Ozzie goes off, again.

[Drip]

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

 

[D-3 Fan]

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.

 

[In Cold Blood]

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.

 

[LongTimeListener]

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.

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.

 

[black dude with pompano]

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.

 

[Boom_70]

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

 

[Steak Snabler]

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."

 

[I Should Coco]

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.

 

[jlee]

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:

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.

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]

 

[Shoeless Joe]

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.

 

[Drip]

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 ****. 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.

 

[TrooperBari]

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.

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

 

[Mark2010]

Screw the translators. All of them should learn English. Period.

You wanna play in Japan, learn Japanese. You wanna play in the US and Canada, learn English. Millions of other people do it.

 

[TrooperBari]

Screw the translators. All of them should learn English. Period.

You wanna play in Japan, learn Japanese. You wanna play in the US and Canada, learn English. Millions of other people do it.

Your stance, while suitably patriotic, is unfeasible on a couple levels.

In a business sense, the foreign talent is within its rights not to sign for any team that says "screw the translators" and instead pick a team that is willing to make such accomodations. Would you want your team to miss out on an Ichiro or Vlad Guerrero in favor of proving its nationalist credentials?

Also, moving city to city in the same country is stressful enough. Packing up your life and moving to a country with a different culture and a language you don't speak is on a whole other level (I can speak to this first-hand). You want to throw athletes -- not usually the most cerebral of people -- into that deep end with no assistance and expect them to wrap their heads around a foreign language while performing at a high level at the same time?

I agree that, ideally, athletes moving to a foreign country should make an honest effort to learn about their new culture and its language, even if they will only be there for a short time. However, it is these translators whom you would so casually toss aside that help them take their first steps on that journey while away from the field, not just serve as an interpreter during games and practice. To expect players -- who likely reached the status of professional athlete by focusing more on training and lifting than reading and writing-- to navigate their new surroundings on and off the field with no assistance is, at best, misguided.

 

[Drip]

John Kruk said that Ozzie is dead on with his opinion.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Screw the translators. All of them should learn English. Period.

You wanna play in Japan, learn Japanese. You wanna play in the US and Canada, learn English. Millions of other people do it.

And until they do, they shouldn't be allowed to communicate with anyone!

Here's a look at Ozzie's rant from someone who doesn't slobber down his shirt when talking:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5430700

 

[hondo]

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.

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.

but the 17 players wouldn't be exactly lonesome for people who speak the same language.

 

[LongTimeListener]

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.

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.

but the 17 players wouldn't be exactly lonesome for people who speak the same language.

True dat, but unless they are all going to the grocery store together, there's still going to be a lot of fear and awkwardness for a 17-year-old kid. And as those players work their way up the system and become the subject of more media attention, they will be asked to converse in a language they don't know. Then they will be quoted in their cute little broken English and roundly mocked for their attempts -- how many ballplayers, Sammy Sosa for one, have been thought of as the real-life Chico Escuela with the "bazeball been beddy beddy good to me" comparison?

Considering the grumbling that has always gone on beneath the surface regarding Ichiro, how do you think he might have fared in that situation if he didn't have a translator to clean up and flower up all his quotes? Which brings up another point -- I have read/heard that Ichiro is actually pretty good with his English, which would be consistent with having grown up in an educational system that teaches the language to everyone, yet he still opts for the translator so he can operate in Japanese. That's something Sosa, Vlad et al. never even had the option to do.

 

[TrooperBari]

They don't teach usable English in Japan, just the English that shows up on standardized tests.

 

[LongTimeListener]

OK ... still probably more than they teach in the Dominican, though.