A Whole New Ballgame

In the minor leagues, nearly half -- 46 percent -- of the players under contract when the season started were born outside the U.S.

And beyond numbers, many of the game's brightest stars -- as the All-Star Game proved -- are foreign-born. Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki and the Yankees' Hideki Matsui were major stars in Japan. Toronto's Carlos Delgado (Puerto Rico) and St. Louis' Albert Pujols (Dominican Republic) are Triple Crown candidates. The Yankees' Alfonso Soriano (Dominican Republic) last year became the first big-league second baseman to notch a 30-homer, 30-stolen-base season.

The MLB push for globilization continues to grow, too. While players from Latin countries have been filling rosters for years, more and more players from Japan and Korea are finding their way to the States. And if MLB-International is successful in its expansion, players from China, Brazil, Nigeria, Germany and France could be dotting rosters in the future.

"The world is getting smaller," said Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi.

MLB disputes the notion that its looking to bolster its product internationally because interest among youngsters in this country has, for whatever reason, been dwindling. It says it merely wants to capitalize on the baseball boom overseas.

One of the reasons, admittedly, is financial.

"Internationally, more foreign baseball players means we have more business opportunities to sell back to those markets," said Jim Small, regional vice-president of marketing and devlopment for MLB-International.

"It's a way to generate revenue internationally from Japan, for instance," said Alderson. "With Ichiro and Matsui having been so prominent in the U.S., that brings about interest (from Japan) in baseball in this country, so it enables MLB to improve its revenue potential in Japan."

But it goes beyond that.

"Our goal is to (remain) the best league in the world," said Small. "You can make the statement that you have the best hitters in the world, for instance, and now we have Ichiro, one of the best hitters in the world. If we had not looked to broaden our horizons, we would not have the best players."

Bringing in foreign players, however, has also changed baseball's culture.

Until 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line, baseball was played exclusively by American (and a few European) whites, and light-skinned Latins. Even after integration began, progress was slow; it wasn't until the mid- to late 1960s that most teams had more than two or three black and/or dark-skinned Latin players on a roster during any given season. The real influx of Latins began in the '60s and '70s, and it wasn't until the 1990s that Far Eastern players began sticking in the big leagues.

At first, baseball attempted to bend the newcomers to the existing culture. As time went on, however, teams realized they were the ones that had to change.

"We think the player's comfort level is very important," said Yankee general manager Brian Cashman. "The comfort level is extremely important to perform. There's a big difference between pressure and stress. Everyone can deal with pressure. It's the stress of not being comfortable in your own environment that's pretty hard to get optimal efficiency from."

AP photo Ichiro Suzuki was a major star in Japan before joining the Seattle Mariners, where he's now one of the best hitters in the majors.

"A lot of people in the United States of America don't care about other languages," said Tony Bernazard, a 10-year major-league veteran who currently works as a special assistant to the players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association. "They should, though, because the world has changed."

Little by little, it began happening. Sal Artiaga is extremely involved in such educational efforts in the latest of his capacities in his 38 years of professional baseball experience . . . which includes a stint as president of the minor leagues.

Artiaga is the Philadelphia Phillies' director of Latin America operations and a consultant to MLB focusing on linguistics and cultural assimilation. Artiaga, who recently had 13 young Phillies' farmhands for his 50-minute classroom sessions each day, is working on a second textbook to help organizations educate their Latin players.

"The industry as a whole has the responsibility to train the players in language and the cultural differences they face," said Artiaga. "We have to teach them survival skills, such as ordering food in a restaurant, traveling, renting apartments. Those things are vitally important.

"You can acquire language through sound, through listening. The verbal part factors in later. You have to get them to try to understand why things are done in certain ways here that are different from the way they are done in their countries. I teach them about the 10 key questions, such as why, where, when, how much, etc. Those words are used in every form of commnunication.

"An athlete performs best if he has mental alertness and is able to react instinctively. If you don't understand what you're being asked to perform, how can you react instinctively?"

Many organizations, such as the Red Sox, hold classes in the Dominican and in Venezuela, as well as at their minor-league complexes once the Latins come to the States. Bernazard believes education should extend to everyone connected to the team, as well.

"I think within an organization -- the administration, the management staff, the coaches, the managers -- everybody should have an understanding of how it feels to not be able to speak another language. You have to have a level of patience and understanding," said Bernazard, who went through his own culture shock when he played three years in Japan.

NOTE: Figures based on 2003 opening day 25-man rosters and disabled lists. Providence Journal graphic / George Sylvia

Today, change is in the air. In the Red Sox' minor-league system, for instance, there's at least one Spanish-speaking coach at every level with the exception of one of the organization's Class A teams, in Sarasota.

At the major-league level interpreters are used, particularly for Asians. The Yankees, for example, hired an interpreter for Matsui not only for the field and the clubhouse but also for away from the ballpark.

And recently, New York brought back former infielder Luis Sojo to help out as a coach and a Spanish-speaking liaison.

"Our . . . clubhouse has . . . more Latin players (than in the past)," said Cashman, "and we started to recognize an interpreter who wasn't really a baseball player or a former player, someone who was just able to speak the language, was different than having a former baseball player in that role. There's a difference between speaking the language and speaking baseball language."

The Red Sox have made great use of the linguistic talents of assistant trainer Chang-Ho Lee, who serves as relief ace Byung-Hyun Kim's interpreter. In the past, in both Pawtucket and Boston, Chang has interpreted for Hideo Nomo and Tomo Ohka (both Japanese) and for Sunny Kim, Sang Lee and Jin-Ho Cho (all Korean, as is Kim).

One goal is to make the foreign-born players fluent enough in English to not only be able to order in a restaurant and open a bank account, but to answer questions from the media. Often those players are fearful of speaking because they don't want to misuse English words. They're also fearful of being laughed at if their vocabulary isn't quite right, not to mention misinterpretations -- which could have clubhouse and public-perception ramifications -- that could stem from unfamiliarity with the language.

"When you get these guys in an on-field, camera-type situation, they all handle themselves pretty well. Heck, there are some guys who speak English and are from this country who butcher the language, too," said Ricciardi. "But I take my hat off to those guys because they've made the effort to try to explain themselves in English.

"I know myself trying to learn another language is not easy. I can speak Spanish 'un pequito.' Actually, it's more slang what I speak, maybe Spanglish. But it's baseball's way of being able to converse and sometimes it gets you by."

One of the reasons it works is because the language of the game itself is universal.

"I was in Germany watching the European Championships," said Small. "I wandered over to a field in Bonn where the Czech Nationals were playing France. I was standing behind a chain-link fence, watching the Czech pitcher warm up. I could hear the ball when he threw it, that hissing sound when it left his hand. The catcher's mitt was popping.

"And then the pitching coach came over to him and spoke Czech. I had forgotten where I was until that moment. I was just watching baseball, a pitcher warming up. It took me a moment to realize that I was in Europe and not in the U.S.

"But I realized it's the same game. It's baseball, in Europe or the U.S."

Or anywhere else.