Even Major League Baseball is outsourcing to India these days. It seems an American entrepreneur created a reality-television type contest to find the Indian cricket players who were most likely to become outstanding baseball players. In a country of over a billion people, it makes sense that at least one of them should be able to pitch a 93 MPH strike. Now, two of them have been signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Of course, having taken a clueless Indian to a few games and teaching him about “the hitting box” and other such things, I was most amused by Singh and Patel’s reaction to their first game. What did the shortstop do wrong, Patel asked Bernstein, to not be given a base in the infield? It’s a deep question really, and the answer is… he had a better arm than the second baseman and quicker fielding skills than the third baseman. And thus, he was punished. At least he wasn’t banished to the outfield.