Baseball is a game played at a slow pace and is deliberate when it comes to changing the way it is played. The same can be said for Major League Baseball (MLB) and its racial and gender hiring practices.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) released its 2019 MLB Racial and Gender Report Card Monday, and there was little change from a year ago. The report shows a slight increase in racial hiring, a slight decrease in gender hiring and a combined grade that is identical to 2018. MLB earned an A- for racial hiring with 89 percentage points, up from 88 percentage points last year, and a C for gender hiring with 70 percentage points, down from 71 a year ago. The overall grade of B- with 79 percentage points is the same as 2018.
“The numbers are very much similar to last year,’’ said Dr. Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the study and director of TIDES at the University of Central Florida. “There was a slight increase overall in racial hiring and a decrease in gender hiring but basically everything stayed the same, with a little bit of increase in terms of managers of color, which is good. General Managers is still low. Obviously African-American players is still low, those are kind of disappointing statistics.
“I’m always expecting things to get better,” he added. “They don’t always follow my expectations. Moving percentages when there are so many people involved is hard. You can have a couple of key hires and it really doesn’t change the percentage very much. We really don’t expect big swings year to year. But we do expect to see a regular improvement.”
Highlights of the report:
“The fact that it’s an increase is significant because it had been going down,’’ Lapchick said. “But it’s not a large increase. We need to see the numbers in the teens fairly soon to make a real statement.’’
Lapchick says the number of African-American players being drafted and the number on MLB rosters will increase if more youngsters in communities are exposed to baseball and become more interested in playing the game.
