What the Seattle Mariners – and all of us – can learn from integration’s past
By Adrian Burgos
Pioneering is never easy, whether on the field, in the dugout or in the front office.
The entry of new people and ideas can be extremely disruptive. It often challenges comfort zones—it’s the way we’ve always done things!—of those who were already present. Even more, it can expose beliefs, approaches and practices that previously were viewed as tradition that adversely affect the newcomers.
The accusations of racism in Seattle this past week left me with a sinking feeling. I had been impressed when the Mariners hired Dr. Lorena Martin in October 2017 as the team’s first-ever Director of High Performance.
Unfortunately, she lasted about a year in that innovative position. Most who follow baseball didn’t even know Martin had been fired by the Mariners until she took to social media.
“The Mariners organization has issues,” she declared, saying she’d witnessed members of the front office and coaching staffs calling Latinos “LAZY, DUMB, and STUPID, especially DOMINICANS.”
Major League Baseball and the Mariners ought not to hurriedly move towards reassuring us all that there is nothing to see here.
Judgment Call
La Vida Baseball contributor Isabelle Minasian wrote for Lookout Landing about the fundamental problems that apparently existed during Martin’s time in the Mariners organization. Her powerful words should remind us all about the casual racism and sexism that exist in many workplaces and how those dynamics can linger, even when women or people from different racial backgrounds are brought in to an organization.
The accusations of racism levied by Martin against Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto, manager Scott Servais, and director of player development Andy McKay surprised many within baseball.
The Mariners strongly denied the accusations in a Nov. 12 statement:
“The Mariners categorically deny that any member of our management or coaching staff made racist remarks regarding any of our players or staff.”
Even with the organization’s emphatic denial, another former Mariner employee Leonardo Santiago added his own claims about racially discriminatory treatment. A trainer who worked at the Mariners Dominican academy until his contract was not renewed this past October, Santiago shared his experience with McKay and Martin in a phone interview with Todo Deporte Online, an outlet in the Dominican Republic
Until this point, Seattle had seemed to be a place that had figured out how to integrate cultures.
Seattle is where Félix Hernández became “King Félix.” It’s where Nelson Cruz remade himself into one of the American League’s most prolific designated hitters and where Edgar Martínez found a home in baseball, playing his entire career there and now working as a hitting adviser for the Mariners.
When one looks at Seattle’s coaching staff, one sees Dominican Manny Acta as Servais’ bench coach.
The larger issue here isn’t just about whether Martin’s comments are true or not, it’s about what it takes to create inclusion, an effort that goes beyond mere representation.
It’s a lesson baseball has been trying to learn for decades.
Integration Matters
Integration takes work. Just like any innovation, it involves disrupting the comfort of those already within an organization. Players, coaching staff and front office personnel all have to start thinking about issues that seemed minute or trivial before, whether it is what they say or where they stay. They may seem minor, just the way things have always been done, but they really matter to the newly arrived members of the team or staff.
This became clear to Jackie Robinson and fellow black players across the major leagues when it came to staying in hotels in St. Louis. The Chase Hotel, where many teams stayed when visiting St. Louis, had a strict policy: no blacks allowed. This frustrated black players not just because they couldn’t stay with their teammates, but because the Chase had air-conditioning while the black hotels did not. It was separate and unequal.
Robinson complained of this practice to team officials, imploring them to pressure the hotel’s management to change the policy. In 1954, the Chase hotel finally allowed black players to stay as overnight guests, but still forbade them to use the dining room.
“Now, looking back, I want to say to myself, ‘Why wasn’t I outraged at that?” said Carl Erskine, a teammate of Robinson and then Dodgers’ player representative, in reflecting on the era of baseball’s racial integration.
St. Louis was not alone. Such issues arose in other big league towns and also in the places where teams conducted spring training. Many teams did not immediately change locations of their camps due to the segregation policies of those towns. Rather, they asked the pioneering players to stay in black hotels or in surrounding towns where they were permitted.
Major league team officials often did not fully assess how their institutional practice or organizational culture needed to adjust to make conditions better for their black players, whether African American or Latino.
Similarly, they did not always think through how changes in a team’s roster or staff meant finding the right manager.
Signs of Progress
Perhaps the most powerful example of this was the San Francisco Giants’ hiring of Alvin Dark as manager in 1961. The Giants handed baseball’s most racially and ethnically diverse team to Dark, who had no managerial experience.
During his first spring training camp, he hung a sign in the clubhouse that said only English should be spoken there, upsetting Cepeda, Marichal, Felipe Alou and other Latinos on the Giants.
The point then and now is that diversity of faces alone does not change the game. The full impact of change is produced through thoughtful assessment of how a team’s organizational culture takes its practices into account for everyone—those already within the organization and the newly arrived.
Thus, the takeaway is not whether Dr. Martin is fully correct or incorrect in her allegations of racism against the Mariners. Rather, it is for us to understand that there will be friction and challenges whenever baseball tries something new. It was part of the process of integration that started with Robinson and the Dodgers and affected every major league organization thereafter.
It remains part of the process of not just representation, but inclusion of Latinos as players, coaches and managers, and in the front offices. It’s an effort not just toward equality, but equity.
Featured Image: Seattle Mariners Twitter