This past week, Craig Calcaterra noted in his Cup of Coffee newsletter that the Diversity Pipeline Program had disappeared from Major League Baseball’s website, seemingly in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from organizations across America.
The diversity initiative, established in 2016 under Commissioner Rob Manfred, aims to identify and develop front-office candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.
Friday, MLB released a statement in response to the move.
“Our values on diversity remain unchanged,” MLB said in a statement via USA Today. “We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.”
This statement echoes comments made last month by Manfred at the MLB owners meeting.
“Our values, particularly our values on diversity, remain unchanged. But another value that is pretty important to us is we always try to comply with what the law is,” Manfred said. “There seems to be an evolution going on here. We’re following that very carefully. Obviously, when things get a little more settled, we’ll examine each of our programs and make sure that while the values remain the same that we’re also consistent with what the law requires.”
News of MLB’s removal of the diversity program followed reports that Trump’s Department of Defense had removed a webpage celebrating the military achievements of Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. That page was later restored after a public outcry, and the DoD claimed it was “mistakenly removed.”
Like so many companies and organizations, MLB is on a slippery slope with this move, attempting to appease Trump’s grievance whims while also telling its fans and consumers that it still believes in the thing it no longer has the courage to stand behind.
