The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released their annual report card for Major League Baseball, with telling results. Despite the sports organizations support of diversity hires, MLB saw a decrease in ethnic makeup versus last year.
“The league scored an 82 in racial hiring, down from 90.5 last year, and went from a 74.3 in gender hiring to 70 this year. Overall, MLB scored 76, which is down from 82.4.”
The issue within the MLB’s diversity push has recently come at the team level. Within the central office, the “MLB received an A- in racial hiring practices, where people of color make up 28.1 percent” and “a C- for gender hiring practices, with women making up 29.3 of its workforce.” Meanwhile at “the team level, MLB received an F in racial hiring practices for managers.”
According to Dan Halem, the chief legal officer for MLB “It’s a work in progress….The commissioner, when he became the commissioner in 2015, made diversity in all of these areas one of his top priorities. He put together a lot of well-funded programs in the last couple of years to try to do better. But it’s going to take a little bit of time before we really see results from these programs in actuality.”
