Baseball’s Praised Diversity Is Stranded at First Base.

[elleng]

About 40 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are black, Hispanic or Asian, and the sport is seen as a leading example of diversity, yet a curious disparity has emerged in a corner of the game.

Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.

The question is why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/sports/baseball/12bas...

[joeybee12]

1. Ozzie Guillen!

He's ruined it for the rest!

[Bluzmann57]

2. A few years ago, the Cubs had an Asian 3rd base coach

A guy named Wendell Kim. He stunk. They fired him. But yes, there is a question of why there are not more minorities who are 3b coaches.

[RockaFowler]

3. Both of the Marlins coaches are minorities

First Base coach is Tarrik Brock. Third Base coach is Joey Espada. Both have been with the Marlins for over 4 years. Very diverse group of Fish!!

[charlie and algernon]

4. plus Ozzie Guillen was their 3rd base coach during their 2003 World Series run

[hughee99]

7. Ron Washington and Manny Acta are former 3rd base coaches as well. n/t

[brendan120678]

5. The Mets' Razor Shines used to be...

third base coach.
But he sucked at it.
So he got "demoted" to first base coach.
How anyone can be so bad at telling runners when to go, slide, or steal is a mystery...but Shines was the master at being bad at it.

[hughee99]

6. 23%, 67%, "twice as large". These statistics sound shocking until you realize

that the sample size is 30.

23% is 7 out of 30
67% is 20 of 30
The difference is 13 jobs. If this is twice as large as it was in 1990, we're talking about a difference of 6 or 7 jobs.

Is this really a sufficient statistic sample to determine if any kind of institutional bias is occurring?

I'm not saying it's not occurring, but this is a situation where statistics can be deceptive.