Foreign relations reached a crescendo this week with developments for two internationally prized players. The Texas Rangers won negotiating rights to the young Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish, and a young Cuban outfielder, Yoenis Cespedes, appeared close to gaining residency in the Dominican Republic en route to his baseball career in the major leagues.

Both players will have to prove themselves on the highest level in this country, but they will do it well fortified with money. The difference is that Darvish is restricted to negotiating only with the Rangers while Cespedes, once he is granted Dominican residency, will be a free agent, able to negotiate with any and all teams.

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Now that Bud Selig has struck a blow for minority hiring by adding a 14-year-old female to MLB.com as a youth reporter, maybe he’ll turn his attention to his crumbling efforts to induce teams to hire adult minorities for significant positions, general manager and manager, for instance. Teams don’t seem to be doing that these days.

The results of this year’s off-season hiring practices are appalling, abysmal, astoundingly poor, and couldn’t be worse if the clubs had set out with a joint policy to shun completely the addition of a member of a minority as a general manager or manager.

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Throughout their history, the Florida Marlins have been an enigma. They somehow won two World Series – 1997 and 2003 – despite beginning life as an expansion team in 1993. But then they promptly decimated those teams rather than pay the price with increased payrolls. Two different owners – H. Wayne Huizenga and Jeffrey Loria – took turns shattering the hopes and dreams of their fans with their crass, cold-hearted acts of self-immolation and doing what they could to destroy fan interest in the team.

Two years less one month ago the Marlins, under Loria, suffered the ignominy of being the first team in Major League Baseball history to invite joint condemnation from M.L.B. and the Major League Baseball Players Association for cheating economically. When both management and the union agree on something like that, you know the Marlins were doing something bad.

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