Kim Ng brought hope to baseball when the Miami Marlins hired her as general manager of the team in November, making her the first woman and second person of Asian descent to lead baseball operations for a major league team.
In a sport dominated by men – specifically, at the top, by white men – Ng symbolized the potential for change. Last year’s civil unrest was bringing diversity to reckoning for many industries across the country, and it looked like this reckoning would include baseball.
For the rest of the Major League Baseball low season, Ng was left alone. Eight people were promoted or hired as permanent baseball operations president, baseball director or general manager of a club – Sandy Alderson returned to the Mets, the Chicago Cubs raised Jed Hoyer, Dave Dombrowski took over the Philadelphia Phillies. All but one season’s signings were a white man.
Returning another off-season, Ng is the only black woman or person hired for 13 vacancies comparable to hers.
“It’s hard for a leopard to change its spots,” said Dave Stewart, a black American who did almost everything in baseball: a pitcher for 16 major league seasons, an announcer, a pitching coach, a special assistant, a general assistant manager , a GM and now an agent.
“I’ve been singing this song as a musician since the mid-1980s,” Stewart added later in the phone interview. “And then, when I became an executive and was released for a job for which I was more than qualified when I was in Toronto, I said again publicly – that there was a problem with baseball and racism. Whether they say it is racism or they say it is prejudice, it is still a problem. “
Like other baseball-colored people, Stewart was not surprised by the hiring of top executives this season. His frustration arises from the continued lack of opportunities, especially after corporations in the United States pledged to combat racial inequality after George Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody in May.
Only four baseball club chiefs of operations are identified as non-white by the MLB’s diversity goals – about 13 percent of the MLB’s 30 teams. They are Kenny Williams, who is black, from the Chicago White Sox; Farhan Zaidi, of Asian descent, from the San Francisco Giants; Al Avila, who is Latin, from the Detroit Tigers; and Ng. This is a stark contrast to demographics on the pitch, where 40% of major league players are identified as non-white by the MLB – most of whom are Latino.
“It weighs on me and it’s something I want to fix,” said Neil Leibman, who recently took over as chairman of the MLB’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee, which is made up of team owners and league leaders. Leibman, who is white, is the chairman of the Texas Rangers ownership committee and the club’s director of operations.
As MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said and Leibman recently reiterated, clubs make their own choices when hiring baseball operations president or general manager. Although the MLB has resources, programs and a database of candidates designed to help improve its diversity, the only requirement that governs top positions in baseball is the Selig Rule.
First proposed by ex-commissioner Bud Selig in 1999, the rule requires clubs to consider minority candidates for vacancies in five major baseball positions, including general manager and manager.
But in the two decades since the rule began, the owners have mostly hired top executives who look like them, and the number of baseball chiefs and field managers has not changed much. (Entering the 2021 season, there will be only six black leaders – about 20 percent, which falls short of the composition of the MLB and country player pool.) Over the years, several candidates of varying racial backgrounds – including Ng – had said that they felt as if the job interviews had taken place simply so that the teams could check a box.
“This story – either fairy tale or whatever you want to call it – you’re selling to make minorities think you really have a chance, we still have to aspire to get that job, but for decades – for decades – it’s just not it’s happening, ”said Stewart, who also pointed out the lack of diversity among landowners as a contributing factor. Arte Moreno, a Latina, is the sole owner of a majority non-white team in the MLB
Among the ideas to help correct the imbalance in the front offices is the update of the Selig Rule. Michele Meyer-Shipp – who was hired by Manfred last summer to serve as MLB chief of staff and culture – and Leibman said in interviews that they were reviewing the rule with Manfred’s approval. Each said it is looking into what other leagues have been doing and will make a recommendation to Manfred. “We are not going to look just to expand it, we are going to look at this to make it stronger,” said Leibman, who as chairman has increased the frequency of diversity committee meetings.
Meyer-Shipp and Leibman declined to discuss specific changes because they said the process was continuing. Meyer-Shipp said he has been studying the practices of the MLB and its teams since it started in October, and that various hiring policies like these can lead to not only penalties, but rewards. Leibman said that perhaps the mandate could be extended to all clubs, in addition to a handful of senior positions, and to the secondary baseball league, which will soon be managed by the MLB after years of independent operation.
“It is easy to establish a rule that says, ‘As part of your job performance, you must interview at least one candidate from a minority,'” said Leibman. “This is no longer acceptable. You have to interview the candidates that come from us and not only examine them, but also have the mindset that we need to diversify baseball. ”
In the NFL, where there is a greater disparity between demographics on and off the pitch, league officials updated their version of Selig’s Rule, Rooney’s Rule, last year, increasing the requirement that teams interview at least one external non-white candidate for at least two for head coach positions. He recently added draft selection compensation for teams that lose non-white team members to coaching or leadership positions elsewhere. Leibman and Meyer-Shipp said they expected Meyer-Shipp’s long résumé outside baseball – she was hired from accounting giant KPMG – to bring a new set of ideas to an old problem.
“I was very, very excited about Kim Ng and I really thought that his hiring, being the historic hiring that he is, left me incredibly optimistic,” said Meyer-Shipp. “Regarding the fact that we still have a majority of white men in the roles, that’s it. So it wasn’t like I was like, ‘Oh my God, how did this happen?’ or ‘Oh my God, this is so awful.’ That’s what it has been and that’s why I think there was a recognition that we have work to do. We need to think about how we can do things differently. We need to think about how we can do things differently. “
Meyer-Shipp and Leibman also aimed at improving paths for team officials long excluded from leadership positions long before they held a leadership title in baseball operations. Meyer-Shipp said he is studying career paths for general managers and looking for ways to help candidates who can diversify the game. She also said she hoped to build on existing MLB programs to help remove barriers to entry into the sport. Baseball can be an expensive sport for families, and many team officials have entered the industry working for little or no money.
Leibman – whose team hired Chris Young, who is white, a former Rangers pitcher and top MLB executive, as GM for the first time in December – said that baseball needs to do more to build a more diverse talent pool from the bottom ( more urban youth academies). He suggested that this would lead to more black players (only 8% of current major league players are black) and then more coaches and then more executives.
“The commissioner’s responsibility to me is that we have to focus first – and I totally agree and endorse this approach – on achieving diversity in the field,” said Leibman. “And with the diversity on the field, we will have more people watching baseball. If you’re not watching baseball, and they don’t like baseball and aren’t playing it, then they won’t be interested in applying for a job at MLB. They will be more interested in applying for a job in the NBA or NFL or some other company. “
There are already promising candidates who haven’t had a chance to lead a team. Two black assistant general managers – Kevan Graves with Pittsburgh Pirates and Billy Owens with Oakland Athletics – interviewed for several GM openings. Eddie Romero of Boston Red Sox, Rene Francisco of Kansas City Royals and Moises Rodriguez of St. Louis Cardinals are notable Latin general managers. More women are joining coaching and front office teams.
Stewart, meanwhile, said he continued to watch candidates with less or no front office experience get jobs. He has not been interviewed for a job at GM since he was fired in 2016 after two years as GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks (Arizona was 148-176 while leading the team). He was intrigued by why Ng’s predecessor, Michael Hill, who is Black and was president or general manager of the Marlins for 12 years, was not leading a team again.
After all, this was the same industry, said Stewart, in which Ng did not receive the reins of a team before spending three decades working as an executive at the MLB, Los Angeles Dodgers, White Sox and Yankees. She had more experience, he said, than other general managers who “were fired and rehired and fired and rehired again”.