Dusty Baker appeared tranquil Thursday at the SNY studios, speaking with reporters and joking around with some fellow ex-players. Later that day, he was leaving for Ghana with those ex-players and Mets general manager Omar Minaya, and he mentioned, with a smile, that he couldn't have made this goodwill trip if he still were managing.
But when the subject turned to baseball's success in granting job opportunities to minorities, Baker's smile lost some of its shine.
Because Baker managed every season from 1993 through last year, and because 1993 coincidentally marked Bud Selig's first full season as commissioner, Newsday asked Baker to compare then to now when it comes to minority hiring.
"About the same. About the same," Baker said. "Take two out, put one in, two in. It's about the same. Things haven't changed that much.
"But you get tired of talking about it, because we just sit and talk about it every year around this time. Around Martin Luther King's birthday, around Black History Month. And then you don't talk about it, hear about it until next year at this time."
I thought Baker wasn't being quite fair until I crunched the most basic of numbers: At the start of the 1993 season, six of 28 managers, or 21 percent, were either black or Latino. At the outset of the 2007 campaign, five of 30 managers, or 17 percent, are minorities.
Yeesh. At least there are an owner (the Angels' Arte Moreno) and two general managers (Minaya and Ken Williams of the White Sox) who are minorities compared to zero of both in 1993, but still. Terrible.
"I won't quarrel with anybody who says we could do better," Selig said in a telephone interview. "But we've done OK. The way a lot of people judge this is to see how many general managers and managers [are minorities], but our program is a lot deeper and more meaningful than that."
There's no doubt that Selig cares passionately about this subject.
Baseball front offices feature about 25 percent minorities now as opposed to the 2 percent when Selig took over in September 1992. The Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program is legitimate, as is baseball's Urban Youth Academy in Los Angeles. There's a reason why the New York Urban League will be honoring Selig in early May.
Yet this day, when Tony Dungy's Colts are taking on Lovie Smith's Bears in the Super Bowl, is a good one to point out that baseball has a great deal of room for improvement. More room than many people realize, this space suspects.
"It's a little slower than I'd like, absolutely," agreed Selig, who addressed this topic in the January owners meetings.
Quotable
Jose Reyes, appearing Tuesday at the Kravis Children's Hospital at Mount Sinai in Manhattan: "I think it's going to be better for me. Last year was a great year for me, so I can't push back. I've got to go forward. I think it's going to be a better season. Not just for me, but for the whole team."
If Reyes can build on his spectacular 2006, perhaps the Mets' starting pitching won't be as great a concern as anticipated.
Glen Cove's Craig Hansen, appearing at Wednesday's event for the St. John's baseball team, on his difficult 2006 season with the Red Sox: "I view it as a huge learning experience. I didn't have the year that I wanted to, but I had the year that I wanted to mentally by learning so much, bringing into the offseason and the season coming up."
It's far from too late for Hansen to get it together and be a successful big-league pitcher. It is too late, however, for industry folks to criticize the Yankees for passing on Hansen in the 2005 draft. The whole idea was that Hansen could've helped the Yankees' bullpen the past two seasons. Instead, while Hansen struggled, the Yankees dealt their first pick of 2005, C.J. Henry, to the Phillies for Bobby Abreu, who energized the 2006 Yankees.
Goose Gossage, at the Thurman Munson Awards Dinner, on Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron: "I think there's going to be a dark cloud over this thing the whole way through. That's a tough predicament to be in. I'd hate to be the commissioner ... I don't even know if we'd be talking about this at all if it weren't for steroids. Put steroids in a guy who's a superstar anyway, a performance-enhancing drug in his system, and he's a monster."
No commentary needed, except that it'll be great to have Gossage back at Yankees spring training after a five-year absence.
Yankees senior vice president of baseball operations Mark Newman on 6-8 pitcher Dellin Bettances, a Yankees 2006 draft pick: "If you could make one in a lab, he'd be like him."
Around the leagues
The Yankees were supposed to visit San Diego this season, but when Colorado management begged for the Yankees to come in and boost attendance, baseball relented and switched the schedule, as first reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune. This is when the Yankees have every right to cry hypocrisy: Opposing teams don't want them spending so much on talent - until the chance arises to have them in their ballpark ... While Mel Stottlemyre appears headed for a senior advisory job with the Diamondbacks, there clearly are no hard feelings with the Yankees. Stottlemyre recently participated in a Yankees Fantasy Camp in Tampa ... One National League official, discussing Roger Clemens' options: "With the Astros, he'd be pitching to Russ Ortiz. With the Yankees, he'd be pitching to David Ortiz."
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