CHENNAI: On Monday, American Major League Baseball (MLB) team Pittsburgh Pirates made its best move of the year. In fact, it’s better than its best; it’s unprecedented. The Buccos have become the first MLB team to sign an Indian-born player… actually, it’s Indian-born players. There are two of them.
Twenty-year-olds Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh, from Varanasi and Bhadaini in Uttar Pradesh, beat the competition in the Indian leg of a pitching talent-hunt contest, ‘Million Dollar Arm’, sponsored by a California-based sports management company. The TV reality-show contest, drawing around 30,000 participants, sought to find athletes who could throw strikes faster than 134kmph. Patel, the winner, has hit 145kmph on the radar gun and Singh, the runner-up, 135kmph. The reward: they have been signed up as non-drafted free agents with the Buccos and earned invitations to this year’s Minor League spring training.
Both Singh, 6’2”, and Patel, 5’11”, were javelin-throwers at school, but had never played baseball until this year. No problem. They have been training with University of Southern California pitching coach Tom House and scouts in the US believe that once the two Indians learn the intricacies of the sport and go through at least four years of Minor League toil, they will be ready to break into the Major League. “Their talent is the upside but it’s going to take them a while to learn how to play. You can really develop these kids. It’s well worth the risk,” says House. Despite being more than raw, the Indian pitchers were signed by well-known agent Jeff Borris, who was attracted by their potential.
The signings represent a shift in policy for MLB, which has mostly ignored non-traditional markets such as Asia for players. Why is an American baseball team interested in pitchers from India who are not familiar with the sport? “To open a pathway to an untapped market,” explains Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Neal Huntington. But this signing means much more than just the talent of Patel or Singh. If they manage to capture the hearts of Indians and people of Indian origin, for the Buccos, the dividends will be plentiful in terms of revenue.