There’s a saying in baseball that on any day you can see something you’ve never seen before. On Tuesday I didn’t see something for the first time, but I learned something I didn’t know.

What I did know was that the Toronto Blue Jays had hired Mark Shapiro as their new president and chief executive officer without interviewing any minority candidates. The only other person the Blue Jays talked to, I was told, was Dave Dombrowski, whom the Boston Red Sox hired a few days later as their president of baseball operations.

The Red Sox didn’t interview any minority candidates, contrary to the rule established in 1999 by Commissioner Bud Selig, but they didn’t have to because …

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If no one has already done it, someone in Washington should file a missing persons report with the District of Columbia metropolitan police. Note I said persons – plural – because many members of the district’s major league baseball team have been missing for months. In fact, it might already be too late for a missing persons report to do any good. If it hasn’t already, time is running out.

As recently as the start of the season, the Nationals were widely considered to be a clear-cut favorite to win the National League East title. More than that, many so-called experts and fans alike expected the Nationals to …

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Nearly 40 years ago, the leader of the National Football League, Ed Garvey, criticized and ridiculed Marvin Miller and Richard Moss for their willingness to limit Peter Seitz’s historic arbitration award that created free agency.

Seitz ruled that baseball players, such as Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, in whose names the union filed the grievance on which Seitz ruled, could become free agents if they played a year without signing a contract. The renewal clause in the uniform player’s contract, the arbitrator found, could not be exercised in perpetuity and therefore players could be free after a year.

However, Miller and Moss, the most effective dynamic duo in labor history, Miller the union leader, Moss the union lawyer, knew that players would benefit far less if …

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