Campanis Embarrassment: A Call to Sports Diversity : Management: Eight years after ex-Dodger official’s remark, major leagues have improved minorities’ standing.

The steering wheel shakes beneath Al Campanis’ hands. In the middle of a busy street, the luxury car slows.

The man whose derogatory comments about blacks in 1987 illuminated the racial complexion of professional sports is talking about Jackie Robinson.

“Do you know that Jackie once volunteered to speak at my son’s eighth-grade graduation on Long Island?” Campanis says. “Showed up and made my boy feel so good. I’ll never forget it. Jackie Robinson.”

A wheezing sound fills the car, then a moan. It is 100 degrees outside, but the noise is not coming from the air conditioner.

It is Campanis. He is crying.

Eight years of pain pour down across his 78-year-old cheeks, the pain of ridicule, of regret, of banishment from the only thing he loved.

And, he often wonders, for what?

For plenty. According to statistics and experts involved in the three major league sports, Al Campanis’ few moments on national television altered a century of exclusionary hiring practices.

In the eight years since Campanis’ comments, coaching and management positions in major league basketball, baseball and football have diversified at a rate that outpaces the rest of American businesses.

“Like many institutions, the sports world responds to embarrassment,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

On April 6, 1987, Campanis, then Dodger general manager, told “Nightline’s” Ted Koppel that blacks lacked the “necessities to be a field manager or general manager.”

The leagues reacted as if jabbed in the ribs, proving to many that the road to diversity can proceed without formal affirmative action signposts.

“There is movement in the right direction,” said Harold Henderson, an African American who is the National Football League’s executive vice president for labor relations. “It’s not at a pace that a lot of people would like, but it is at a pace that is greater than the business world and society at large.”

This is important, experts say, because much of society takes its cues from the often-televised and much-publicized world of sports.

When a Fortune 500 company appoints a Latino to a vice president’s position, few notice. When baseball’s Houston Astros hired a black general manager in 1993, Bob Watson’s face appeared on countless sports TV shows and his picture ran in newspapers throughout the country.

“The sports world has a significant opportunity for leadership in the area of diversity,” said Reggie Williams, an African American who became a vice president for Walt Disney World Co. after a career as a professional football player. “It is a great place to showcase diversity to everyone, because it is the one area besides entertainment where people put their differences aside and come together to root for their team.”

A Majority on the Field

The pressure for change also has come from the presence of black and Latino athletes, who constitute a majority of players in two of the three major league sports. Blacks account for 79% of the players in the National Basketball Assn. and 68% of the players in the National Football League. The number of Latinos in both leagues is less than 1%.

In baseball, 18% of the players are black and another 18% Latino.

The majority owners of the 87 teams in the three sports--all white men except three--have responded by appointing women and blacks to mid- to high-level jobs in virtually every area and league.

The glaring exception is the continued absence of Latinos in major league baseball’s front offices, where they constitute less than 10% of total employees.

“Most Latinos love the game with a passion, but they love it to play it,” said Michael Babida, a Latino who is director of merchandising for the San Diego Padres and one of the highest-ranking Latinos at the club level. “If you picked out 10 Latinos, how many would ever dream of a position in a baseball front office? The opportunities are there, but I don’t know if the interest is there.”

Interest is not a problem in other areas, where minorities have responded to programs that have increased their involvement in something besides the starting lineup. A few before and after Campanis statistics:

* Since the beginning of professional sports in 1876, there had never been a league president who was a minority in any of the three major sports. Since Campanis’ controversial remarks, there have been two black presidents, both in baseball.

* There were no minority managers among 26 major league baseball teams. Today, there are four among 28 teams--three blacks and one Latino.

* Before, 21 of 136 major league coaches were minorities, or 15%. Today, 39 of 157 coaches are minorities, or 25%. Twenty-eight are black, 10 are Latino and one is Asian American.

* There never had been a black football coach in the 67-year history of the National Football League. Since Campanis, there have been three; two are now employed among 30 teams.

* Before, 34 of 289 assistant NFL coaches were black, or 12%. Today, 85 of the 380 coaches are black, or 22%.

* There were two blacks serving as football general managers, assistant general managers or directors of player personnel. Today, there are 10.

* No woman had ever served as a top executive of a major sports franchise except as an owner. Since Campanis, Susan O’Malley--who is no relation to Dodgers’ owner Peter O’Malley--has become president of the NBA’s Washington Bullets.

* Before, there were four blacks among 42 assistant NBA coaches--just under 10%. Today, blacks hold nearly half of the assistant coach jobs--25 of 59, or 42%.

* There were two general managers or directors of player personnel. Now there are seven.

High-ranking minorities applaud the change.

“I have spent 25 years fighting for this,” said Bobby Mitchell, a black assistant general manager of the Washington Redskins. “And I have to say that in the last three or four years, there has been some pretty good movement.”

Satch Sanders, NBA vice president of player programs, said, “There are a lot of blacks working here, and a lot more blacks trying to get in the door, so you have to make certain assumptions.”

Those same assumptions cannot be made of American businesses, according to a 1995 American Management Assn. survey on managing cultural diversity.

In 983 businesses sampled, 10.6% of senior executives, and 15.1% of middle managers are minorities.

According to the 1994 “racial report card” compiled by the independent Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sport in Society, 20% of the mid-level managers and senior executives in the three major league sports are minorities.

“Baseball has made a lot of progress, but we still have a lot of mountains to climb,” said Leonard Coleman, the National League president, who is black. “We are continuing our commitment with absolute diligence.”

‘It’s Baby Steps That We Are Taking Now.’

Like diving catches or last-second baskets, proof of increased diversity in sports management has appeared in dramatic moments and places.

The labor contract between the NFL and its union--a pact that has freed the league from labor strife and solidified its position as this country’s most powerful sports entity--was negotiated between two blacks, the NFL’s Henderson and union leader Gene Upshaw.

Lenny Wilkens, the Atlanta skipper who recently became the winningest coach in NBA history, is black.

Manager Don Baylor’s Colorado Rockies are leading baseball’s competitive National League West. Dusty Baker’s San Francisco Giants had been extremely competitive until a rash of injuries put them in last place. Both men are black.

Then there are the blacks who were finishing college at the time of Campanis’ statements--some of whom say he inspired them to become sports executives.

In the spring of 1987, Aaron Jones was a student at Cornell University, completing a degree in labor relations. He was unsure of his future plans until he heard Campanis’ remarks.

“Right then, I knew I wanted to go into sports just to prove him wrong,” Jones said.

Early that summer, the NFL heard about his interest and helped arrange a public relations internship for him with the Cleveland Browns.

Today, he is a senior manager for NFL Properties, the league’s billion-dollar marketing arm.

“I remember times when you would go somewhere in the league and not see any minorities in the front office,” Jones said. “Now, that is just not the case. There are many steps to be made. But there are many steps that have been made.”

But critics contend that the remaining steps are giant ones.

Even with what has taken place, Kellen Winslow, former San Diego Charger tight end who will be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame this month, said the public should not be fooled.

“The numbers bear out that people are getting more opportunity, but it’s still that glass ceiling,” said Winslow, a lawyer with the sports representation firm of Precept Sports & Entertainment. “Don’t look at numbers; look at decision-makers, look at people in authority. Those numbers drop.

“No one has come close to having what I would call an open, free society. I guess that won’t happen until we get ownership that has African American flavor.”

Since Campanis’ statements, however, the NBA has welcomed its first black part-owners in its 49-year history--Earvin (Magic) Johnson and Isiah Thomas. Johnson has a minority interest in the Los Angeles Lakers, while Thomas has a minority interest and serves as general manager for the Toronto Raptors expansion club.

Football, meanwhile, improved the league’s black ownership history by adding Deron Cherry in Jacksonville and William Simms in Charlotte, N.C. Both are minority partners.

Already, that has paid dividends. Cherry was involved in the decision to hire perhaps the most powerful African American at the club level--Michael Huyghue, the Jaguars’ respected vice president of football operations. Huyghue has had direct input in forming the Jacksonville Jaguars’ expansion team, which will begin play this season.

In turn, Huyghue has helped others by helping the Jaguars formulate a sports management program for minorities at the University of North Florida.

Black Enterprise magazine, in a recent cover story, referred to black businessmen’s entry into sports boardrooms as a “quiet revolution.”

“It’s baby steps that we are taking now,” Huyghue said. “But it’s steps.”

The pressure for more action intensifies as the number of minorities on the playing field remains high.

“Nobody believes that 68% of the executives in the NFL have got to be minorities,” said Richard E. Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, the sports industry’s watchdog on racial balance. “But since so many athletes that are making the dollars are minorities, we feel their front offices should be held to higher standards.”

Most agree that those standards are being approached because owners are willing to recruit minorities, not just give them an equal chance if they happen to walk through the door.

“There is no question things have gotten better,” Lapchick said.

The biggest worry now is how those commitments will fare in this country’s current racial climate.

“I see tremendous progress, most importantly in attitudes,” Williams said. “The challenge is what this affirmative action fervor will do to that momentum.”

A Veteran Released After One Bad Pitch

There were many things said on that April evening in 1987, where Campanis spent the final moments of his Dodger career sitting on a chair on home plate in a darkened Houston Astrodome.

So many things, in fact, that Ted Koppel later commented that Campanis was “like a careening bus going downhill.”

But despite statements that questioned the potential of everyone from black swimmers to black quarterbacks, Campanis contends today that the interruption of his nearly 50-year baseball career hinged on one word.

“I should have said ‘experience,’ not ‘necessities,’ ” Campanis said of his “Nightline” interview. “I meant ‘experience.’ I have always believed it was ‘experience.’ But for whatever reason, I said ‘necessities.’ ”

The exact statement, in response to a question from Koppel about the lack of blacks in positions of authority, was: “It’s just that they may not have some of the necessities to be a field manager or general manager. I don’t know. How many quarterbacks are there? How many pitchers?”

Forty-eight hours after the interview, Campanis was out of a job.

It would be seven years before he would get another.

The man who spent 1946 in Montreal preparing Jackie Robinson to become the first black player in the major leagues--sitting with him when teammates ignored him, stepping in front of him during fights--was branded a bigot.

Today he is vice president of an independent minor league team in Palm Springs, which plays in a newly formed league of other independent teams. It is a league in which the only thing that runs consistently is the air conditioner in Campanis’ tiny office.

It is more than a long fly ball from Chavez Ravine.

The players are paid around $1,500 a month, the crowds average around 1,500 per night, and anything can happen.

When the home plate umpire was injured in a game between Palm Springs and Surrey, British Columbia, players from both teams helped officiate the game. Only one of them was wearing a baseball uniform.

Campanis once wrote the book, “The Dodger Way to Play Baseball.”

This isn’t it.

“But times are changing,” said Campanis, who has survived a recent stroke. “Fences are being mended.”

Setting in Motion an ‘Evolutionary Process’

Each of the three leagues reacted to Campanis’ 1987 comments by implementing programs that are best described as volunteer affirmative action.

Nudges from commissioners. Visits from consultants. Late-night calls from league executives to owners on the verge of filling important front office positions.

Although the league denies it, sources insist that phone calls between the NFL and Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie this spring were one of the factors that influenced Lurie to choose San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes, who is black, as his head coach.

Although Rhodes had a proven record of coaching success and had been a leader on the Super Bowl champion 49ers, Miami Dolphins’ assistant coach Gary Stevens, who is white, thought the job was his. Two days later, Rhodes’ hiring was announced.

“I know Paul Tagliabue is very much in favor of diversity, very outspoken about it,” said Bob Kraft, who has owned the New England Patriots for two seasons. “In one of our first meetings after I bought the team, you could tell.”

Jim Fitzgerald, former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and Golden State Warriors, said the NBA’s commissioner was more coy.

“David Stern actually had cute little ways of doing it,” Fitzgerald said. “He’d call to talk about something else and then say, ‘Jimbo, by the way, I really think you ought to be thinking about this. . . .’ ”

Despite having no set policy, the NBA has become the sports leader in management diversity, with women constituting 49% of the middle- to upper-management staff of its league office and blacks and Latinos about 22%.

Among the list of the 30 “most valuable professionals in the business of sports,” compiled by Black Enterprise magazine, eight were involved in NBA front offices, five in major league baseball and four in the NFL.

“It’s always been our view that equal opportunity employment gets you access to the greatest possible pool of talent,” Stern said. “For us, what some people call diversity is good business.”

That feeling was shared by the NFL, which picked black lawyer David Cornwell to lead its newly created equal employment department shortly after the Campanis incident.

“For us, it wasn’t a social issue; it was a business issue,” said Cornwell, now a vice president with the Upper Deck Company, a sports memorabilia firm. “It was like, how was it that we were harmed if somebody like Art Shell wasn’t given a chance to be a head coach? It doesn’t make sense to be exclusionary.”

(Shell took over the Los Angeles Raiders in October, 1989; he was fired in January.)

During Cornwell’s tenure, the league instituted the most successful diversity program in professional sports--a minority coaching fellowship.

Each summer, minority college coaches were invited to work with NFL coaching staffs during training camp. Seventeen graduates of that program have become NFL assistants.

“You need to aggressively pursue the best people, no matter what race, color, gender or background,” Tagliabue said. “The best people don’t just fall into your lap. You go out and find the best.”

Today, among the NFL’s 80-person middle- to upper-management staff, 21% are women and around 19% are black, Latino and Asian American.

But friends say Tagliabue remains troubled by the fact that there are just two black head coaches. He has not been afraid to corner owners at league meetings and discuss coaching candidates, but he has been frustrated by the response.

“In my position, I’m hiring executives, lawyers and accountants . . . and clubs, of course, have to do that as well,” Tagliabue said. “But I’m not hiring coaches.

“Some say I should try to do more to convince the owners to hire more black head coaches, but that’s not the way the real world works. People have to make their own judgments. I believe I can set an example and lead by persuasion.”

Change has even come to that dinosaur known as baseball, thanks to the influence of Alexander & Associates Inc. Major league baseball contracted with that law firm after the Campanis incident to survey and fine teams that do not diversify. No fines have been assessed and the results of its findings are kept confidential.

In the offices of major league baseball and the National and American leagues--three separate entities--22% of the employees are women, black, Latino or Asian American. That is about double what it was five years ago.

That change still seems awfully slow for Bob Watson, general manager of the Houston Astros, who is the only minority in charge of player personnel matters.

“There has been some movement because I’m sitting here, but it could be a whole lot better, no doubt,” Watson said. “There has been tremendous progress in non-player personnel jobs--finance officers, marketing departments--but not much where fans can recognize somebody.”

Watson said the solution lies in visible minority ownership, which is still absent in baseball.

“Where do most people who make the decisions to hire run into people of color, people like me?” Watson said. “They don’t go to the same places we go. You talk about the good ol’ boys, well, a guy hires somebody he likes and knows.

“I’d like to see more guys like me in the process, but we don’t get that opportunity.”

Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos promised that those opportunities are coming. The nudges, the memos, the arm-twisting is adding up.

“It’s an evolutionary process; it takes time,” Angelos said. “But the way it’s going now, I bet within five or 10 years, this won’t even be a topic of discussion.”

Starting Anew, Making Amends

Just look at the front office and field personnel of the Palm Springs Suns.

Of 23 employees at the start of the season, there were 11 women, blacks and Latinos.

Al Campanis finishes talking about Jackie Robinson, wipes his eyes, and says he’s never felt better.

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About This Series

The Times examines affirmative action, a policy that has left its imprint on the workplace and college campuses over the last 30 years. With some now questioning whether giving preferences to minorities has been fair to all, this series, which will appear periodically throughout 1995, will measure its impact on American institutions, ideas and attitudes.

* Previously: Why affirmative action became an issue in 1995, its legal underpinnings, its impact on presidential politics, the difficulties of defining a minority, the views of its beneficiaries, a Times poll showing ambivalent attitudes on the issue, how informal preferences have molded American life, the mind at work in racial stereotyping and the evolution of diversity programs in the workplace.

* Today: Ever since Al Campanis’ ill-spoken comments about blacks and their ability to succeed in sports management, coaching and management positions in major league basketball, baseball and football have diversified at a rate that outpaces the rest of American businesses.

* Monday: A look at minor league baseball, a place where there are still pockets of sexism and stereotypes, and its efforts to diversify.

* Tuesday: How ultra-efficient recruiting of minority athletes at all grade levels has put a premium in inner city neighborhoods on developing athletic, as opposed to academic, skills.

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8 Years of Change

Pro sports has seen shifts in minority employment since al Campanis’ statement in 1987. Some examples:

# of # of Major League Baseball 1987 teams 1995 teams Managers 0 26 4 28 Coaches 21 26 40 28 National Football League General managers* 2 28 10 30 Head coaches 0 28 10 30 Assistant coaches 34 28 85 30 National Basketball Assn. General managers* 2 23 7 27 Head coaches 4 23 5 27 Assistant coaches 4 23 25 27

* Includes assistant general managers and directors of player personnel.