A column last month about minority hiring did not please a reader.

“Should the NBA be required to have a fixed percentage of white players on each roster that reflects the actual makeup of the population?” the reader wrote in an e-mail.” Get off the soapbox on this issue already; it is very 1990’s. The guys who are qualified will get hired.”

I would like to think so, but I know from too much experience, from the 1990s and before and since that’s not true. The guys who are qualified are not always hired, especially if they are black or Latino. I don’t know if owners of major league baseball teams are …

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This is Major League Baseball’s dishonored roll for 2016, with the suspended cheaters’ achievements added:

* Jenrry Mejia – permanent suspension
* Marlon Byrd – 162 games
* Dee Gordon – 80 games
* Taylor Teagarden – 80 games
* Daniel Stumpf – 80 games
* Chris Colabello – 80 games
* Juan Duran – 80 games
* Abraham Almonte – 80 games
* Josh Ravin – 80 games
* Raul Mondesi – 50 games

This group of disgraced players is twice the number of players who were suspended at the equivalent time last year and exceeds by three the number of players who were suspended the entire year. The tawdry 10 represent the most who have been …

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Readers of sports sections have different ideas about what should appear in those sections. The New York Times, as we noted in a column earlier this week, either believes or thinks its readers want its sports section to include articles about cup stacking, beach volleyball, duckpin bowling, soccer and tennis more than baseball.

However, Times readers who read this website think otherwise. I have taken no survey, but reader response to the column about the Times sports section was one of the largest responses this site has received in its eight-year existence, and the responses were unanimous. No one defended or supported the Times practices, including its baseball coverage and choice of topics to feature.

Again I have no survey-based evidence, but I suspect many of this site’s readers – viewers in Internet lingo – are Times refugees, eager to read about …

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