Baseball Picks a Pioneer

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."

With reporting by Lawrence Mondi/New York