Ozzie goes off, again.

Ozzie Guillen makes some very valid points.
http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/news/story?id=5428431

 

Valid, or racist as a sizable number of people are saying. Secondly, I would like to know where has Asian players have gotten preferential treatment over Latin players.

 

My hometown team does not have any Asian players on the major league roster, but it does have at least one Latin player who has a translator.

 

Ozzie said the one Korean player on the minor league team has a translator, while the 17 Latin players are left to fend for themselves. That should be easy enough for reporters to prove or disprove, but if he's correct, that would definitely be preferential treatment.

 

The Asian players often have more leverage when they're negotiating deals, and can ask for (and receive) certain perks like translator, massage therapist, other stuff.

Latin players are more likely to be signed as young, raw, inexperienced players without much leverage (and no knowledge of how to exercise it even if they had it).

That's a generalization of course, but so was Ozzie's rant.

Ozzie's not wrong, but I think it's more of a market issue than a race one.

 

Not having a translator can also be a benefit when a player does not want to answer questions.

 

Ozzie's getting to be like that character Morrie in Goodfellas, whom Hen(d)ry Hill described thusly:

"He talks so much nobody listens to what he has to say. Nobody cares what he has to say."

 

Always interesting to hear Ozzie spout off about various topics.

Here's what I'm wondering: Is part of the difference that Asian players can make a comfortable living in Japan's league, so only the very best of the best come over here? I don't know enough about the Japanese league -- or whatever pro leagues exist in Latin America -- to know if this is true.

 

With some crummy math, I think the average pro salary in Japan is roughly $400,000, and active-duty players average double that amount. I think that's what black dude (interesting handle for the topic) was getting at:

I was interested in this:

[quote author=The Associated Press]In his latest rant, the outspoken Guillen also said he's the "only one" in baseball teaching young players from Latin America to stay away from performance-enhancing drugs and that Major League Baseball doesn't care about that.[/quote]

until this:

[quote author=The Associated Press]He said MLB only cares about how often he argues with umpires and what he says to the media.[/quote]

 

In no way, shape or form is what he said racist. He just pointed something out that he saw (correctly or incorrectly). Just because you make a statement about someone from another group as yourself doesn't necessarily make it racist even in today's overblown PC world.

 

I totally agree. I remember my days covering A ball in Florida. There were no Asian players and the Hispanic players had problems communicating off the field. On the field, it was all about playing baseball. I remember going out for drinks with a few players and the shortstop, from the Dominican Republic, went with us. As we ordered, he asked the waitress to suck his dick. It was funny for a moment, but a lot of talking had to be done to prevent us from getting kicked out of the bar.

 

I wouldn't hold up NPB as an example, if only because clubs are limited to four foreigners on their 25-man active roster regardless of nationality. In Korea, the limit is two, and Taiwan is four. Unless I'm mistaken, American leagues lack such restrictions.

Part of the reason mostly top-of-the-line players move to the US from Japan is because it's such an arduous process. If an MLB club wants a player under contract in Japan, it has to go through the posting system, in which other clubs are allowed to bid for the player during a four-day silent auction (and that's assuming the Japanese club even allows its player to be posted). Whichever club wins the auction has to pay that money as a transfer fee to the player's NPB club and then agree to terms with the player himself. Only free agents and players with nine years of service in NPB are exempt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_system