Underdogs: How Two Indian Athletes Beat the Million Dollar Arm and Became Professional Baseball Players
By Fergus Mason
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About this ebook
Baseball players come from Cuba, Korea, Japan...India? India is the least likely place anyone would expect a professional baseball player to come from, but one man saw potential, and gave two men a chance to prove themselves.
After a strong display of athletics on the Indian television show Million Dollar Arm, two pitchers (Rinku Singh and Dinsesh Patel) were invited to America by the Pittsburg Pirates.
Some saw it as a publicity stunt, and maybe it was, but these two men were able to prove they deserved that chance. This book tells their inspiring journey.
NOTE: This book is not endorsed by Rinku Singh or Dinsesh Patel, and should be considered unofficial.
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Book preview
Underdogs - Fergus Mason
LifeCaps Presents:
Underdogs
How Two Indian Athletes Beat the Million Dollar Arm and Became Professional Baseball Players
By Fergus Mason
© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc./LifeCaps
Published at SmashWords
www.bookcaps.com
Disclaimer
This book is not endorsed by Rinku Singh or Dinsesh Patel, and should be considered unofficial.
About LifeCaps
LifeCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a lesser known or sometimes forgotten life is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to literature and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly (www.bookcaps.com) to see our newest books.
Introduction
It’s hard to think of a game more fundamentally American than baseball. For well over a century it’s been one of the most popular sports in the USA and the World Series has been a highlight of the year for fans since 1903. Most American boys grew up playing catch with family and school friends, and millions have taken part in Little League games or played for their school or college team. For many a baseball scholarship has been a ticket to a college education and for others - the few who’re good enough and lucky enough to play at a professional level - it’s made their fortunes. Leading major league ball players can have annual earnings of millions of dollars and over the course of a career that can run into hundreds of millions – New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in MLB history, had brought in over $353 million by the end of the 2013 season. There’s more to be gained than money too. The best ball players can enter the pantheon of American cultural heroes - players like Babe Ruth, who changed the whole face of the game in the 1920s and is still one of the standards today’s stars are measured against. All over the world, when people think of baseball they associate it with America.
Of course, the USA isn’t the only country where baseball is played. Despite the enduring legend of how it was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839, the game doesn’t even have New World origins, and it certainly hasn’t stayed within America’s borders. A Canadian team has played in the World Series twice – the Toronto Blue Jays won it in 1992 and 1993. International competitions have been running for decades, with the first Baseball World Cup held in England in 1938. The game has been hugely popular in Japan and Korea for well over a century, and Asian teams now regularly win at an international level. There’s a whopping following in Latin America too, and it produces some astounding talent – Cuba won more Baseball World Cups than any other nation, starting with the second one when they took the trophy from Great Britain in 1939, and US teams have signed dozens of players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Australia has its own MLB-controlled league, and there are enthusiastic amateur teams all over the world, from Wales to New Zealand.
On the other hand, there are also countries where baseball hasn’t made much of an impact. Usually that’s because other games are already deeply embedded in the local culture. New sports tend to catch on where they fill a gap in what’s already available so if a nation already has a hugely popular bat and ball game the potential interest in baseball is lower. Through much of the British Commonwealth people already have a game that involves hitting a leather ball with a bat, and it’s cricket. Sometimes the cricket tradition goes back hundreds of years and loyalty to a local club more or less runs in families. In a situation like that few people are going to miss a match to watch a new game that they don’t truly understand. India is a classic example of that – a country where the sport has almost become a religion. If you’ve seen films like Slumdog Millionaire you’re probably familiar with the sight of Indian boys playing scratch cricket games all over the place, all of them dreaming