Had the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Nationals hired white managers following the 2015 season, there would be no minority managers in Major League Baseball today.
When the Atlanta Braves fired Fredi Gonzalez last week, MLB was left with Dave Roberts and Dusty Baker at the respective helms of the Dodgers and Nationals.
Neither man was considered the leading contender to be hired. The Dodgers interviewed at least six candidates before Roberts. The Nationals had selected former San Diego Padres manager Bud Black, but could not come to financial terms.
Yet, MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred is still repeating the tired mantra of “there are only so many jobs.”
Speaking at a press conference at MLB headquarters in New York last Thursday, Manfred said “managers are a really difficult issue for us.”
“There’s only 30 of them. They turn over frequently. That’s the nature of the game and it’s always going to be the nature of the game, so you’re going to have periods of time where these numbers ebb and flow,” Manfred said.
“Remember, if you lose two diverse managers, and you go from four out of 30 to two out of 30, that’s a big change, but two guys getting fired is not that big a deal in baseball.”
The man in charge of MLB says having two minority managers, regardless of circumstance, “is not that big a deal.” He and other MLB executives wonder why more black athletes don’t choose baseball after spewing out that gibberish.
Baker is obviously tired of the excuses.
“I’m not doing the hiring, or else I’d have hired me a long time ago,” he told the Sporting News online publication.
With Hispanic players comprising 29 percent of MLB rosters, Baker said having no Latino managers is incomprehensible.
“There definitely should be more,” he said. “That ratio doesn’t work. The ratio speaks for itself.”
At least Manfred realizes that MLB is missing millions of dollars in revenue by alienating minority fans who don’t like the lack of diversity in manager chairs.
“We want, because we believe it is important to our business, to have diversity in our player complement, our field managers, our general managers, our commissioner’s office staff,” Manfred said.
“To the extent that our fans, the people with whom we do business, are focusing on a particular area, and perceive a lack of diversity, that’s an issue that we work very hard to avoid.”
Having just two of 30 managers being minority members is not a “perceived” lack of diversity. It’s a slap in the face to diversity.
Mizzou hires former star
The Missouri Tigers have hired a minority coach to an important role in its football program.
A.J. Ofodile, a former tight end with the Tigers, has been named director of recruiting operations.
Ofodile 42, had been head coach at Columbia Rock Bridge High since 2003. He was offensive coordinator under new Missouri head coach Barry Odom at that school from 2001-02.
“Naturally, it’s very special for me to be coming back to my alma mater. Mizzou holds a very special place in my heart, and I am very excited about doing anything I can to contribute to it,” he said.
“I’ve been very set about if I was to ever make the move to the college level, that who I was going to be working for was the most important aspect, and it couldn’t be a better situation for me at Mizzou with Coach Odom.”
Odom said Ofodile “cares deeply about Mizzou.”
“(He) shares a lot of the same beliefs that I have on building Mizzou into a championship program.”
A first-team All-Big Eight selection in 1993, Ofodile was a fifth-round draft pick in 1994 by Buffalo and spent six years in the NFL with the Bills, Steelers and Ravens, respectively.
After his NFL career ended, the Detroit native earned his bachelor’s degree in General Studies from Mizzou in August of 2001.
Super times in L.A.
Secret ballots have been good to Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke and southern California.
His franchise won the right to relocate from St. Louis by a 30-2 secret-ballot vote. On Tuesday L.A. was selected to host the 2021 Super Bowl, which will be played in Kroenke’s new $2.6 billion stadium and entertainment venue.
L.A. last hosted the Super Bowl in January 1993 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
Casey Wasserman, the civic and business leader who directing the Super Bowl bid and the city’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games, said L.A. has become “a radically different city” over the past two decades.
He told the L.A. Times, “The scale of the event, the reach of the event, L.A.’s place as a leader in the world in terms of innovation and creativity and culture – you put a game like the Super Bowl in L.A., and I think it’s a really unique and special combination.”
San Francisco 49ers owner, whose city and franchise hosted this year’s Super Bowl, said, “To bring the NFL back to L.A., and to host the biggest game in the country, it’s a big deal.”
Alvin A. Reid is a panelist on the Nine Network program, Donnybrook and appears on ABC’s The Allman Report and several sports radio shows. His Twitter handle is @aareid1.
