A Managerial Travesty, Part 2

Thanks to those who have commented on my previous article. Today I want to take it one step further, but I do need to issue a correction.

While the numbers are still a travesty as far as I’m concerned, after further research I find they’re slightly, and I mean only slightly better. In my original analysis, I considered Davey Lopes and Jerry Manuel to be Hispanic managers. Looking into it further, I realized Lopes is of African descent and Manuel also considers himself an African-American. My apologies for not having them on the original list. I also failed to make note of Dave Clark, who served on an interim basis in Houston after the Astros fired Cecil Cooper in 2009.

Still, the fact remains that only 15 African-Americans have attained the position of major league baseball manager since 1975, when Frank Robinson was hired as the first fulltime African-American manager. That’s only 15 in 36 years. In addition, only 15 Hispanics have been named to an MLB managing post in the same time frame, as well as the previously mentioned Don Wakamatsu as the first and only Asian-American. That’s a total of 31. In that time, a total of 173 men attained their first MLB mangerial position. Thus, combined, only about 18% of MLB managerial jobs since 1975 have gone to minorities.

Below is the list, as derived from baseball-reference.com. Most were hired as fulltime managers. There were a few who just served as interim managers. In those cases, I only considered those who managed for more than ten games in their careers. However, if I had considered them all, regardless of how many games they managed, the percentages would be much worse.