TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/021389/02138900.062

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 68 lines

SPORT, Page 76

Baseball Picks a Pioneer

League leader Bill White becomes the game's ranking black

By TOM CALLAHAN


    Forty-two years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line but
only 22 months after Al Campanis broke the party line, baseball
last week hired a black man to be president of the National League.
He will preside at owners' meetings, approve players' contracts,
supervise the umpires, set proprieties and penalize iniquities.
"Whatever historical significance there is in it," said Bill White,
55, a reluctant-sounding pioneer, "if I didn't think I could do
this job, I would be foolish to take it. My goal is to be the best
president I can be." Of any color.

    The former first baseman and broadcaster will succeed A.
Bartlett Giamatti when the current president relieves departing
Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in April. "Bill was hired
because he was the best man," Ueberroth said. Insisted Los Angeles
Dodger President Peter O'Malley, who chaired the search committee:
"Race did not play a factor." Still, the pressure baseball has been
feeling is well known.

    The perennial frustration of blacks in their attempts to rise
above the playing field was crystallized by a 1987 ABC Nightline
program on which then Dodger executive Campanis uttered a stream
of chilling biases. "I don't believe it's prejudice," he said of
a system that has entrusted just a handful of teams to a total of
three black managers -- Frank Robinson, Larry Doby and Maury Wills
-- retaining only Robinson in Baltimore at the moment. "They may
not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager
or perhaps a general manager." That's when the screaming really
started.

    In his December state-of-the-game message, Ueberroth proclaimed
that minority employment in baseball has risen from 2% to 10% in
two years and that minorities have filled 102 of the latest 282
front-office openings in areas like promotions and ticket sales.
However, home-run king Henry Aaron, now player-development director
for the Atlanta Braves, noticed that there are still no black
general managers. "It sounds like the same old bull," he said.

    White grew up in Ohio, won an academic, not an athletic,
scholarship to Hiram College and interrupted premedical studies for
a notable career in baseball that culminated in a $300,000
announcing job with the New York Yankees. It is a pleasing fact
that several other black candidates for the league presidency,
including former Cincinnati second baseman Joe Morgan, were too
prosperous in business to consider the wage. In fact, White is
taking an estimated $50,000 pay cut.

    A large man but a nimble first baseman in his 13 years in the
major leagues, White seven times won the Gold Glove, which
signifies pre-eminence at a position. In his happiest period, from
1959 through 1965 with the St. Louis Cardinals, he hit as much as
.324 and regularly managed 20 home runs and 100 runs batted in.

    Bob Broeg, a veteran sportswriter for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, recalls an interview in 1964 that capsules White.
St. Louis was ten games behind Philadelphia at midseason. Would he
comment on the problems if Broeg pledged to exclude his name? "No,"
White said. "I won't comment unless you do use my name. I'm the
problem. The RBI man hasn't been knocking in any runs." After that
he started knocking them in by the bushel, and the Cards made up
6 1/2 games on the Phils in the final two weeks and went on to win
the World Series.

    Last week White said, "I don't remember losing to the American
League in six All-Star games." His first message to the National
League players was simple. "They better not lose my first one."