(This first section comes courtesy of Fay Vincent, the former commissioner and a friend of this column.)

With our game of baseball now heading into the full bloom of the new season, I thought about the wonderful things I have been told by baseball people during my baseball years. These represent for me the wisdom and often the elegance of what baseball people, sometimes but not always Hall of Fame players, have shared with me.

When I asked Warren Spahn who taught him how to pitch, he peered at me as if I had just insulted him. I was sure I had asked a stupid question and he acted as if he agreed. After a pause, his answer was – “Commissioner, hitters taught me how to pitch.” I was stunned by the answer. He knew there is also no other way to become a great pitcher, or doctor or lawyer or rabbi. One has to learn from one’s patients, clients, audience or competition. Spahn was the smartest baseball person I ever talked to about the game and from him I learned …

Keep reading...

Major League Baseball is so pleased with and proud of itself for observing Jackie Robinson Day every April 15, the date Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, officials dwell on the past and ignore the present. They apparently think the annual one-day celebration expiates all of the racial sins they have committed and absolves them of those sins.

What sins might those be? The primary sin is the failure of teams to hire minority candidates for the two most significant positions of manager and general manager, or president of baseball operations, as the top front-office job has become in recent years.

And as teams fail to do what’s right and decent, the commissioner fails to do his job of opening the owners’ eyes to see what they are doing is as bad as what their ancestors did 80 and 90 and 100 years ago.

What would Robinson say, if he were around today, about the blatantly bad treatment teams show blacks and Latinos who want a chance to be a general manager or a manager? He wouldn’t be kind, and he would very likely tell Commissioner Rob Manfred to …

Keep reading...

These eight players have at least two significant aspects of their lives in common:

Jose Dominguez… Miguel Sulbaran… Frank Encarnacion… Jose Ramirez… Andy Taveras… Junior Lopez… Elniery Garcia… Starling Marte.

Minor leaguers, except for Marte, they were all born in the Dominican Republic, and they are all serving suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy. They all tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. In fact, they are the eight most recent players who tested positive and were suspended in a two-week period this month.

Most intriguing about the suspensions is that the players are all Dominican. Why should that be? Is there something about the island that leads the native players to use steroids? Do players from other Latin countries use steroids, test positive and incur suspensions?

A study of the list of players who have been suspended shows that players from other countries, especially Latin countries, have also been caught using illegal substances and suspended …

Keep reading...