Baseball owners likely to discuss contraction, labor [and race quotas]

AP via CNN ^ | 11/6/01

[NativeNewYorker]

PHOENIX (AP) -- Less than 48 hours after the last out of a riveting World Series, owners meet Tuesday uncertain whether to try to eliminate teams or start baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972.

Owners have informally discussed cutting two teams, perhaps as soon as next season, with Montreal, Minnesota and Florida mentioned most often as possible candidates.

[NativeNewYorker]

Yeah. Racial quotas! That'll REALLY increase fan appeal.

Insert NBA parallel here.

[Hans Moleman]

Sports is about the only place left where one advances only on ability with no affimitive action influence. Now they want racial quotas for baseball? What's next? Three balls and four strikes for minority players? A seperate set of bases closer to the plate for minority players?

[RayBob]

"The Pittsburgh Pirates have a manager of color. They lost 100 games this season."

They lost 100 games because the white GM, Cam Bonifay got rid of the majority of players with a modicum of talent and replaced them on the roster with AA players. Had he not been sh*tcanned, he would have traded away Giles, Ramirez, Kendall and any talent left on the pitching staff for minor league prospects. Bonifay ran the team like the Cleveland Indians team in the movie "Major League."

[B Knotts]

The San Francisco Giants have a manager of color. They won 90 games this year.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say. But it didn't smell good.

I'm against quotas, too, though. Imagine how many more white players would have to be hired!

[BostonGuy]

Before we all go off on amusing theoreticals, can we establish the reality that they're discussing hiring of management, not players? Not that I'm in favor of such things (quotas) at all, but rhetoric about different rules for players is irrelevant. As is the win-loss record of black managers. What is relevant is that in the sports world, qualified blacks seem to have trouble even getting interviews for open positions. Why is that?

[anniegetyourgun]

Pretty soon they'll be faced with "gender equity" in pro sports. Won't that be fun?

[Chicago Guy 2]

Actually, aren't a majority or at least a large plurality of the players white?

[Chicago Guy 2]

Thanks for the comments. I don't favor quotas or anything like that but it is a reasonable question to look to see if there is discrimination.

[wny]

What color? I think we need more blue managers. Or perhaps green.

[Chicago Guy 2]

You know very well what is meant by the term and your tired joke doesn't add anything.

[BostonGuy]

Yeah, I'd love to see a rational discussion of this issue here. I'm sure most of the NFL fans here will remember when Sherman Lewis, as offensive coordinator of the super bowl champion Packers in 1997, wasn't even interviewed for several of the openings that later went to coaches with much worse records (including my own beloved team, hiring loser Pete Caroll). Now I'm certainly not arguing that someone should have forced the Pats to hire Lewis, or anyone else, for any reason at all. And all of those teams that hired loser white coaches had good reasons, and have since (Lewis is still an offensive coordinator, still no head coaching job). But sticking your head in the sand and making jokes about the issue is what allows the left to implement wrong-headed "solutions" to these genuine issues.

[Sabertooth]

In the last 20 years, my team, the Giants, has had two black managers, numerous black coaches, a Korean coach, and even a gerbil coach (Don Zimmer).

I think Dusty Baker is second after Bobby Cox in NL magerial seniority now.

[BostonGuy]

Yeah, we in Boston know the Gerbil well! I happen to think that the NFL and MLB, the only leagues I really follow, are doing a pretty good job at eliminating the reality of straight-up prejudice in upper-level hiring. The success of Dusty Baker in MLB and Tony Dungy in the NFL, just to name two, is a pretty good indication that there is no widespread bias in hiring. Even my beloved Sox, well known as the last bastion of MLB racism, pursued Felipe Alou hard this year. But it's hard to deny that on a large scale, the previous bias against blacks (dating back only 40 years, minimum) hurts their ability to to network their way into the top-level jobs even today. That's not bias, that's history. And the fix isn't mandatory hiring, but there's got to be work done, and it doesn't have to be a huge deal to talk about it. That's all I'm saying.

[F16Fighter]

Soon they'll be faced with "gender equality" in pro sports. Won't that be fun?

Yeah, and the biggest problem -- just how will Roger Clemens be able throw "high and tight" to the likes of some Dolly Parton-eque type leadoff hitter? Talk about "plate coverage."

[F16Fighter]

And speaking of the "gerbil" (no, I wasn't going to mention Richard Gere), has anyone heard from Bill "Spaceman" Lee?

One imagines he's out on his farm somewhere in Mexico sitting on his front porch working on a bong the size of a saxophone partially obscured by a 10,000 foot plume of smoke.

[Chicago Guy 2]

Sorry but I meant the part about what it meant to be a minority.