*Sigh* Minority preference interview-and-hiring mandates never work well, so much is patent. But sometimes a situation is so egregious that they are necessary, if only to break the ice, and get some folks to actually, seriously talk to some guys (and gals) they wouldn’t have paid any attention to whatsoever otherwise. Baseball management positions is one of those intstances. I think that Selig’s mandate was necessary. I think it’s one of the best things he has done in his tenure. And I do think that it is working. But these things never work _well_; they never work decisively; they never, ever work quickly. Willie Randolph just got hired. Now, it’s easy to brush that off as either desperation or a gesture. But consider how many guys have been hired as managers since Willie started interviewing. I have no real take on how good a manager Randolph will be; probably middle of the pack at best, but he could be a good man-manager and buy himself some time to get good at other things in his new job. But I am quite certain that Randolph is at least as good a _candidate_ in the way that baseball currently looks at candidate-managers as many, many people who have been hired since he started. Randolph is a _better_ candidate than at least a dozen guys who were hired during that time; you pick your list, but it’s easy to do. —But nobody would take the move. Without the mandate, they wouldn’t have bothered with the interview, either. Many guys of color don’t want to put themselves through what Willie had to do to get the chance that should have come five years earlier, but the next comparable guy will get hired in four years of trying, or three. Because Willie is _not_ so outstanding, he’s only just as good as the other guys. Outstanding guys like Robinson and Dusty Baker have gotten the nod, but the key is for a guy who is good enough to get real consideration, just like innumerable non-minority guys who are ‘good enough’ get a chance.

Selig had MLB give the Montreal job to Robinson. I’m not saying that the results were excellent, but it was an excruciating and thankless job, and you know what: Frank did at least half decent, better really than in either of his other stints as a manager. Some of the guys in MLBs offices like Bob Watson are going to get interviews for FO jobs that they would not otherwise have gotten, and some of them are likely to get hired for GM jobs, or GM track jobs. Take a look at a guy like Arte Moreno [spelling?] down in SoCal: believe me, he understands the issue, and don’t be surprised when he hires and promotes Hispanics to management positions. Things like this work slowly, but first you have to break the ice, make a move, give a guy a chance so that you see he’s got pretty much what everybody else has got. That is the virtue of Selig’s approach. If a guy like Hicks in Texas ‘doesn’t get it,’ and keeps hiring Old Pale Males, then that’s what he gets, but the world will turn an eighth of a spend everytime another Omar Minaya gets the hire. And for that to happen, someone has to get out there and push.

Hiring minorities in the low minors won’t do it, Dave: there’s a glass ceiling for minor league managers now, and many qualified non-minority guys aren’t crossing that barrier anymore either. Rohn in Tacoma is the perfect example. Somebody telling me he’s not a better candidate _on performance_ than Charlie Manuel, BoMel, and Wally Backman? How many interviews did he get? That’s right, and that’s all he’ll get until he has a major league coaching position for a couple of years, since that is now effectively essential to the hire. Oh, Cleveland hired out of the minors—but so did Arizona, and that was a catastrophe, and the kind of thing that makes everyone think, I’m only hiring a guy vetted at the ML level for several years. And think about it: minorities have been getting a solid share of _coaching_ hires for a dozen years and more, but their shares of managerial and FO hires have remained frozen, or at least had until this year.

No mandate will solve this issue, and you cannot make people fill key organizational hires with people they don’t want in those roles, so no complicated interviewing mandate will improve anything; it will only make the process longer, and probably increase resentment. What it takes is rubbing shoulders with people you wouldn’t otherwise, raising the profile of guys outside of ones normal ‘acceptable’ pool (like non-whites), and getting people to do more than token interviews to individuals who get a bit of a name for themselves. I can’t see any other way, myself, and the only other thing I can say is, You guys on the outside looking in, just keep on going for it. Each year it’ll be a little more there for you. It’s not fair, but it is what it is, so just keep after it: nobody’s promised anything—but that works for _you_ in its way, too. : )

I think you’ll see this deficiency if you pay attention to Mississippi State and the rest of the SEC over the next 5 years. Sylvester Croom is the first African-American coach in the history of the conference, and he’s also well-qualified to do so. Alabama will regret passing him over in the long run.

If teams are truly being partial to majority candidates or are not giving minority candidates the experience they deserve, then what is being created is an inefficiency in the market, waiting for some team to exploit.

Teams’ number one priority when hiring is to make the hire that has the highest reward for their team. If there is any unnecssary bias in their decision making (towards race or experience or whatever criteria), then sooner or later some team will take advantage of this misevaluation.

Eventually teams will better understand what makes a good managerial hire and make that hire.

Thus there is no need for such legislation. Progress may be slow, but obviously there is some turnover in the market as managers do retire, which forces teams to eventually open up the job pool. Part of the reason the turnover is so slow is that there is only one major league consisting of only 30 teams, and that makes it difficult for more than a small group to gain any modest amount of experience in managing. Teams naturally feel safer hiring a candidate with experience.

What I expect to happen is a bottom-up gradual change with regards to race and ethnicity in managers. Perhaps right now there are more candidates that are of a minority status at the lower levels than at the higher levels. I’m not too sure.

Another thing I expect to see is high quality candidates coming from other countries much like players. You might see an Ichiro of sorts who has managed with success in the Japanese leagues come to the majors or a Cuban defectee. Obviously they would have to understand and speak English, but it still could happen.

Bottom line: Plans that attempt to change the makeup of the managers that get hired will ultimately fail because their focus does not match the team’s focus (to hire the best possible candidate), or they attempt to force this point, which ultimately does not succeed.

Teams may not always hire the optimal candidate, but because of competition, the trend of hiring managerial candidates will continually tend to optimize over time.

Your initial comment was certainly… inflammatory. I’m willing to move past that though, and go comment on two seperate points that you make, valid or not. The only way to alter skewed world-views is through communication. (Or really really big guns, but I don’t have any of those.)

You have to admit that it is curious that, a Bob Melvin gets rehired shortly after getting fired for losing 99 games, and yet say Cito Gaston, who has won a World Series, isn’t even seriously interviewed anywhere. Oh, and wasn’t Melvin was basically hired twice before Willie Randolph was once. And yet, Randolph is a member of “brilliant” Joe Torre’s staff. And if Randolph loses 99 games, will he get quickly rehired next year? Will he even get interviewed?

Just a thought to ponder racially.

As far past performance, think about this:

People hire those who they know or those who are known is not a surprise. People fear the unknown. In my last (failed) job interview for a head coaching position, I was going up against a guy who was roughly 60-20 or so as a head coach. I have no (head) coaching experience.

Admittedly he has a pretty good record, but does that record reflect his ability to coach or the talent that he had? Now, let’s just say his record was 20-60. Does that make a difference? Perhaps. But, they know that he has an established record as a head coach. Good or Bad. They know I didn’t.

The potential for growth is something most teams don’t want to take a chance on. They would rather have “safe” average than a chance for improvement that could start poorly. Therefore they hire the “known commodity” and not someone w/o prior experience but a potentially higher ceiling.

And whether you chose to admit it or not, there are not that many minority candidates who have “past experience” because there haven’t been that many minorities hired. And those that win get to stay, further reducing the rehire pool’s legitimate minority candidates.

just thoughts to ponder, my friends.

Finally, to load another brilliant comment on you: 7 out of the 30 MLB teams currently have minority mangers. That’s 23.3%. That doesn’t seem to me to be a major disparity.

I think that’s exactly the problem. It seems to me this rule is the classic example of unintended consequences. When a team is making a managerial hire, and they have a pool of, say, 3 or 4 that they really really want, they’ll go ahead and interview Manuel or Baylor or Randolph, even if they aren’t on the list. Instead of opening the candidate pool, it’s actually shrinking it in a way.

The only way to increase minority participation in baseball (or football) is to start from the bottom and go up. Give minority managers a chance to move up the ranks in the minors or as assistants, and time will eventually work its magic. Is it the ideal solution? No, but it’s probably the only feasable one.