Bill White Would Be a Good Man for the Job

This business of Bill White suddenly becoming the leading candidate to be president of the National League is like Kremlin-watching or studying who stood next to Mao at the May Day parade. The only thing we know for sure is that the job of president of the league is coming open soon.

The National League has always found a man to fill the job. Seldom has he had real impact because the owners still run the game and league presidents operate with the owners holding the reins. The issue has taken on this air of mystery because the search committee has fixed on hiring a black man, who would be the first black ever to head a professional sports league. Baseball would look terrific.

Peter Ueberroth is stepping out as commissioner of baseball and Bart Giamatti is stepping up from the National League. That’s fact. The rest is leaked from a search committee that has maintained a posture of being unusually close-mouthed for a baseball group.

Naming a black man president of the league wouldn’t mean that baseball had completed its obligation to hiring minorities, but it would be a visible and necessary public step.

Originally, the prime candidates all were white, and that, considering baseball’s eagerness to appear more sensitive to the issues of the time, was decided to be unsatisfactory. Then two other men who had strong administrative credentials, and were black, took the lead, which seemed to suit the definition that the lords of baseball had in mind. But the names of Simon Gourdine and Gilroye Griffin, however strong their qualifications, stirred little public recognition.

After months of committee study, Bill White appears to have taken the lead. One of the candidates speculated Tuesday that White’s baseball background has put him into the lead. White is a former star player, and he has broadcast Yankee games since 1971. He is a bright, articulate man. The public knows him. That is a very strong qualification.

People on baseball search committees have in the past set out trial balloons to see what kind of reaction they get. Bill White, who was in Los Angeles and unavailable for comment, may be such a trial balloon. He has been interviewed by Peter O’Malley, the kingmaker son of the late kingmaker Walter O’Malley. Tuesday, it was reported that White would most likely be offered the job this week.

Baseball officially denies having decided any such thing. “We’re not confirming or denying any of the speculation that’s been going on out there,” O’Malley, president of the Los Angeles Dodgers and chairman of the search committee, said Tuesday.

Fred Wilpon, president of the New York Mets and another member of the search committee, would say only that “quite a few candidates” had been interviewed, “all of them very impressive.”

White is an impressive guy. He is a graduate of Hiram College in Ohio. He was always a man of substance on his ballclub and a man who would deal with thorny issues, racial or otherwise. During his time as a Yankees broadcaster, he was clever enough to have turned down owner George Steinbrenner’s offer to be a general manager.

But what are the qualifications for the job? Clifford Alexander, the Washington attorney heading the search committee, won’t even offer a job definition “because you could infer who was being considered,” he said.

Or are any real qualifications necessary? Gourdine was deputy commissioner of the National Basketball Association before his present job as head of labor relations for the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York.

Griffin is vice president for labor relations for Bristol-Myers. Baseball is scheduled for very thorny labor-management negotiations in 1990, and the input of people with labor experience would seem valuable. But the appearance of White’s name at this date suggests that’s not what the search committee is searching for.

The league president has three substantive tasks: controlling the umpires, overseeing the schedule and disciplining players. Then he kisses babies and entertains visiting dignitaries. He does what the owners permit him to do--kind of like the vice president of the United States. If the job is largely that of a figurehead, a black man is entitled to be a figurehead, too.

The league president also has been a member of the Player Relations Committee, which will do the heavy work in negotiations. But they’ve never been active participants. Lee MacPhail became a factor after he retired as American League president.

Now baseball has created a new position of deputy commissioner for business affairs to work with Giamatti. The deputy is Francis Vincent, a Washington lawyer formerly with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and with Columbia Pictures. And there is a second lawyer, Chuck O’Connor, now on the Player Relations Committee with Barry Rona.

Don Fehr, executive director of the players association, notes that it has been easier to work with American League President Bobby Brown, because he had a player’s understanding of the weight of the schedule and the size of the strike zone. Former National League president Chub Feeney was more fixed on baseball as it used to be, which was his background. MacPhail could disagree without being disagreeable.

White would bring ideas that might be closer to the real life of 1990. “But the league president has made no difference at all in negotiations,” Marvin Miller, former director of the players association, said. “The commissioner has never been that important to labor negotiations, either.”