The Undefeated – Rhiannon Walker: There are not enough minority managers in affiliated baseball. It’s far too easy to lose sight of this problem with the ongoing labor strife that dominates Major League Baseball discussions and the accompanying problem of fair pay for players in Minor League Baseball. Those issues aren’t going away, but neither is the fact that affiliated ball continues to be a place where white men are allowed to manage and minorities are given barely any consideration. Every single statistic that is available clearly paints MLB especially as having a massive problem when it comes to hiring minority candidates for managerial positions. Toil away, earn your spot, but the fact remains that no matter how much you toil and how easily you’ve earned that spot if you are a minority candidate you will lose out to a less qualified white man simply because they are a white man.
Yahoo! Sports – Hannah Keyser: Rob Whalen got to the top of the mountain and saw time on an MLB roster. When he reached the top of that mountain he expected his team, the Seattle Mariners, to be there for him if he slipped and started to tumble. As Whalen saw his career sliding downhill thanks to crippling anxiety and mental health issues he felt his team retreat from him. Instead of helping Whalen the Mariners gave him ultimatums and threatened to cut him from the roster. Eventually, he did make his way back to the mountain top, and the Mariners were more than happy to credit their player development team for his return. Now that Whalen’s mental health issues have caused him to retire from baseball, he wants people to know the Mariners weren’t there for him like they claim.
Baseball Prospectus – Justin Klugh: When a person accomplishes something special in life they deserve to receive recognition for their accomplishment. What happens when the accomplishment of that person is outweighed by the rhetoric of that person’s politics? For the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox organizations, and many of their fans, the answer seems to be that the player’s disgusting politics can be ignored. Those two organizations continue to honor Curt Schilling even as he practices open transphobia and Islamophobia. Reporters continue to peddle the “we’re judging his playing career, not his politics” trope even as he jokes about reporters deserving to be lynched. I’d argue that Schilling’s abhorrent acts as a person have made it where his playing career hasn’t mattered for some time now. It’s time MLB, the Phillies, the Red Sox, and the reporters who support him realize just what their support of him means.
Lead photo courtesy of Patrick Smith – Getty Images
