Joey Cora: MLB's hiring system unfair to Latinos

Former MLB player Joey Cora, who is interested in becoming a big-league manager, believes the hiring system in baseball is unfair to Latin American candidates.

Cora, who was born in Puerto Rico and has minor-league management and major-league bench coaching experience, expressed his concern with the lack of Latino managers across MLB in an interview with ESPN on Friday.

"Some of the guys tell us we have to go through the minor league system to get experience," he explained. "I don't think that is fair. All they have to do is give us a chance - the same chance you'd give anybody else. It is not because we are Latinos. Our resumes speak for itself."

After the Atlanta Braves fired Fredi Gonzalez earlier this week, baseball was left with zero Latino managers in the bigs.

"Maybe us as Latinos are going at it the wrong way," Cora said. "We are looking at being a manager as the thing. But it shouldn't be that way. I think we've got to go higher than that. We have got to get into positions of power - (general manager), director of minor league systems, assistant GMs."

Cora also went on to make a shocking revelation when he blamed the "Selig Rule," which requires all MLB teams to consider minority candidates for openings, for unfairly leading on Latino candidates into thinking they have a chance of landing a position.

"I have been interviewed and when I tell them I went to Vanderbilt University, the guys that are doing the interview are surprised," Cora said. "So that tells me it might be a check mark interview for the Selig Rule. That's wrong. That's a process that is faulty.

"That's not right. ... Some guys say, 'I'm not going to the interview because I know it's for the (Selig) Rule, for a check mark. But we have to keep fighting because one of these days, one of the guys will be so good that the owner or the GM will say, 'We have to hire this guy.'"