What would Roberto Clemente do?

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't approve of this response.

At a news conference Thursday following an owners meeting, Selig brushed off calls to move the All-Star Game out of Phoenix and instead pointed in defense of baseball’s minority hiring record.

"Apparently all the people around and in minority communities think we're doing OK. That's the issue, and that's the answer," Selig reportedly said.

"I told the clubs today: 'Be proud of what we've done.' They are. We should. And that's our answer. We control our own fate, and we've done very well," he adds.

Of course, even that's better than the transparent bullshit issued by the Diamondbacks' owner.

"We certainly are well aware of the struggles our state has due to federal inaction on illegal immigration," Kendrick said in the statement. "The fallout of recent state legislation has a direct impact on many of our players, employees and fans in Arizona, not to mention our local businesses, many of which are corporate partners of ours.

"Unfortunately, this whole situation is sad and disappointing for all of us who are associated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. We remain hopeful that this situation can be resolved in a manner that does not cause harm to our great state."

Kendrick, who would not take questions when reached on the phone Friday, has been targeted by opponents of the bill because of his previous contributions to the Republican party.

UPDATE: Doug Glanville, in what is sadly his last column for the NY Times before going to the barren territory of ESPN, writes about something that surprised him -- and me -- the openness with which pro athletes have been protesting the AZ immigration statute.

Many of today’s players are those 12– to 18-year-olds from a decade ago, and they didn’t see the erosion of privacy as a loss, but rather as an invitation to be open.

As a result, today’s players have a voice, and it is never off, never toned down for a minute. You tweet, you post, and the world listens. Baseball, with more young general managers like Josh Byrnes in Arizona and Jon Daniels in Texas, is even more with the times and more likely to embrace the culture of the player. They understand that everyone is an enterprise, and that collective enterprise can effect change in a micro-minute.

We will see how things in Arizona will play out in the coming days and weeks. But regardless, public political neutrality for the athletes has gone out the window. In many ways, it is historic, maybe a paradigm shift for how players see and use their voice. It will go through challenges, most likely swerving left and right for a while, but if nothing else, you will know where everyone stands — and there is something refreshing about that.

We'll see, indeed. While the Pheonix Suns have protested, I haven't heard much from the Diamondbacks team. As Glanville writes earlier in the column,

In so many organizational cultures in sports, the ownership is the invisible smoke in the room. You feel its presence, you know it is there, but you can’t find it, you can’t relate to it, you can’t talk to it, even though it is changing the chemistry all around you. And you cannot possibly know what impact your public opinions can have on how you will be perceived. Because even in the sports world, perception — not just your batting average — is reality.

Something tells me the Kendrick smoke is pretty noxious.