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July 11, 2008
 When MLB Owners Hear The Cash Register Ring, Diversity Is Sure To Follow—Results Be Damned!
By Joe
Guzzardi
Since my June 27th column,
Immigrant Baseball—The Bubble Bursts, I have become
fascinated by the numbers of American-born players in Major
League Baseball, how they perform versus their
foreign-born teammates and how their respective clubs fare
in the standings.
During every game that I watch, I have my indispensable
Who’s Who in Baseball at my side to check the birthplace
of various batters as they come to the plate.
One conclusion is inescapable: the teams with the highest
percentage of Americans and the lowest payrolls are the surprise
of baseball. Those are the
Oakland A’s,
Minnesota Twins,
Tampa Bay Rays and
Florida Marlins.
Obviously, the reverse holds true: teams that have spent the
most money and have a high percentage of immigrant players have
been huge disappointments, relative to pre-season expectations:
the
New York Yankees, the
New York Mets and the
Detroit Tigers.
As Major League Baseball heads toward the
July 15 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, a news item
regarding a
young Dominican pitcher merits our consideration.
Last week the A’s, despite its current success (second place in
the American League West) and although being well known
throughout baseball as penurious, signed 16-year-old Michel
Inoa, a 6-foot-7 right-hander with a blazing fastball who,
general manager
Billy Beane projects, will dominate hitters for years to
come.
[In Inoa, Oakland Has Its
Sweet 16, by Susan Slusser, San Francisco Chronicle,
July 3, 2008]
The A’s shelled out $4.25 million for Inoa, a lofty sum for a
team that has relied on signing players straight off the
U.S. college campuses.
In a curious statement, Beane said that signing Inoa reflects
the team’s growing commitment to Latin Americans—even though
Oakland’s minor league system has nurtured an entire crop of
solid if not spectacular U.S. players.
Until he signed Inoa, Beane had defied the conventional approach
that holds that big-name, power hitters and young pitchers with
rocket arms are the key to diamond success.
Armed with massive amounts of
carefully-interpreted statistical data, Beane believed that
wins could be had by more inexpensive methods such as relying on
hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots
of ground ball outs.
Although working with a tight budget, Beane built winning teams
made up of young affordable players and selective castoff
veterans. Beane’s success is the subject of a best-selling book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game.
Among the “young affordable players” Beane signed are
Americans who now lead the A’s:
Mark Ellis,
Bobby Crosby,
Eric Chavez (California),
Kurt Suzuki (Hawaii) and
Daric Barton.
The A’s have done especially well developing pitchers, among
them
Justin Duchscherer,
Huston Street and
Joe Blanton. The team leads the major leagues in earned run
average.
Regarding Inoa, what’s done is done.
However, a cautionary note for the A’s: bonus baby busts are a
dime a dozen beginning with the very first one five decades ago.
In the early 1950s, the
Pittsburgh Pirates signed
Paul Pettit, a left-handed “can’t miss” pitcher, for
the then unheard of sum of $100,000.
In his
two-year career, Pettit won one game.
More recent bonuses paid to Latin players indicate that it’s a
crapshoot.
Some like
Miguel Tejada pan out; others don’t.
Nearly ten years ago, when the diversity craze was just taking
off, the Yankees gave outfielder
Wily Mo Peña a $2.44 million bonus and seven years ago the
Dodgers gave infielder
Joel Guzman $2.25 million. Both disappointed.
And, as any knowledgeable source will tell you about Inoa, a
good fastball may be enough to win in the bushes. But it means
nothing in the big leagues.
Here’s what pitching great
Sal Maglie had to say:
“With nothing but a real good
fastball, a pitcher can be a winner in high school and college,
on the sandlots and even in the minor leagues. But no one—not
even a
Herb Score or
Bob Feller—can consistently throw the ball past major league
hitters. The guys you run into here are just too good for that.”
[Sal
Maglie on the Art of Pitching,
by Roy Terrell, Sports Illustrated, March 17, 1958]
(Aside for serious baseball fans: Maglie
pitched brilliantly for the pennant winning New York Giants,
Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees, one of few players on all
three 1950s New York championship teams)
Time will tell about Inoa.
Meanwhile, fans are left to wonder if
foreign-born players aren’t
a zero sum game, wherein many are signed—regardless of their
skills or lack of them—for the sake of
diversity alone; or to cater to the special needs of
immigrant players already on the squad.
After my last column Mike Corsano, a Met fan of 40 years, wrote
me to share his agony over his then-floundering but now
resurgent team widely referred to as Los Mets:
“As a lifelong baseball fanatic, I have watched the
problems caused by diversity.
“Los Mets are the perfect example. The team
is rife with ethnic cliques and sub-cliques. The Mets signed
second baseman
Luis Castillo to a ridiculous 4-year contract to entice his
Minnesota Twin teammate
Johan Santana to eventually join him.
“Puerto Ricans
Carlos Beltran and
Carlos Delgado are aloof from the rest of the team. One of
the worst problems with the Latin players is that they use the
‘I don’t speak English excuse’ to avoid talking to the media
after loss after loss created by uninspired and disappointing
play for over a year including the historic September 2007
collapse.
“This forces the American players like
David Wright,
Billy Wagner, and
Paul LoDuca (since traded) to take the media heat.
“Limited English is symptomatic of the nation’s problem. When
there were only two or three Latin players on a team, they were
forced to
learn English and
assimilate. Now with half the team speaking Spanish, they
form their own enclaves within the team.
“Here’s one last example of the Mets’ ruination. In 2006,
Dominican general manager
Omar Minaya signed fellow Dominican
Julio Franco
to a two-year contract ignoring the fact he was 48 (yes, 48)
years old. At the time Minaya claimed Franco would be a good
influence on the younger Latin players. He was kept around way
after it was obvious that his usefulness as a productive player
was long gone.”
In short, the Mets need the one Latin guy—Castillo—to lure the
other Latin guy—Santana. And the team also needs a third Latin
player—Franco, ancient though he is—to
coddle still other Latinos.
That’s baseball’s version of
chain migration.
Continuing with my zero sum theory, look at pitchers from the
Far East. Here are three—one good, one average and one ugly:
Japan’s
Daisuke Matsuzaka, a slightly above average
Boston Red Sox pitcher,
Kei Igawa, a $20 million total bust signed by the Yankees
because the Red Sox outbid them for Matsuzaka and
Chien-Ming Wang, a Taiwanese Yankee who won nineteen games
in 2006 and 2007 but is now on the disabled list because he
cannot
run the bases.
What baseball fans get is a mixed bag of foreign-born players
that
don’t necessarily perform better than the
home-grown American version. Certain fans—those who root for
New York’s Mets and Yankees and the
Seattle Mariners have to grin and bear it.
Today’s baseball teams are a microcosm of American society. The
achievements of the foreign-born are
disproportionately praised while the
outstanding Americans toil in relative obscurity.
Duchscherer (South Dakota) is a good example. Selected to the
All-Star team, he’s
leading the majors in individual ERA with 1.78, half a run
lower than any other pitcher.
But few outside of the Bay Area know much about him. Who, on the
other hand, doesn’t know about
Dice-K?
But the owners love diversity-driven baseball. And why wouldn’t
they? Since the stateside arrival of famous Japanese players,
sales of MLB licensed merchandise in Japan increased from
$36.6 to $103.7 million. And the league signed a six-year, $235
million television deal with a corporate
Japanese media giant.
Once the cash register starts to
ring, whether the American fan wants more homegrown players
simply doesn’t matter.
What counts is which owner can make
the most hundreds of millions.
And if that means more immigrant
players, then that’s the way it will be—until Americans take
steps to reclaim their national pastime.
Joe Guzzardi [e-mail
him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor.
In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has
been writing
a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive
to
VDARE.COM. |
