"During the course of that year, there was a restaurant that did a promotion in Salisbury," Watson told ESPN's Gary Miller on a recent edition of Up Close. "If you had a good game, you'd get a certificate for a Salisbury steak. Well, first game I played in, I hit a three-run home run in my first at bat as a professional ballplayer. I got the certificate and went to the restaurant and they said they wouldn't serve me. I said, 'OK, that's cool. Let me have it out the back door.' They would not let me have it."

Watson shared his experiences with discrimination as part of Up Close's recognition of Black History Month. An edited transcript of Watson's Feb. 17 comments follows.

Miller: What are your earliest memories, something that has stuck with you since your youth, of racism, of discrimination that stung you.

Watson: Gary, I will have to say that I guess things that stick out in my mind are the early days of playing minor league ball. My first year playing Class A ball in Salisbury, North Carolina. We had just left spring training Cocoa, Florida, a big city. Salisbury is another big city. We took the bus up, and arriving in Salisbury, they dropped myself and two other black teammates off on this side of the tracks and said, "There's a black family you have to stay with. You can't stay with us in the hotel." That was my first real event that sticks in my mind. During the course of that year, there was a restaurant that did a promotion in Salisbury. If you had a good game, you'd get a certificate for a Salisbury steak. Well, first game I played in, I hit a three-run home run in my first at bat as a professional ballplayer. I got the certificate and went to the restaurant and they said they wouldn't serve me. I said, "OK, that's cool. Let me have it out the back door." They would not let me have it. So, I had a pretty good year there in Salisbury and all my certificates for Salisbury steaks went to my teammates.

Miler: Did that make you mad or sad?

Watson: I was really surprised, basically. I grew up in Los Angeles, where if you had the means to go anywhere, you could go anywhere. We did not have a racial discrimination that I knew at the time, at least when I grew up. I think the discrimination was more economic. We just didn't have a lot of money. What it did was let me know that there was two different worlds out there, very naive coming from my situation, but we also knew that Martin Luther King was really at the time pushing for Civil Rights.

Miller: When you think about that, and what happened to you, how could you ever have conceived that you could become not only an assistant general manager, but then the first ever black general manager for the Astros, and then the Yankees, the team of teams in baseball?

Watson: Well, I'll tell you what, that really showed that the game has made some progress, this country has made some progress with a lot still to be made. But you know what, I sit back and pinch myself sometimes, looking at the fact that, here's a young man from inner city Los Angeles. I have had a chance to live and play my dream to be a big league ballplayer, an All-Star, play in the World Series, then be a general manager of a World Series winning team. Also, play in the eighth wonder of the world, the Astrodome, and then hold the keys to that building as the general manager, and then ultimately be the general manager and Vice President of Operations for probably the ultimate sports franchise in all the sports, the New York Yankees.

Miller: Are you surprised that you are still the only black general manager?

Watson: In a way, yes. I've had some interviews. Last year I interviewed for the Dodger job. I actually went out a couple of times and met with some people very high up in Dodger organization and met with the new ownership, the Fox people. I didn't know exactly why I didn't get the job. With the credentials that I have, I thought that I should have been strongly considered. Maybe I was. This year I went out to Seattle and to Anaheim. I actually went to Anaheim three or four times and thought I had some very good interviews, but they went another direction, as we say in the business, and I'm here talking to you as not a bitter man, but somewhat perplexed like everyone else.

Miller: One thing you did say about the Anaheim job: there were five candidates in line for the job and none of them had general manager experience at the major league level, except for you. You had long interviews and the only guy to have two separate long interviews with them.

Watson: Actually I had four.

Miller: The only one that had the category, the length that they had. At one point you said, "I'm so disillusioned with this prospect I don't even want to ever go through with this again."

Watson: Right, I did not want to go through with it again. I think I have given it a lot of thought. I'm not going to close the door on doing anything at the higher levels of baseball. I don't think I want to go through the process the way it's set up now. I definitely would be interested in something as a president or a minority owner. I think the way this whole process is going to change is that we change some attitudes and some thinking and that's the people at the top. It always starts at the top. It never starts at the bottom.

Miller: Bob, Bud Selig is trying to separate himself from the Brewers ownership so that he can become a commissioner in the strictest sense, and he has made this policy and advocacy of increasing the minority influence in terms of executive positions. Yet the Brewers had an opening and his daughter runs the team, and they didn't hire a minority. How much can we say that he is trying to get people into these positions when he had the opportunity and he didn't fill it?

Watson: I think what he did was he tried to divorce himself from it and let his daughter do the choosing. I think in talking to people that were involved in the interview process, they did a real honest job in interviewing. I think the situation was that, if there was not a minority hired as a GM, then there was a good chance that a minority would be hired as a field manager, and that's the case (Davey Lopes). I think from what I understand, Bud is trying to hard to at least have minorities strongly considered for these jobs. I understand there was a letter sent out to ownership, some mandates made that they had to submit a list to him when there was an opening and that's what this whole business was about with Detroit, where Detroit failed to do so (the Tigers hired Phil Garner without interviewing any other candidates). He has taken an "active role" in trying to at least make sure that minorities are included in the interview process.

Miller: Let's put you back in the general manager's chair and put you with the Braves. John Rocker, everyone's got an opinion on this thing, but we don't know how it will finally resolve once the players union gets involved with the appeal of it. For now he's been suspended for spring training and the first month of the season and fined. How should we handle a situation like that?

Watson: I believe that the young man has made a mistake and I think he has suffered quite a bit for what he chose to say. I think the response that I would have is, how would Dr. Martin Luther King handle the situation? I know he said some derogatory things about groups and religion and different things. For Bud Selig to not take some action would have been terrible, but to fine him, I think a lot of that went along because Marge Schott said some of these same things and she eventually lost her team, she was suspended for a year. But I think it's a different situation. Marge Schott was in control of jobs and people's lives, whereas John Rocker can sometimes get somebody out. He even had a tough time as a professional ballplayer right now because it's a team sport and your team is being penalized. The Braves are behind a situation now where they have to look for another closer for 30 days, or whatever, and those type of people are hard to come by.