One question about Jared Porter exposed big problem in sports

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The question came forth simply enough to Sandy Alderson:

When the Mets considered Jared Porter for their general manager opening last month — reaching out to “a variety of organizations, a number of individuals, people that had known him for a long time, people that had endorsed him. There wasn’t really a dissenting voice,” the team president explained on Tuesday afternoon — were any women among the references?

“No,” Alderson replied to Hannah Keyser of Yahoo Sports.

And that’s why diversity matters. On the Mets. In Major League Baseball. Everywhere in the universe.

The Steve Cohen Mets faced their first crisis Tuesday and dealt with it swiftly enough, terminating their new GM, Porter, 38 days after hiring him, within hours of learning of his highly disturbing conduct — unsolicited, lewd texts — with a female reporter from another country while he worked for the Cubs in 2016. Major League Baseball, too, jumped on the grenade, mobilizing for an investigation of 1) whether Porter did this to other women; and 2) who knew what and when among the Cubs, as an employee based in the journalist’s country acknowledged to ESPN (which broke the story) that he was aware of Porter’s behavior; the person no longer works for the Cubs. The Cubs announced they’ll conduct their own internal scrutiny of this matter.

Hence we have our annual baseball scandal, this one far less fun and far more concerning as a societal matter than last year’s Astros sign-stealing extravaganza (which compelled the Mets to fire their new manager, Carlos Beltran, who, like Porter, didn’t make it as far as spring training). Yet if clubs always will try to gain a competitive advantage on the field, one solution to doing so off the field dovetails cleanly with the very issue that toppled Porter: The dynamics of the industry must change so that, when a team vets a candidate, it reaches out to women — and people of all colors and orientations — as a matter of course.

“There does need to be more diversity across the industry,” Alderson acknowledged. “We need more diversity at the Mets.”

He can start by bringing folks of different backgrounds into the Mets’ baseball operations power structure, which currently consists solely of white men at the front office’s highest level; Luis Rojas, a Dominican Republic native, manages the team and has coaches of color in Ricky Bones (bullpen), Chili Davis (hitting) and Tony Tarasco (first base).

As Alderson noted, including women in the Porter process wouldn’t have automatically alerted the Mets to Porter’s gross behavior. However, using common sense, it surely wouldn’t have made such a discovery less likely. The more diverse voices reflecting diverse experiences you have, the better.

“It’s important that different sensitivities are reflected not just in decision-making, but in assessing the situation and determining what’s appropriate,” Alderson said. “It’s not about putting the onus on women. The onus is on all of us to root this out where it exists.”

MLB had enjoyed a banner winter on the diversity front with the Marlins’ hiring of Kim Ng, who had worked in baseball operations for 30 years, as their GM, breaking a barrier in all North American professional sports. The Yankees hope that Rachel Balkovec, the hitting coach they hired prior to the 2020 season to work with minor leaguers — who didn’t have a season thanks to the novel coronavirus — gets an opportunity to actually do her job this coming season, and the Giants’ Alyssa Nakken worked during games last year, a huge leap.

There need to be so many more huge leaps, though, to prevent such stumbles. To naturally block someone like Porter from making it this far, this fast — would the reporter have felt less isolated and helpless, or would Porter have felt less entitled, if there were more women executives and media members around the ballpark? — without being spotted for such creepiness. So that we can avoid such sorry days of reckoning.

“That’s one of the unfortunate circumstances that exists in the game today: There aren’t women in those positions with whom one can have a conversation and develop information and check references,” Alderson said, in response to Keyser’s question.

“Something to consider going forward,” Keyser suggested to Alderson, who nodded and replied, “Yes.”

Not diversity by mandate. Diversity because it makes the product, the industry, superior.

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