Clubs Balking at Hiring Minority General Managers

The hiring of Mike Scioscia as Angel manager concludes--temporarily, at least--one of the most extensive job fairs in baseball history.

Seven teams changed managers since the end of the season and five changed general managers.

With all of those available positions now filled (assuming owner Peter Angelos and sons will continue to serve as the de facto general managers of the Baltimore Orioles), there are two conclusions:

* The general manager’s role, amid escalating payrolls, competitive pressures and corporate involvement, is more tenuous than ever and continues to evolve, with an emphasis now on business and budget-oriented administrative types rather than talent evaluators who come from the baseball side.

* The hiring of Davey Lopes as Milwaukee Brewer manager and the return of Don Baylor as manager of the Chicago Cubs represented a small measure of minority progress, but none of the general manager openings was filled by a minority and baseball is still 0 for 30 on that decision-making front.

Or as Dave Stewart, assistant general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, put it: “I accepted the commissioner saying, ‘Let’s wait until the smoke clears.’ Well, the smoke has cleared, and we were still 0 for 5 [when it came to GM hirings]. I’m happy with the progress on the field, but you can’t help but be disappointed with 0 for 5.

“The message seems to be that since [most of the minority candidates] are former players, the clubs still feel our place is on the field. They’re comfortable with that, but there’s still a reluctance [to hire a minority as general manager] and it’s very tough to tell an owner who to hire when it’s his livelihood, his business and he’s got millions of dollars invested. You can mandate interviews, and I think a lot of those took place because clubs were trying to avoid a fine, but we’re still sitting where we’re sitting.”

In an effort to accelerate minority hiring, Commissioner Bud Selig has supplied the clubs with a list of potential minority candidates and ordered the clubs to inform him of job openings and the names of candidates being interviewed. He fined the Detroit Tigers $250,000 for hiring Phil Garner as manager without informing him of the vacancy or conducting any interviews.

Reached Thursday, Selig said he couldn’t be happy with the minority hiring pace in the high-visibility roles of manager and general manager, but considering other front-office positions “the overall picture continues to improve and when all the front-office and central-office hirings [for this year] are completed, I think people will generally be satisfied. I only wish we’d started 10 years ago because we’d be much farther along.”

It has been 12 years since the infamous Al Campanis incident turned the spotlight on baseball’s minority hiring pattern.

In that time, Bob Watson is the only minority to have served as a general manager. Watson, who was a finalist for the Angels’ position that went to Bill Stoneman, refused comment Thursday on developments this winter--”I want to get my thoughts in order before I say anything,” he said--but he recently expressed the opinion that one of the lingering problems when it comes to minorities being hired for the decision-making roles is that “we still don’t sit in the same steam room with the owners.”

Perhaps, but that hint of bitterness is not shared by Hal McRae, the former Kansas City manager and current Philadelphia batting coach who was a finalist for the Angels’ managerial position and also interviewed in Baltimore before the Orioles hired Mike Hargrove.

“All you can ask for is a thorough and honest interview process, and I feel like I got two fair shots,” McRae said. “I’m happy. I got to home plate, and that’s a lot farther than a lot of guys get.

“I also think the [minority] environment is a lot more positive than it has been and that things are moving in the right direction. It’s a slow drip, but the spigot is open. There are now two minority managers in a major market, and I think that’s very positive.”

McRae referred to Baylor with the Cubs and Jerry Manuel with the Chicago White Sox. The other minority managers are San Francisco’s Dusty Baker, Montreal’s Felipe Alou and the long-delayed Lopes, now getting his chance with Selig’s Brewers.

Minorities also serve as assistant general managers with eight teams. In addition to Stewart, who feels that he received a sincere opportunity when he interviewed for the Milwaukee GM vacancy that went to Atlanta assistant Dean Taylor, they are Cincinnati’s Doc Rodgers, Milwaukee’s Dave Wilder, the New York Mets’ Omar Minaya, the White Sox’s Kenny Williams, Kansas City’s Muzzy Jackson, the Yankees’ Kim Ng and Boston’s Elaine Steward.

In Anaheim, where Stoneman and President Tony Tavares are in the process of a major housecleaning (“It was time to change the way we do business,” Tavares said), longtime Dodger scout Gary Sutherland, who joined the Angels last season and survived the recent purge that claimed more than a dozen of the club’s most experienced scouts, is emerging as a key player.

Sutherland was a significant influence in the hiring of Scioscia and is expected to head the club’s professional scouting department, which is being separated from the amateur wing. Sutherland is Caucasian, but the Angels are believed close to filling the farm and scouting director vacancies with minorities. Darrell Miller, a longtime member of the Angel staff, is considered the leading candidate for the farm position, and Frank Wright, currently with the Mets, is a leading candidate to head the amateur scouting division as overall director.

Stoneman, given his Montreal background in administration and finance, seems typical of the new breed of general manager, a job that has been made increasingly difficult by rising costs, demanding owners and payroll and contract complexities.

“The position is a hell of a lot tougher than it once was,” Atlanta General Manager John Schuerholz said. “As the cost of business elevates, so does the pressure on the general manager to produce, and only a few of us have expertise as both a business CEO and talent evaluator. If you can’t decide what player to trade or what free agent to sign, you’re not going to have the job long, but if you can’t handle a budget and the owner’s investment, you’re not going to have it for very long as well.”

The need to merge business and baseball has, perhaps, made it more difficult for a minority candidate whose basic background stems from the playing field to get one of those coveted general manager positions, although Stewart asked, “If an administrator can hire a baseball guy as assistant, why can’t a baseball guy hire an administrator as assistant?”

A legitimate question, but not the only one. In a winter of multiple hirings on and off the field, baseball still has a lot to answer for with regard to minorities.