60 Years Later: MLB Still Has Work to Do

By Alex Horowitz

EVANSTON, IL - Sixty years after breaking the color barrier, Jackie Robinson has clearly changed the outward face of Major League Baseball. Disturbing to some, though, is that the behind-the-scenes faces you do not see have changed far less dramatically.

“I think with the players being put on the field, Major League Baseball is doing a pretty good job,” said Sekou Bermiss, a Kellogg student who organized last month’s Northwestern Fireside Chat on African American athletes. “But the power structure remains pretty much the same.”

According to a University of Central Florida report, 40.5 percent of today’s Major Leaguers are people of color, a number not far off the league’s all-time high of 42 percent. Since the time of Robinson’s death in 1972, however, the ratio of African American players has plummeted from 20 percent to 8.4 percent.

This drop could be attributed to increased and broader opportunities for African Americans, and other sports leagues that desegregated much later than baseball.

“Among the African American community, baseball is no longer the only desegregated option,” said Justin Shin, a Northwestern student. “Now, African Americans have a broader range of options, either in education, choice of career, or even other sports like basketball or football.”

With player diversity close to record highs, the administrative side of baseball has lagged behind significantly. Last year, only 49 of Major League Baseball’s 468 central office employees were people of color. At the same time, 27 of the league’s 32 teams were guided by white managers, and only two teams had minority general managers.

“In business there is a concept called the glass ceiling, pertinent to women,” said Marlene Jia, a psychology student at Northwestern. “I believe that exists not just for women, but for minorities, too, and not just in corporate America, but also in sports like baseball.”

Hispanics, not African Americans, maintain the greatest statistical discrepancy between management representation and number of players. According to the report, 30 percent of all current Major Leaguers are Hispanic, a number unthinkable before the Robinson breakthrough.

“Anytime you have one person break a barrier, they do not only break that barrier for their coalition or group,” said Bermiss. “They break it for anyone else that wants to enter. Hispanic players also have their own pioneers like [Roberto] Clemente.”

Still, Hispanics make up only 13 percent of Major League Baseball’s central office and boast only one general manager. Bermiss believes that the lack of Hispanics on the executive level should be baseball’s biggest concern.

“I think the real travesty is the underwhelming representation of Latino managers and GMs and what have you,” said Bermiss. “They have all those players and they are the growing minority. With that kind of difference between players and management, they should be baseball’s priority right now.”

Last month, Major League Baseball celebrated and honored the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough. These numbers, though, indicate that there is still work to be done.