I Have A Dream

On the day we celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, it's appropriate to explore the issue of race in baseball. MLK and I are happy to observe that there doesn't seem to be much of one.

Oh sure, black Americans comprise just nine percent of MLB players, but...so what? Professional sports are as close to a pure meritocracy as any activity in life. If more black athletes were choosing to play baseball, or more great baseball players were black, that percentage would be higher.

MLB has its RBI program that is designed to increase interest in baseball among denizens of this country's inner cities. This of course, is little more than a PR stunt. What does it matter if black Americans choose to play football and basketball instead? In fact, the hell with all that: promoting education in America's inner cities benefit their inhabitants and society in general far more.

Diversity is hardly an issue in MLB. Latinos fill more than a quarter of roster spots. A handful of ballplayers from the Far East join them. Minorities ride the pine just as white players do, demonstrating that front offices aren't employing minorities only when they're indispensable.

MLB received an A for race and a B for gender hiring in the annual study by the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. Twenty-eight percent of employees at baseball's central offices were nonwhite, including 20 percent among senior executives. Women were 42 percent of employees, and 26 percent of the senior executives. That's pretty laudable considering the longstanding link between playing the game and working in it.

Minorities have always had the most difficulty breaking into the old-boy club of on-field management. Yet nine of the 32 manager jobs are held today by non-whites, roughly representative of the dugout. Four of those managers are black, four Latino and one Asian. 

Beyond the numbers, it really does appear that we are focused on the content of a player's character (and his on-base percentage) rather than on the color of his skin. A recitation -- not herein forthcoming -- of beloved players of all races and national origin would illuminate that.

Suffice to say that the great man whose birthday we celebrate today would be a fan of America's pastime. In fact, he may even have been dreaming about it.

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