Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

There’s No Crying, or an Off Season, in Baseball

In Texas, they say there are two sports. Football and spring football. Baseball has three seasons. Regular, postseason, and hot stove. For those who are not baseball fans the last category can be rather annoying. Endless discussion of trades, free agents, who’s back from injury, what will happen with Barry Bonds, etc. I know, get a life or get ready for Ohio-State Michigan. But as a professor of political philosophy from my grad school days liked to say, it’s something to do.

Foreign-born and international players continue to be a significant and growing part of the mix. The Red Sox acquired the rights to negotiate with Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka for a seemingly ridiculous $51.1 million (add on to that a salary likely to reach $50 million or so). The fact that they successfully outbid the Yankees for Matsuzaka’s rights may decide the balance of power in the American League East next season – one way or the other. I’m dubious. That’s a lot of money to spend on a pitcher who has thrown a staggering number of innings already in his Japanese professional career. Peter Gammons thinks otherwise, however, and until further notice Peter has forgotten more about baseball than I know.

Gammons stresses the larger factors that went into Boston’s decision. He notes that Boston GM Theo Epstein, the boy genius, believes that in the next decade the mass of baseball talent coming out of Asia will alter the American professional landscape, and his owners want to be entrenched in Japan as well as China; they signed three prominent Taiwanese prospects this spring and are looking into establishing complexes in Taiwan and mainland China. We are back to Michael Lewis’ thesis about how economics change sports. According to Gammons, the Red Sox want to cash in on Japanese marketing dollars and have already made plans for one marketing official to go to Tokyo after the first of the year. They expect that all of Matsuzaka’s starts will be televised in Japan, with the Japanese advertising superimposed behind home plate.

Matsuzaka opened eyes with an MVP performance at the World Baseball Classic earlier this year. In a different way, so too did Manny Acta, third base coach for the New York Mets who managed the Dominican Republic team. Acta’s performance there helped him secure the Washington Nationals’ managerial position, replacing Frank Robinson. I could go on for many more paragraphs that you care to read about Robinson, a Hall of Famer and the first black manager, who is as Old School as they get. I had absolutely nothing to say about Acta, who I had never heard of until recently – until I ran across this item in the Washington Post.

Unlike most of the teenagers whom Linares encountered as a scout in the Dominican Republic, Acta was highly interested in school, where he wanted to study engineering. But once he decided to sign with the Astros, he applied his intelligence to learning English as quickly and as thoroughly as he could. Within a few years, Linares said, Acta was conducting impromptu English classes for his Latino teammates. "I couldn’t believe it when I found that out," Linares said. "He’s just an extremely intelligent person."

Years later, Acta would return to studying, this time for the U.S. citizenship test, and when he passed, he put in a call to Linares, the old scout who says he considers Acta a son. "He was very emotional," Linares said. "I think he was crying. It meant so much for him to become a U.S. citizen." A few years ago, when Acta was in Montreal, the U.S. customs office in Houston asked him to speak to a group of prospective U.S. citizens, most of them Latino, about the naturalization process. Acta’s speech was so moving and articulate, half the room was in tears.

I now know one manager I’ll be rooting for in 2007. I guess that’s what intense study during the hot stove league should really be about.

Discussions - 1 Comment

Patrick, good catch (pun intended) on Acta’s moving story.

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