Royals’
starting pitcher Yordano Ventura’s season just yo-yoed fast enough to cause a
bad case of whiplash. Ventura, he of the
headhunting tendencies on the mound, was sent to the minors on Tuesday; the
14-game winner of a year ago is struggling this season at 4-7 with a 5.19
ERA. But before Ventura could pack his
proverbial bags, the Royals brought him back due to a season-ending injury to
pitcher Jason Vargas. Ventura should
consider himself lucky.
Or
not, given his semi-exile in an English-speaking world. You see, major league baseball would rather
not talk about its language problem—the front office and coaches all speak
English while some 28 percent of the players are Hispanic. Basically, teams have a coach or two who
speaks Spanish along with a few more-or-less bilingual players. But considering the money involved, this is
no way to run a big business.
Have
you ever been struck by accents while traveling in the U.S.? I have.
The first time we were in New York, I had to suppress my “Huh?” reflex
to the speech sounds and patterns I heard, and that was before moving on to
Boston. I mean, whatever happened to the
letter R? Now apply the same experience
to baseball. “Spanish” means one thing
to a Dominican player, another to a Cuban, another to a Venezuelan, and something
else again to a Colombian. Put three
such Spanish-speaking players on the mound for a conference, and what have you
got? Something between my excellent
adventure to the East Coast and an updated version of the Tower of Babel.
Yordano
Ventura had a 3.20 ERA last season. What
happened? Maybe Royals’ manager Ned Yost
(born in Eureka, CA) or pitching coach Dave Eiland (Dade City, FL) speaks enough
Spanish to find out, but I doubt it, and the team has all of one
Spanish-surnamed coach listed on its website.
Most likely, Yordano Ventura and anyone like him struggle to be
understood and understand. Unless
baseball can borrow that universal translator from Star Trek, it had better get
serious about going bilingual.
No comments:
Post a Comment