#16: Why diversity doesn't guarantee an inclusive workplace
Plus: Retiring, fan!
Tomorrow is a big day. In 24 hours time, I’ll be en route to Cincinnati to cross something off the bucket list. No, it’s not Skyline Chili. (Though I might have some of that, stay tuned.)
Hey, it’s Zach. When I was a kid, my dad always, always told me to do something with my life that didn’t feel like work, something I could love.
He’s a mechanical engineer, and for the past 26 years he has been keeping the machines running at a plant that packages Reynolds foil and various associated products. He enjoys the people and exercising the engineering muscles, don’t get me wrong, but the hours are long — brutal and unpredictable in many stretches — and his fulfillment has always come less from the work than the springboard it afforded: To move our family to a more vibrant area. To access better schools, better health care, better opportunities. To go on vacations and make lasting memories.
One of the first ones that I was old enough to have influenced was to Boston, to see Fenway Park. It was July 2004, and I scampered down to the field after the guided tour to meet Terry Francona and Johnny Pesky, who were sitting on the wall by the dugout.
Francona, who came out of a brief retirement this year to take over the Reds, is maybe baseball’s utmost example of someone who has lived out my dad’s advice. In the dugout is where he wants to be, so it’s where you’ll find him.
“I don’t know what the hell else he would do,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said of Francona recently,
My dad does know what the hell else he would do. And he’s earned the chance to do it many times over. Now he’s got the time. Today is my dad’s last day at work. He’s retiring.
That’s why tomorrow is the big day. I’m flying to Cincinnati with friends to kick off my bachelor party, driving south to meet up with my dad and others. And on Saturday, we’re knocking out a dream that goes back about as far as that Boston trip. We’re going to the Kentucky Derby.
And after that? Well, his new job is figuring it out. He’s going to be great at it.
How Latin baseball players are proving an ‘illusion of inclusion’ in the workplace
by Hannah Keyser
A couple of new academic papers from researchers at Cornell University use Major League Baseball to examine what they term the “illusion of inclusion.” The player pool in MLB is diverse — with The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport giving MLB an A+ in 2023 for racial diversity among players — but that doesn’t necessarily reflect equity. You know this, of course, because of the discourse around incidents like what happened recently in Atlanta with Ronald Acuña Jr. insinuating that even a star player will be treated more critically if he’s non white.
The researchers took both a qualitative and quantitative look at how internationally born Latino players — a classification based on how the players and coaches referred to themselves — fare in the minor leagues and found that they’re less likely to advance through the levels and that they face unique challenges compared to U.S.-born white players.
I talked to one of the authors of both papers, Claire Sandman Malcomb, about the research. I like how she describes her area of study, which is not exclusive to baseball or even sports.
“Specifically, I'm getting my PhD in organizational behavior,” she said. “But broadly I am interested in intergroup relations and how people cooperate and resolve conflict, how we communicate across differences. A lot of my work, and what I’m most passionate about, is studying allyship and understanding how people in positions of power and privilege can become more active in efforts to reduce inequality and increase inclusion.”
The qualitative research was conducted through interviews with minor leaguers, coaches, and MLB education coordinators. They found that players were concerned about “the money, the travel, the nutrition, staying healthy, all these things that we expect,” Malcomb said, “But what we also very quickly came to realize, this came up over and over again, was that there were cliques forming on teams based on language barriers, based on cultural barriers, and that this experience of international Latino players, especially within the minors, was extremely salient in this environment.”
(Worth noting before we highlight the more troubling aspects of this: Malcomb, who describes herself as “very cynical” about the prevalence of discrimination, was surprised to find anecdotal data about players who appreciated the exposure to diversity. “What I didn't expect, and which was really interesting, was the positive attitudes towards diversity and multiculturalism, if you will,” she said. “So players talking about how fun it was to meet different people and learn each other's languages.”)
Preferential treatment by coaches and the opportunities contingent on that attention was a point of concern. The study mentions a coach who had to keep instruction “simpler” for Latino players that don’t speak English. This takes us to the complimentary study, which looked at broader data about the player populations.
The results of the quantitative analysis are relatively simple and straightforward. “Latin American players are less likely to make it to the majors,” Malcomb said. “Basically, if we look to the highest level that they ever achieve in baseball, from the minors all the way through the majors, their highest level achieved is significantly lower than for US-born players.”
They couldn’t control for performance (“Oh my gosh, I wish,” Malcomb said. “One of the reasons that this took six years to publish this because my advisor and I talked about this for so long.”) but they analyzed the data several different ways, controlling for what they could, and felt confident in the correlation.
“We can't say anything about what causes the difference, because it's just a correlational difference at this point. We can't say that there's one specific thing causing international Latino players to be less likely to advance,” Malcomb said. “But what I take away from the two papers together is that we do see that international Latino players have additional barriers to succeed. They often are coming over to the U.S. and learning a new culture, learning a new language, and when they're on teams with coaches who don't speak their language, it limits the ability for them to advance their skill and get the very in-depth training and coaching that they need.”
The implications of which Malcomb sees as being bigger than baseball: “Having high diversity doesn't inherently make a place or an organization inclusive.”
These studies, which were published in the past month, started in 2019. Malcomb’s advisor, Emily Zitek, launched the project in conjunction with MLB itself — which “wanted to understand where they should be putting further efforts” regarding DEI. Unfortunately, along with the pandemic disruption, the person at the league who was pursuing this line of research no longer works at MLB.
“It breaks my heart,” Malcomb said about not getting to finish the reporting she had planned after COVID scuttled a trip to spring training 2020.
“I was really excited to dive deeper into the inclusion on teams and look at whether or not there were correlations or trends between how inclusive people felt that their teams were and the performance of those teams as a whole,” she said. Because, even if you shouldn’t have to prove the business case for caring about inclusivity, Malcomb understands that often you do.
“People want to know why inclusion matters. And so if we can say, well, it matters because people perform better and teams perform better when the teams are more inclusive and there's more team cohesion, then we can get more buy-in for efforts to make place spaces more inclusive.”
What we’re chatting about
Jose Altuve, noted shorter person, asked to stop batting leadoff because he needs more time to run from left field to the dugout. This is an openly funny thing for a professional athlete to admit, but I want to thank Altuve for his honesty because baseball players don’t have to say anything interesting at all. And of course he homered in his first game batting second. –ZC
The great David Roth, at Defector, wrote about Griffin Canning, but really about the Mets’ progress toward a goal so good it sounded stupid: “We're going to Become The Dodgers, it should take a few years, is both a compelling a strategy and not in the abstract very much different than me excitedly telling my wife that I have come up with a plan that will, in due time, lead me to win the Slam Dunk Contest during NBA All-Star Weekend.” –ZC
I think sometimes people like to dunk on interviews in which someone reveals themselves to be a little myopic — but who isn’t? The best thing a Q&A can be is authentic to the way the subject is, well, subjective about their own experiences. That’s already maybe too much throat-clearing about this delightfully untimely interview with Mike Piazza in New York Magazine. On the Belle and Sebastian song that openly questions his sexuality: “Flattered, obviously.” On having a girlfriend of the season while he was playing: “They were pursuing me and obviously other guys who were in baseball. They made it easy for you. It wasn’t like we really had to do tons of work.” On retirement: “I think the first key is realizing that what you do will never be as exciting as what you did.” I could keep going but you should just read the interview. –HK
I tried to come up with something snarky or at least smart to say about this literal commercial featuring Dustin May, Christian Yellich, and Dansby Swanson in partial bald caps lest I give the company uncritical native advertising. But, alas, I find the performances undeniably cheeky and charming. –HK
Cat Guys is a core tenant of Bandwagon’s legacy so I am effectively obligated to share this content about Seattle Mariner Andrés Muñoz touring a local cat-specific shelter to promote an upcoming “Take Meow’t to the Ballgame” night. Click through for pictures of Muñoz holding cute kittens … and looking intently at cat x-rays? –HK
As pets, cats are obviously superiors, but even I have to admit that they are probably not great hangs at the ballpark. Which is why the Mariners promotional day features a cat hat but no actual cats. Dogs, however, can show up to lend their bark to the park. A bark that, apparently, inspires some players more than others. Specifically, Joc Pederson. –HK
This is my favorite defensive play of the year so far. Evidently, the most motivating universal human emotion is 'act cool so people don't notice you tripped over nothing.’ —HK
Great discussion of the difference between diversity and inclusion. One additional piece that I think is relevant to the experiences of white American-born players versus, say, Dominicans is the difference in the pathways by which they can reach the majors. American-born players might be first signed at 21 and go straight to A-ball, but Dominicans are signed so early and spend a few years in the DSL first, then are often approaching service time limits for minor league free agency at an age where most white Americans aren't yet big leaguers. It's tough to have to enter the professional system at such a young age and it puts a lot of additional pressure on the players in their careers.