Indians in the Outfield
Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel have become the first Indians to sign a professional sports contract in America. They are now part of the MLB’s Pittsburg Pirates and if they progress well in the minor leagues, they could be pitching in the big leagues in around three years time. This is a normal process and timeline for new players and there is good reason to feel optimistic. They could possibly do for baseball in India what Yao Ming did for basketball and the NBA in China.
I hope I am rooting for the Pirates and not the Yankees in three years time
Until now Indian players have had decent success playing professional Cricket, Chess, Badminton and Hockey in Europe. We have also had a flop footballer (Baichung Bhutia) and a successful one (Mohd Salim). But this is our first entry into the Mecca of professional sports that is the USA.
Could this really lead to bigger things?
After all, in spite of the large number of Indians that live in the US, we haven’t had a single player of Indian origin in Major League baseball. I could possibly counter that by saying that we have only been exporting nerds and not the athletic types. Rinku and Dinesh are strongly built lads from the villages. Don’t think we have many NRI’s who are like them.
But haven’t we had a national baseball side for quite some time and doesn’t this team suck big time?
We have and the team does suck but we have been picking our national side from just a handful of players. And these players have had absolutely no exposure or quality coaching inputs. It’s almost akin to somebody learning cricket in Greenland.
And now for some optimism
The physical skills required for this game are very similar to cricket – and therefore we have the potential to do well at baseball, provided we can get enough exposure and coaching and practice. Rinku and Dinesh will get lots of that in Pittsburgh and if they are even moderately successful, more Indian players could join them.
Also remember that these guys were selected out of the 30,000 people who contested the reality show – “Million Dollar Arm”. This is a nation of more than 1 billion. There would be many more who are more talented at baseball than this pioneering duo. If we can just get more people to get inspired by this example and take up the sport, we could easily have more players in the MLB. Inspiration will come if Patel and Rinku are successful and make it big.
These newly-baptized ‘pitchers’ have more than just a baseball and their sporting futures in their hands
They have a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to make baseball a popular sport in this country – to become the father of Indian Baseball.
Rinku and Dinesh
We (the few baseball loving Indians) are watching and praying for you
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