The Selig Rule is a sham

[soxhop411]

really good piece by Jeff Passan
 
 

 
The Selig Rule is a sham, a mandatory decree to promote minority hiring that conveniently ignores the mandate part, and the active disregard of it by Major League Baseball teams reached its nadir Monday when the Miami Marlins followed the path of their brethren and hired another white guy with zero managerial experience without bothering to interview another candidate.
That the Marlins were involved in a farce of one variety or another came as no surprise. By naming general manager Dan Jennings their field manager, they copied the trend pervading baseball: handing important jobs to novice candidates while the commissioner’s office continues to rubber-stamp a systemic snuffing-out of minorities.
 



View


With every trip to White Guys ‘R’ Us, baseball reinforces a dangerous idea that, even if not rooted in truth, lives understandably in the subconscious of every minority inside the game: The glass ceiling still exists, and it seems to get lower by the hire. Used to be the fear was not getting the job or being a sham candidate. Now, teams don’t even bother with an interview process, and baseball somehow finds this acceptable.
 
Such railroading would be problematic in any other industry. For baseball, which champions itself as a bastion of diversity, markets itself through the prism of Jackie Robinson’s legacy and hails its place in history, it’s disingenuous bordering on hypocritical. When Selig sent a memo in 1999 requiring teams to interview a minority candidate for top positions in baseball operations and on the bench, he sought 12 years after Al Campanis to prove baseball a post-racial profession that complements its on-field talent with management that resembles it.
Nearly 30 percent of major league players are Latino. Three percent of managers – Atlanta’s Fredi Gonzalez, all alone – are the same. As scant as African-American players are these days, at just 8.3 percent, the percentage of black managers is even lower. Seattle’s Lloyd McClendon is the one and only. Among executives, the numbers aren’t much better. There are two black presidents of baseball operations (the Marlins’ Mike Hill and the Chicago White Sox’s Kenny Williams) and four minority GMs: Farhan Zaidi, Dave Stewart, Jeff Luhnow and Ruben Amaro Jr.
This is not a call for teams to hire minorities just to hire minorities. That would be counterproductive and wrong. It is a reminder that whether intentional or unintentional, baseball’s actions in allowing teams to subvert the intent of the Selig Rule scream exclusion. Baseball’s audience already skews far too white for its tastes. What sort of message does it send to minorities grinding their way through the game, or considering pursuing a post-playing career in the sport, when front offices settle on a candidate and weasel their way out of the interview process with loopholes that keep getting exploited?

more at the link
 

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Nobody who could do this job would have taken this job.

 

[Plympton91]

As noted in the article, the Marlins director of baseball operations is a minority.

 

[Cellar-Door]

As noted in the article, the Marlins director of baseball operations is a minority.

And the relevance of that is...?

 

[Blacken]

And the relevance of that is...?

DH3 has a black friend.

 

[YTF]

Just came here to start a thread after reading this similar article.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/mlb-teams-are-making-a-farce-of-the-selig-rule/ar-BBjY947

 

[Hank Scorpio]

And the relevance of that is...?

 
I'd guess it's harder to call out a black manager for not hiring enough black workers, or a Latino manager for not hiring enough Latino workers. That's not to say a member of a race can't discriminate against their own race, but it's probably less likely than cross-race discrimination.
 
Hiring managers may have predispositions about gender/race combinations, which sucks, because it may unfairly cost someone a job opportunity (such as, if a hiring manager hires five Asian females, and all five turn out to be slam dunk hires, and five Hispanic females, and four of the five turn out to be terrible hires with poor performance or attendance issues, that manager would probably award mental "bonus points" to the next Asian female applicant over a Hispanic female).
 
All that said, I don't know if any of this would actually apply to the hiring of MLB managers and executives. Minority or not, they're pretty much hiring from a crop of candidates already inside a fairly small circle, who typically have a very public resume and of accomplishments and skill sets. I'd be kind of surprised if their were still high level executives in MLB who felt that, for instance, "black managers can't handle a pitching staff", or "Latino managers can't keep a clubhouse together", or whatever. But at the same time, I wouldn't be that surprised.

 

[Plympton91]

And the relevance of that is...?

 
See the post above mine.  Passan may well have a great point, but this is not a good example.
 
Which minority candidates did the Red Sox interview before announcing the predetermined hire of John Farrell?  Did any minorities make the final cut before they hired Bobby Valentine?  It was Gene Lamont and who?
 
We know that John Henry wanted to hire Felipe Alou as soon as he bought the team, so there's no doubt he considers highly qualified minorities when they're available.  Why were none available in the Sox past two searches, at least one of which was an unmitigated disaster?
 
A better approach would be to look at the number of minorities who are bench coaches, or 3rd base coaches, or AAA managers, or catchers, as those seem to be the realm from which most new managers are drawn (the most common pool seems to be ex-managers).   If minorities are underrepresented in the pipeline, then they'll be underrepresented in the final decisions too.