As commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred has inherited from Bud Selig the responsibility and obligation to oversee a promising and appropriate practice of diversity hiring. Based on a comment he made last week, Manfred may be getting off to as questionable a start on the initiative as Selig had a finish.

I called Manfred last week to ask him a question for this column, telling him I was writing about MLB’s former scouting bureau director and his laudable record of diversity hiring.

“That should be a fun column for your readers,” the commissioner remarked, his words soaked with sarcasm.

I suppose his remark could be interpreted in different ways, but hearing it first-hand, I didn’t see it as a positive view of diversity hiring or coming from someone who was going to implement a policy that would improve baseball’s faltering record of minority hiring.

Fun or not, the record Frank Marcos established as director of the scouting bureau was impressive. I learned of his record when he responded to a column I wrote about MLB’s diminishing record of hiring blacks and Latinos for positions of managers and general managers.

“Quite frankly, it’s a joke,” Marcos wrote of MLB’s policy on minority hiring. “Lots of lip service about it, but not much done.”

Marcos is free to be blunt about his former employer because MLB has been his former employer since last Oct. 31.  He wrote:

“As the director of the MLB Scouting Bureau for over 17 years, I put my reputation on the line every time I was in a position to hire. In fact, my final 20 scout hires represented the following:

8 Blacks (40%)
10 Hispanics (50%)
1 White
1 Woman scout

“And this was all my doing. I was never told to hire a minority or for that matter, even interview minorities. I did so because that’s my character to include a diverse pool of candidates. And by doing so, I brought into MLB some very qualified baseball scouts who happened to be minorities. By including as many candidates as possible into the interview process I was able to identify some amazingly qualified people who would not normally be given the chance. And that’s the key, giving people a chance.”

Probably the most unlikely person to whom Marcos gave an opportunity was Robin Wallace, a bureau scout, who is also a lawyer in Newburyport, Mass.

If the Internet information about the 38-year-old Wallace is correct, she played in the 2004 Women’s Baseball World Cup, she was the general manager of a women’s team and the organizer of the North American Women’s Baseball League. Her jersey from the World Cup is on display at the Hall of Fame.

I say “if the information is correct” because I was unable to confirm it with Wallace. I spoke to her briefly last Monday, and when I told her I wanted to talk to her about Marcos, she said, “I adore Frank Marcos.” However, she quickly added that she couldn’t talk to me without an OK from MLB.

I did not hear from her, and she didn’t return a subsequent call so I can only conclude that she did not receive the necessary permission, another typically foolish decision by MLB officials that denied them the opportunity to receive recognition for something positive.

Or perhaps MLB just didn’t want recognition for an official it dismissed after 26 years with the bureau, the last 17 as its director.

Wallace was among the scouts who were retained when the bureau underwent cutbacks last year. Marcos was let go along with all six members of the bureau’s professional staff and three amateur scouts. Losing their jobs was bad enough; the timing made it worse.

Confirming information I had received from someone else, Marcos said:

“The scouts’ contracts ran from Nov 1 to Oct 31. The terminations were done at the end of October, literally a day before the end of their contracts. I never operated like that. When I was involved with cutbacks or terminations, the scouts were always given notice well before the end of their contracts and I fought for good severance packages as well. Severance was given this time, but minimal – not worthy given the tenure of the scouts involved. Although all of the scouts got new jobs, some took big pay cuts. The timing was very bad.”

MLB has said little, if anything, about the dismissals in the nine months since they were executed.

One executive suggested that the dismissals were part of a cost-cutting plan instituted to placate owners like Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, who opposed Manfred’s election last August partly on the basis that the commissioner’s office spent too much money and Manfred’s election would mean more of the same.

The suggestion outraged Manfred.

“What happened with the scouting bureau was the clubs’ different desires,” the commissioner said in a curious telephone conversation, presumably meaning the clubs wanted the bureau to play a different role. “It was not driven by Jerry Reinsdorf or any owners.”

The question raised by the cost-cutting suggestion or speculation is if MLB wanted to lower costs, why would it hire two men to replace Marcos? Bill Bavasi, a former general manager, is the bureau’s director, and Bob Fontaine Jr., a long-time scout and scouting and player development director, handles special assignments.

A skeptic might cite those very hires as examples of MLB’s lack of enthusiasm for hiring minorities. Two men are hired, and both are white. How hard would it have been for MLB to have found a black or a Latino to handle special assignments? Or is Fontaine a member of the Old Boys Network who comes before non-members?

Marcos, to his credit, doesn’t subscribe to the network.

“Many years ago, when I was assistant director, we started Scout School. I saw minorities as being candidates. We could hire former players who showed interest in staying in the game. In my letters to clubs I said we have a way of identifying minorities who wanted to stay in baseball.

“I saw an opportunity to hire two or three minorities who would not normally get an opportunity to scout or coach. We were able to see individuals for two weeks and see how they developed their skills.

“Here’s an opportunity to find minorities.”

Jeff Luhnow, John Mozeliak, Anthony Anthopoulos, Michael Hill and Kenny Williams are the most prominent alumni of Scout School, all reaching the top baseball operations positions with their teams. Hill and Williams are black.

“I hope it will continue,” Marcos said of Scout School, “but I don’t know.”

The change, he added, has occurred because “the people who are there now wanted to take it in a different direction. It’s one of those situations where new people come into an organization and have their own ideas to do things.”

The change, he acknowledged, hasn’t been all bad for him.

“The pressures of what was going on in New York was affecting me. Since I left, my health has improved.”

Whether or not finances played a part in the bureau changes, a management executive said the clubs do not rely on the centralized scouting system as much as they used to. Today’s scouting, he said, is more competitive, and clubs don’t trust a central organization.

Whether Bavasi and Fontaine emulate the Marcos method of seeking blacks and Latinos for Scout School and bureau positions remains to be seen. The minority ledger also remains open on Manfred.

Last week the commissioner was quoted in a New York Times column by William Rhoden, the newspaper’s black sports columnist. Neither Manfred’s comment nor Rhoden’s column was impressive.

Manfred talked about his predecessor’s rule that directs clubs to include minorities in interviews for decision-making positions, including general managers and managers.

“It’s time for the Selig rule to be modified, and re-energized,” Rhoden wrote, and then let Manfred get away with saying the rule should be tweaked.

Tweaked? Manfred is going to get more black and Latino managers, of whom there is currently one each, by tweaking the flawed Selig rule?

The neophyte commissioner needs to blow up the Selig rule and issue the Manfred Manifesto. I’ll offer Manfred a hint: Include in the edict the stipulation that not only do clubs have to interview minorities for decision-making jobs, but they have to interview the same number of minorities as they interview white guys.

And one more hint while I’m at it: Resist the urge to make a sarcastic crack about a column on somebody’s notably impressive minority hiring record.

PROPERTY OF MANFRED, MOSS

Commissioner Rob Manfred surely receives all sorts of mail, ‘e’ and otherwise, but particularly interesting was an exchange he had last week with Richard Moss. Moss was the first general counsel of the Players Association, beating out Richard Nixon for the job in 1966, and in the next decade successfully argued two of the most significant legal cases in sports history. He won the Catfish Hunter breach-of-contract grievance in 1974 and the 1975 Messersmith-McNally case that created free agency, though The New York Times believes the Hunter case did that.

Dear Rob,

On the Sunday before the All-Star game, I looked in on the TV broadcast of the “Futures Game” as presented by MLB Network. I must tell you that I found it highly offensive that the announcers kept identifying players as the “property” of specific major league clubs.

It has been many years, and considerable struggle and progress by earlier players, since the players were regarded as pieces of property. I would suggest that MLB employees be reminded that slavery is no longer acceptable in the civilized world, not even in the small world of baseball.

We will all be better off.

Regards, Richard

Dick

I appreciate your unique sensibilities on this topic. You can rest assured that no one in the game considers players to be property.

I hope you are well.

Rob

Thank you for your note. However, I think you are mistaken in believing that my sensitivities on this topic are unique.