Jackie Robinson’s widow says MLB has work to do in diversity

It has been nearly 69 years since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball and his widow says the game still has a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity.

Rachel Robinson, 93, spoke to television critics at the Television Critics Association winter meeting Monday where she appeared to discuss the scheduled April debut of “Jackie Robinson” a two-part documentary on PBS airing April 11-12. Jackie Robinson died in 1972 at 53.

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“We’re talking about very few (black) coaches, very few managers … so there’s room for real progress, where people can come into the sport and feel they’re going to be respected and given opportunities,” Rachel Robinson said.

Lloyd McClendon was the only black manager during the 2015 season and he was fired at the end of the year, leaving the game without a black manager for almost a month in the fall until the Washington Nationals hired Dusty Baker, who will be the only black manager in MLB in 2016.

The Society for American Baseball Research conducted a study from 1947 when Robinson first integrated the game through 2012 and found that the number of black players in the major leagues reached an all-time high in 1981 when 18.7 percent of the players were black. It also found the percentage decreased every year from 1994 to 2011, the year before the study ended. In 2012, only 7.2 percent of MLB players were black.

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The study also found that the percentage of Latino players in the major leagues exploded beginning in the 1990s and reaching nearly 30 percent in recent years.

“There is a lot more that needs to be done and that can be done in terms of the hiring, the promotion,” Rachel Robinson said Monday.

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Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo