MLB.com reported that
the Mariners just signed two left-handed pitchers, 17-year old Blake Townsend
of Australia and 18-year old Jing-Yu Chang of Taiwan. According to the Seattle Times, the Mariners
gave Chang a bonus of between $500,000 and $700,000.
Think about the
challenges both players will face, especially Chang. They’ll be coming to a new world, so to
speak, where they’re not necessarily the most talented players on the field any
more. As they try to fit in with their
new team, Townsend will probably face endless questions about kangaroos and “the
barbie” while Chang learns the importance of a good interpreter.
That person will have
to speak Chang’s dialect of Chinese, and it will be helpful to crucial for the
interpreter to understand baseball, pitching in particular; otherwise, good
luck with translating “release point” and “backdoor slider,” let alone explaining
how to throw one.
The Mariners will work with
their international signees for as long as they show promise. This is what baseball does, scour the far
ends of the earth in search of talent, provided, of course, that it’s
male. Etched in the glass ceiling at
every MLB office are four words—No Women Players Wanted. No translation required.
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