Tag: Rob Manfred

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Siguenza on Sports

MLB commissioner on CNN discusses plans to play ball

Chase Field in Phoenix, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. (Brian Siguenza)

CNN’s Thursday night town hall on coronavirus was the television program to watch if you wanted an idea of what a return to live sports might look like. That’s because Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred spent approximately fifteen minutes speaking with moderators Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta about his organization’s plans to start the baseball season. You can see a portion of the interview below.

CNN International on Twitter

There wasn’t any real earth-shattering information to come out of the conversation between Manfred, Cooper, and Dr. Gupta, but it was interesting nonetheless to hear the commissioner talk of playing games in front of no fans and the procedures that the league and its teams would take to keep players safe. Some items of note:

  • Manfred asserted that players who were uncomfortable with assuming the risk of being in close contact with others would not be forced to return to work.
  • In the event a player tests positive for coronavirus, he would be quarantined for two weeks, and then MLB would conduct additional tests on anyone the player may have had contact with.
  • Owners could stand to lose $4 billion if a season did not happen, an impact Manfred called “devastating.”
Anderson Cooper 360 on Twitter

Do the economics outweigh the health risks involved in playing sports during the pandemic? That is a question the major organizations are having to ask themselves and should be a contributing factor in plans to resume competition.

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Leadership Archive

A bases-loaded jam

Now that it’s been a couple of weeks since the Super Bowl, we can begin the transition from the gridiron to the baseball diamond. And we find the major leagues in a difficult moment right now, with much of the news centered around findings that the Houston Astros employed sign-stealing methods en route to their World Series title in 2017. The fallout from these actions has been described by public relations experts and sportswriters alike as a crisis for MLB. By their accounts, commissioner Rob Manfred has handled the situation rather clumsily. Writes John Feinstein in the Washington Post, “Right from the beginning, MLB has botched this investigation, from the blanket immunity it gave players to Manfred’s refusal to…tak(e) the 2017 World Series title and trophy away from the Astros.”

As the head of a professional sports organization, it is perhaps inevitable that Rob Manfred would be subjected to fierce criticism of his decisions. But how do other leaders avoid the same kind of scorn from the public and the press? The answer, say Lussier & Achua (2016), is very simple: the leader must get in front of the situation and be able to communicate effectively with all parties. This includes the public, the media, and especially with employees in the organization.

Ideally, the firm will have a plan already in place for dealing with scenarios that are at best embarrassing and at worst have deadly consequences. They’ve assembled a team, determined possible threats to operations, and created an outline for publicly dealing with these threats (Lussier & Achua, 2016). Given the ability to react in real-time on social media now, as people did when Astros players apologized during a news conference, it is not unreasonable for organizations to implement so-called “safety measures” that protect their reputation from further damage.

I would have to imagine that for being such well-known entities in North America, Major League Baseball and the Houston Astros would have some sort of contingency plan for handling controversial matters, it’s just in this instance both seemed to swing and miss.

Reference

Lussier, R.N., & Achua, C.F. (2016). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.