This may be the most difficult column I have ever written. It is an obituary, and I have never liked writing obituaries. But this is worse because of the subject of the obituary. This is not an obituary of a person, a family member, a relative, a close friend. In this column, I lament the demise of The New York Times’ baseball coverage, something of which I was part for 39 years.

The Times, in its fashion, still covers the home teams, the Yankees and the Mets, but the newspaper has relegated the rest of baseball to a sentence or two in a part of the sports section that used to be called “briefs.” Given what baseball reporting has appeared, that term is an understatement. Or an exaggeration.

While the Times gives minuscule attention to on-field coverage, its coverage of off-field events is …

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There’s nothing wrong with a team’s firing a minority manager. Minority managers have to be hired to be in position to be fired. Once they are hired, they should enjoy the same accolades or face the same perils as their white male counterparts. The problem with their being fired is there are so few that when one of them is fired, it’s magnified.

That’s what has happened with the Atlanta Braves’ dismissal last week of Fredi Gonzalez, the only Latino manager and one of only three minority managers in Major League Baseball.

So much for Commissioner Rob Manfred’s mythical minority hiring initiative.

Gonzalez’s involuntary departure leaves Washington’s Dusty Baker and Dave Roberts of Los Angeles as the only …

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On the eve of his induction into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Friday with Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield , I continue to hear that Larry Lucchino did not willingly relinquish his role as the team’s president and chief executive officer but was pushed out.

Lucchino, 70 years old, was part of the John Henry group that bought the Red Sox in December 2001. An active hands-on executive, he was instrumental in the team’s unprecedented success. With Lucchino as head man, the Red Sox ended the franchise’s 86-year World Series championship drought and then won two more World Series for a total of three championships in 10 years.

Before moving to Boston with Henry and Tom Werner, Lucchino was the chief executive of the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres.

While in San Diego, he developed a future general manager in …

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