Mets Reach Out to Ghana

This is pretty cool. The New York Mets paid for six Ghanaians to travel to the United States and attend Spring Training with the club this year. This is the first I have heard about baseball in Ghana, which did not have any representatives at least year’s MLB European Baseball Academy. Three of the Ghanaians who traveled to the U.S. were players, and three were coaches, who attended seminars on modern coaching and training techniques.

Baseball in Africa is a pretty cool development, and both individual teams and MLB are investing millions trying to bring the game to Africa’s poor communities, in hope of creating a new prospect pipeline. Right now African baseball is divided into South Africa, the continent’s lone representative at the World Baseball Classic, and everywhere else. South Africa, where baseball is growing exponentially, has more baseball programs than the rest of Africa combined, so there is quite a long way to go.

A representative of MLB who I spoke to in Africa a couple of months ago told me about a Nigerian outfielder he had occasion to scout who was talented enough to earn a college scholarship with the right training. Three years later, the same MLB official saw the same player in the same tournament, and the kid had played a total of three baseball games in the intervening years, due to lack of opportunity.

It’s a start, but there is a long way to go.

Batista Blog

I don’t know how I missed this for so long, but Seattle Mariners’ pitcher Miguel Batista, a native of the Dominican Republic, has a blog up at ESPNDeportes.  The most recent article is a fun report on teammate Ichiro’s clubhouse demeanor called “the Samurai Hitter.”

A rough translation of the first two paragraphs :

There are a lot of things you normally see in a major league clubhouse, like listening to rap or heavy metal, players saying the most horrible things to each other, seeing a group of players dancing, bobbing their heads up and down to the rhythm, or making rookies dress up like women.

But of one thing I am positive.  You don’t often see a Japanese player pass by you in stride and say to you in perfect Spanish, “Dimelo Caballete!”

Batista may not be a star, but he seems like a funny guy.  I’ll be reading this semi-regularly for sure.

Changes Afoot in the VSL

The Venezuelan Summer League looks like it will receive somewhat of an overhaul this season, as new teams look to establish a stronger foothold in South America’s largest baseball hotbed.   Reports are conflicting on what this year’s VSL, set to begin in 10 days’ time, will look like.  Last year, the VSL was a 10-team league, with seven teams owning and operating their own squad attached to their team’s academies, and six other major league franchises splitting their players between three teams.

Last year’s split squads, the Orioles/White Sox, Tigers/Marlins, and Twins/Blue Jays, are being switched around.  In for sure are two newcomers to the VSL, the Cubs and Devil Rays.  Chicago’s  north-siders will split their VSL squad with the Twins this year, while the Devil Rays will run a split VSL team with the Reds.

As for the Orioles, White Sox, Marlins, and Blue Jays, it’s unclear at this point whether they will be getting out of Dodge altogether, or forming a second division in the VSL with full squads.   If the latter is the case, the two divisions will not play against each other as schedules for the existing division have already been set.

New developments in the Venezuelan academies are interesting to keep an eye on as the country’s political and economic links to the United States become more tenuous.  Venezuela is already considered one of the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere for foreigners to visit, and from my brief time there, I can say that the reputation is well earned.  Venezuela does not yet appear on the US Government’s travel warning list, and its ’s vast oil reserves make an embargo of the emerging socialist nation unlikely.

For now, it is interesting that certain clubs are ratcheting up their involvement in Venezuelan scouting, even if others are backing off.  If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez makes good on hints that he will begin instituting a system where the government negotiates players’ contracts with MLB clubs (a major long shot), all hell will break loose.