He did everything he said he would—setting up all aspects of the stay at CKT, from locating the mattresses for our makeshift dorm to getting enough dal for all the guys to eat—so that leading up to the day of the finals, March 21, 2007, I couldn’t have felt better about my decision to trust him.
I also felt pretty good on the day of the finals. Walking out of my hotel in a crisp white Million Dollar Arm shirt, I felt like a million bucks. I was excited about the possibility of finally proving the thesis that Ash, Will, and I had developed in Will’s San Mateo office: that there were guys walking around India who could throw a baseball and simply didn’t know it. I was happily thinking about how we had gone with the goal of finding just one guy, and now it looked like we had at least two, when suddenly an explosion of powder stung my face.
Was it a terrorist attack? A rabid cricket fan getting me back for encroaching on the sport’s dominance by introducing a little baseball?
As I cleared the fine powder from my eyes, a bunch of laughing kids came into focus. Red, blue, and green rained down from my head, only causing them to laugh even harder. It turned out that the brightly colored powder was part of the Hindu holiday celebrating the start of spring. For Holi, or the Festival of Colors, kids run around the street pelting everyone with rainbow-colored powder as part of the celebration. So much for my white shirt.
Despite the fact that I had been completely crop-dusted, I was still eager to see how the finals played out. According to the rules we set up, every contestant would be allowed to throw twenty pitches. Whoever threw the most strikes over 85 miles per hour would be crowned the winner and awarded $100,000. Then the winner would get to throw three more pitches for the chance to win the $1 million prize. He would win $250,000 for throwing one strike at 90 miles per hour, and $500,000 for throwing two consecutively. If the winner by some miracle managed to throw three consecutive 90 mph strikes, the grand total of $1 million was his.
Dinesh was up first. Nobody could throw 90-mile-per-hour pitches like him. My heart beat loudly as he took the pitcher’s mound, wound up, and whipped the ball. It sped through the air and hit the hand of the mannequin we had set up in the batter’s box as a hitter, shattering the plastic. Dinesh took a deep breath and then threw five or six pitches that, although they clocked in right around 90 mph, came nowhere close to hitting the strike zone. His last pitch went behind the batting mannequin’s head, snapping off the barrel of the bat it was holding. We hadn’t prepared for that. There was no backup mannequin to come in off the bench, and, as they say, the show must go on. So Deepesh ran like the wind and returned with duct tape, which we used to put our batter back together.
Dinesh wasn’t known for his fine placement of the ball, but his turn during the finals had been a little wild, even for him. The contest went on, and one by one, our finalists all got up in front of the cameras and failed to throw a single strike over 85 miles per hour.
With each pitch that seemed to miss the strike zone by about a mile, my anxiety spiked another level. We were looking for speed and accuracy in deciding whom to bring back to America. But most of the contestants were concerned mostly with speed, so they threw as hard as they possibly could, with little regard for accuracy.
From training camp, I knew that at least some of the guys had the raw ability to get strikes over 90 mph. But as any athlete or fan knows, there’s a big difference between doing things in practice and doing them when the pressure is on. The contestants were keenly aware of not only how much money was at stake but also how many people were watching them on TV.
When the twentieth guy flunked out, my jitters started to get the better of me, too. Technically, we didn’t have to have a winner or give away a $100,000 prize. But we’d been touring the country for months and months on this premise. Someone had to win the money and get rich on our TV show, or we would look like fools at best and charlatans at worst.
With only four pitchers left, Rinku took the mound. I laughed nervously at the tai chi–like style he still hadn’t completely abandoned. His first pitch was wild, sending my heart down into my stomach. Come on, Rinku! His second came dangerously close to the poor batter’s rigged hand. Then he did it: the Flamingo Kid threw a strike that clocked in at 87 mph!
We sat through the last three contestants, which was practically a formality, and then as soon as they were through, everyone jumped all over Rinku as if he had just pitched a perfect game to win the World Series. There wasn’t a sore loser in the bunch as the rest of the guys hoisted him high up on their shoulders. Then Rinku received what may well have been the first Gatorade shower in the history of India. He looked as alarmed by the unfamiliar ritual of getting doused by juice as I had been by the Holi color war. But the contest wasn’t over yet. In his soaked uniform, Rinku still had to try to win the $1 million.
There was almost no chance that Rinku would win the grand prize, because there was basically no chance that anyone could win it. When I ran into pitching great Roger Clemens at a celebrity golf tournament in America, way before the finals, he told me that even he wouldn’t have been able to win the $1 million given the way we set it up. Natural ability without extensive training (we’re talking years, not a week) only goes so far. Generating that kind of velocity and accuracy is next to impossible for someone lacking that training. Clemens estimated that the winner would be lucky if he could throw one strike.
So when we looked into insuring the $1 million in the rare event that someone did win it, and the quotes came back ridiculously high, we decided to take our chances. Will wasn’t eager to shell $1 million out of his own pocket. By the same token, if we found a kid who was able to consistently throw 90-mile-per-hour strikes after a week of training with Ray, $1 million would be a small price to pay for such a rare talent. He’d make back that money for us and a lot more when he signed a pro contract.
Despite all the evidence before me, I did hold my breath as Rinku took the mound for a second time. Not only was he soaking wet; he was also drained emotionally. It had been a long mental and physical road: disobeying his parents in making the trip to Mumbai, giving it his all for an intensive week of training in a sport that was completely new to him, and maintaining his composure to win $100,000—on TV. Then to hand him a ball and ask him to throw one, two, or three strikes at 90 mph? He didn’t come close.
One hundred thousand dollars was still an enormous sum for Indian TV—and even larger for a kid from a tiny village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It was more than enough to transform the lives of his entire family.
Almost as soon as he came off the mound, Rinku wanted to call home to share the news of their new fortune. But first he had to tell his parents where he was and what he had done. They still thought that he was in Lucknow at a javelin-throwing contest. After confessing that he had betrayed their wishes by going to Mumbai, he proudly informed his father that he was now retired, effective immediately. Now that his son was able to take care of him, it was finally time for his father to relax and enjoy his life. As proud as Rinku might have felt, Ash and I were equally elated. There have never been two people happier to part with $100K than Ash and I were at that moment.
* * *
Though the contest was over, my work was just beginning. We had three finalists—Rinku, Dinesh, and an impressive sixteen-year-old named Manoj Shukla—all of whom we decided to bring back to the States for training. (Since no one but Rinku threw a strike over 85 miles per hour, we ranked everyone else based strictly on velocity.) Manoj, one of the youngest in the entire contest, probably had the most raw talent of all three. Although he was very skinny, to the point of undernourished, the six-foot-two teenager was still able to throw around 85 mph right off the bat, with a little bit of control.
During the finals in Mumbai, he was not nearly as serious as Rinku and Dinesh. A class-clown type, he was always showing up late to meetings and then making jokes in Hindi that made everyone laugh—and, I’m sure, were at my expense. Manoj was also in love, listen
ing constantly to romantic Hindi songs on his cell phone. But he was a sixteen-year-old boy—one who, if given the right diet and training, could become a legitimate prospect for the major leagues.
The problem with Manoj wasn’t his attitude. Rather, it was getting him a passport. As I entered the bureaucratic morass of visas and passports for our three winners, which made getting the permits seem like child’s play, I quickly found myself facing the most unexpected and devastating by-product of poverty. Because he and his family came from one of India’s many slums, where people lived in temporary housing and survived by carrying packages, running errands, picking through trash, or begging, there was no official record of his existence.
Manoj’s parents didn’t pay rent or taxes. They didn’t have jobs with IDs or pay stubs. He wasn’t enrolled in school. No one in his family had a state-issued identification card or any way to get one. Manoj, who had been born in whatever his family called home at the time and not a hospital, didn’t have a birth certificate.
For six weeks, I tried everything I could think of, and Vaibhav talked his way through every official, but to no avail. To make matters worse, without our knowing, Manoj had given what little money his family could muster to a con artist who’d promised him identification documents. Still, I refused to give up hope. I was determined to find a way for Manoj to join us, and in the meantime found him a baseball coach and living situation so that he could continue to train in Mumbai while we trained in the States.
Ultimately, even though Manoj had lived in India his whole life, we didn’t know how to prove that he was a citizen. And with that, his chance to visit the United States—and possibly to transform his and his family’s futures—flickered out.
CHAPTER 5
I startled awake to someone shaking my shoulder. It was Dinesh, his serious brow furrowed more deeply than usual. “Sir, big problem.”
I was more than aware of the enormous responsibility of taking a few sheltered Indian kids, who hadn’t even been out of their region, let alone out of their country, and bringing them to the United States, where the opportunities for personal advancement and personal corruption were equally great. But we hadn’t even landed yet. In fact, we were only about a third of the way through our flight to America when Dinesh came up from coach to find me in business class. (I was an old man and couldn’t sit for sixteen hours in coach. Meanwhile, they were more than fine in those seats, amazed at the televisions built into the headrests in front of them.) Something was wrong already?
Even though we had to bridge a language gap the size of the Indian Ocean, I could tell that he was very embarrassed without him saying a word. But Deepesh was on hand to translate.
Throughout the finals, Deepesh never suspected in a million years that he would be coming to America. But, despite the fact that Rinku’s and Dinesh’s English, which was nonexistent when I met them, was improving every day, I knew they would still need help communicating with the coaches and other players in America. While he was in the States, not only would Deepesh work with Rinku and Dinesh, but I planned for him to become NCAA certified as both a coach and an umpire. With those credentials, he could return to India after Rinku’s and Dinesh’s training was over and become the go-to resource for baseball in his native country. When I offered him the job after the finals, he almost had a heart attack.
Deepesh translated that Dinesh had left the airplane toilet without flushing. I saw the boy’s cheeks redden beneath his caramel-colored complexion. He hadn’t been able to find a handle to flush—because there was no handle, just a button.
Good grief. We were really starting at zero here. Flustered and nervous, Dinesh had decided that the best thing to do was leave the bathroom door open and find me. I’m sure the next guy in line took care of the situation, but I went back to where he and Rinku were sitting to have a stewardess give a demonstration of the button that flushes the toilet. For future reference.
Looking at Rinku, Dinesh, and Deepesh in their seats, I keenly felt Manoj’s absence, and the old anger at my failure to get him a passport rose up again. Even for Rinku and Dinesh, the Indian consular system had been merciless. When we found ourselves waiting on yet another endless line for visas the day before our flight to the States, I tried to hurry things along by explaining the unusual circumstances to the expressionless bureaucrats.
“These guys are attempting to become the first Indian athletes to ever go pro in a major American sport,” I said. “But they have to leave tomorrow!” The people at the Indian embassy couldn’t have cared less.
“Please, sir. Step back in line, sir.”
As tough as the Indian visa process was, the US visa process was the direct opposite. We were whisked through our security check at the American embassy, and the boys’ passports were processed while Assistant to the Ambassador Joel Ehrendreich took us on a tour of the grounds. Less than an hour later, the boys were the guests of the ambassador, David Mulford, at his personal residence for a press conference to give them their visas and to wish them luck. The ambassador, gracious in his speech that emphasized the importance of sports as a tool in diplomacy, hoped that the boys’ endeavor would create yet another link in the strong bond between India and the United States. Joel’s son and a friend each played catcher for Rinku and Dinesh in the ambassador’s yard as they gave a brief pitching demonstration. The ambassador even rolled up his sleeves and threw a few. After waiting a month for their Indian passports, we got their US visas and a press conference completed in less than two hours. It was an amazing moment and reminded us of the historical nature of what the boys were about to attempt.
We made it, through the visa process and the flight, landing on May 3, 2008, in Los Angeles. There we planned to spend six months getting Rinku and Dinesh ready for the Major League Baseball tryouts.
From the moment we arrived, everything around them was different from what they were used to. They were even in disbelief during the ride from the airport to their hotel.
“Where are all the three-wheelers?” Rinku wanted to know, referring to the auto rickshaws that were basically glorified golf carts used all over India to shuttle people around.
“It’s so quiet!” Dinesh commented.
Back home, everybody honked the horn all the time, even when twenty-four-hour gridlock traffic made it an absurd cacophony.
“And clean!” Rinku added.
They marveled at how all the cars stayed in their lanes and how smooth the road felt.
“But, sir,” Dinesh asked. “How is it that every car in America is new?”
Compared to the three-wheelers and ancient trucks that clogged the roads in India, all the cars outside the window looked like high-end luxury vehicles.
Naturally, the first thing they both wanted to do was to call home and let their parents know they had arrived safely. I handed my cell phone to Rinku, who dialed his number and joyfully said hello to whichever parent answered. Soon, however, the conversation clearly turned into an argument. I heard him repeat the Hindi words for sun, suraj, and moon, chandni, with frustration while jabbing his index finger at the window.
It seemed that neither Rinku nor his parents could reconcile the fact that although it was night where he was at that very moment, it was daytime back in India. Both thought the other party was playing an annoying joke. At the first opportunity I had, I pulled out a tennis ball and a flashlight to explain the rotation of the earth and how that means only half the planet is lit by the sun at any given time. First how to flush an airplane toilet and now basic astronomy; it looked like I was going to have to introduce the boys to a lot more than baseball.
To start off their first day in the States, I decided to give them an education in American diner food by taking them to breakfast at Denny’s. I chose the chain and its Grand Slam breakfast because the menu had pictures of the food. Having settled into a booth, the boys studied the bright laminated pictures of crinkly bacon, eggs with bright yellow yolks, pancakes topped by a scoop of butter, and ste
aming coffee. When the waitress came to take their orders, I was surprised that they both pointed to the image depicting a T-bone steak flanked by fried eggs and hash browns. Steak and eggs?
Beef was totally taboo in many parts of India, since cows are considered sacred in Hinduism. In many states in India, slaughtering cows is against the law. It’s not just gross, like eating a pet; it’s a sin.
I thought about saying something and then thought again. If I were a teenager and away from home in a different country for the first time, the first thing I might do is order a steak to see what all the fuss was about. My job was not to be the theological police but to help them become great pitchers—and they both definitely needed to up their protein intake.
As soon as the waitress delivered their orders of steak and eggs, two plates so heaped with food that Dinesh lifted the plate to see how much it weighed, they dug in with the ferocious appetite universal to all male teenagers. Now, these were Denny’s steaks—certainly not the choicest cuts of meat—but both of them were pouring A1 steak sauce all over the food and enjoying themselves immensely.
About halfway through the meal, as both boys began to slow down a little, Rinku asked me, “What part of the chicken is this?”
Oh Lord. They had never seen a steak, so they had no idea what it was. They thought it was some exotic part of the chicken we had only here in America. I thought they lived on a farm. How did they confuse this for chicken? All I knew was that I had to break some very bad news. I went with the straightforward approach, since it’s the only one I know.
“Gaya,” I said, using the Hindi word for cow.
Rinku did a double take.
“Gaya?”
I nodded, and his face went white. He slowly stopped working the piece he had been chewing and forced it down his throat.
Dinesh, looking up from his plate, repeated the question: “Gaya?”
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