains virtually closed. In the year since Campanis:

--Nine teams changed general managers and not one chose a minority. They are the Dodgers, who picked Fred Claire; the Chicago Cubs, Jim Frey; the Cincinnati Reds, Murray Cook; the Houston Astros, Bill Wood; the Montreal Expos, Bill Stoneman; the Baltimore Orioles, Roland Hemond; the Cleveland Indians, Hank Peters; the New York Yankees, Lou Piniella; and the Philadelphia Phillies, Woody Woodward.

While former Hall of Famer Billy Williams is now a consultant with the Cubs and former pitcher Ray Burris is an assistant to the general manager with the Milwaukee Brewers, the only minority hired to what seems to be a policy and decision-making front-office position in the last year was Frank Robinson, now the Orioles’ assistant to the president.

--Six teams changed field managers and only one, the Angels, hired a minority, Cookie Rojas, who is Cuban and only the fifth minority manager since 1900, following Mike Gonzalez, Preston Gomez, Robinson, Larry Doby and Maury Wills.

The Cubs recycled Don Zimmer, the Yankees recycled Billy Martin, the Phillies hired Lee Elia, the Indians elevated Doc Edwards and the Kansas City Royals hired John Wathan after Hal McRae, who is black, rejected the Royals because they were only offering a one-year contract.

In addition:

--While there are now 23 minority coaches in the majors, only three, Ozzie Virgil with the Seattle Mariners, Willie Stargell of the Atlanta Braves and Sandy Alomar with the San Diego Padres, coach third base; and only Alomar and Stargell assumed that position in the year since the Campanis incident. There are no minorities on the coaching staffs of the Angels, Astros, Royals, Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates.

--Of the 164 minor league teams, only 14 are managed by a black or Latino and only two, Tommy Reynolds at double-A Huntsville of the Oakland system and Max Oliveras at double-A Midland of the Angels system, are higher than Class A.

Don Baylor, the Oakland Athletics’ designated hitter who has spoken out on the minority issue, reflected on the 33% hiring of the last year and said:

“I’m not that excited by it because we’re still not talking about the key positions. The clubs still say that minority players who made big money in the game won’t come back for less, but the truth is that the jobs just aren’t being offered.”

Said Ueberroth, in an interview by phone: “I’ve found that people do not leap into decision-making positions, they earn them. You first have to have people in the system, and that’s what we have now. I’m not ready to claim a victory, to say the job is finished, but we’ve made great strides, great progress.

“We have two or three clubs which now have a minority as chief financial officer and those are the type positions from which club presidents evolve.

“Some people, in fact, say we now have too much of an open policy, but maybe that’s the result of the door having been closed for too long. It’s a sensitive subject. We don’t want to be unfair to non-minorities, but I think it’s being done well. I don’t see any tokenism and that’s important. I think we’re a good example to media companies, business companys, any type companies.”

Clifford Alexander, Secretary of the Army from 1977 until 1981 and now head of the consulting firm that is working with the 26 clubs to develop affirmative action programs, said that a year ago the situation was “rife with neglect.”

Now? Alexander cited the absence of minorities at the top and said:

“We can’t be satisfied until there is full opportunity, but you have to give credit where it’s due. The owners have listened, accepted the challenge and responded positively. I’m confident that baseball can soon be reflective of what society should be.”

Alexander and his associate, Hill, are into their second and third meetings with the teams. The programs they have attempted to initiate deal with the hiring of non-uniform personnel and the use of products manufactured by minority companies, Alexander said.

Edwards, by contrast, is responsible for developing a pool of former players who would be interested in returning to the game.

It is a role, Ueberroth said, that is “fraught with criticism,” and both Ueberroth and Edwards have received some--Ueberroth for picking a non-baseball man and Edwards for being out of his league and talking down to the people he is trying to help.

In a questionnaire that he sent to former players, Edwards not only asked them to check male or female, he made it easy by defining male (men) and female (women). He also seemed to direct some racist criticism at the media recently by saying that to walk into a white-dominated press box was akin to walking into a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Ueberroth is believed to have privately censored the professor for that remark.

Edwards did not return any of the messages left for him by The Times. But, he recently told Associated Press that baseball would soon lead all of sports in the area of minority hiring and that Campanis, in that one 15-minute discussion on “Nightline,” had precipitated “what people such as myself have been working 20 years to accomplish.”

Out of admiration, perhaps, Edwards has developed something of an odd couple relationship with Campanis. He recently had the former Dodger executive speak to some of his sociology classes and has leaned on Campanis’ expertise in setting up baseball management clinics in Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles and Oakland and in organizing the minority-employment pool that produced, among others, Tommy Harper as a baserunning instructor with the Expos, Deacon Jones as a batting and baserunning instructor with the Orioles, Ron Jackson as a minor league coach with the Chicago White Sox and Ed Lawrence, former athletic director at the University of Anchorage, as the new head of baseball’s umpire development program.

In addition to the concepts directed by Edwards and Alexander, and in response, perhaps, to a concern that neither had a baseball background, more than 300 former minority players have joined what they call The Baseball Network, the purpose of which is to identify jobs and job candidates.

Frank Robinson, who is the president, said that one man and one group can’t solve the problem, that it takes a Ueberroth, Alexander, Edwards and The Baseball Network pulling together, that they are all part of the circle.

Of his own role in the Orioles’ front office, the highest-ranking black in baseball’s hierarchy, Robinson said he wouldn’t have taken a token role, that he was assured he would be involved in the decision-making process and has been, working closely with Hemond. Once baseball’s first black manager, he may soon be baseball’s first black general manager.

“There’s a plan in place now, and we have to keep the pressure on until the final barriers (to the hiring of minority managers and general managers) come down,” Robinson said.

“It will take a while yet, but we have to keep that pressure on.