The family had made a commitment to educating their kids, even if it meant that money was tighter than usual, he explained. It wasn’t a sacrifice, because they understood their lives as one link in a chain. Their job was to be as strong a link as possible in a chain that stretches back to the beginning of time and forward until the end of time. It’s about fulfilling your obligation to both past and future generations. “We just hope our children will honor life,” he said.
When Rinku first left for America to become a pitcher, everyone thought he was the village goof. Playing baseball was tantamount to him joining the circus or something even sillier. But his father didn’t pay any attention to the village gossip. Yes, his son’s adventure was certainly a strange one, but he had faith in what he had instilled in Rinku. “No matter what everyone says, he is my son,” he said. “I trust him.” The outcome was poetic justice. Thanks to Rinku, his father had a mansion and, rather than delivering vegetables all day every day, paid someone else to do it for him.
Now everyone in Bhadohi, where the Singhs lived, wished for a goof like Rinku. They had as big a procession for our arrival as Dinesh’s village did, and they set off fireworks in our honor—or what they called fireworks. Most Americans would probably just call these things bombs. One of them almost blew up a car. The driver got out and started yelling at us, but then some people from the roving mob explained what we were celebrating. And then, just like that, he pulled his car back onto the road and joined the caravan.
At least five hundred kids from Rinku’s village came out to greet him. Screaming with delight, they looked up at Rinku towering over them. When he left India, he was probably six foot two and 180 pounds. Not small. But after a year of eating American food, taking supplements, going from 25 grams of protein a week to 300 grams a day, and working out with state-of-the-art equipment, he had morphed into a six-foot-four, 220-pound giant.
While the children nipped at his heels with every step he took, Rinku, who once told me that he’d never had any dreams as a kid, turned to me and said, “Maybe now they have dreams.”
CHAPTER 10
When I asked Mr. Singh his secret to family life, it wasn’t just academic.
Right before the boys’ homecoming trip to India, Rinku and Dinesh stayed with me in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving. But it wasn’t just the three of us. There was a fourth—and, no, it wasn’t Deepesh.
By then, Brenda and I were officially a couple, the kind that spends holidays together—and if I had my way, a house, a life, maybe even a kid.
In addition to being gorgeous, smart, and successful, Brenda was also a gourmet chef. Literally. Somewhere in between becoming a champion horseback rider and starting a multimillion-dollar company, she also took culinary classes. Instead of making a traditional Thanksgiving meal, however, she wanted the guys to feel at home. So in Dinesh’s and Rinku’s honor, Brenda prepared an Indian feast from scratch. As she put out about fifteen different dishes—chicken tikka masala, dal pitha (wheat-flour dumplings with a dal filling), homemade naan, crispy paratha flatbreads, and more—I could tell that the boys approved of both the food and my new companion. But if they thought Brenda was some traditional woman in the mold of the Indian girls they knew (even if she was wearing a sari during our Thanksgiving feast), they were sorely mistaken.
When Rinku needed a ride to get a haircut, Brenda offered to take him in her Porsche. That’s when he found out that the woman I was in love with liked to drive very, very fast.
Brenda and I first met in 2010, not long after I moved out of the mansion near USC and into a condo by the beach. Once the guys started their first season with the Pirates, it became abundantly clear that I needed to move out of the big, lonely house we had shared. I chose the airiest, most carefree place I could. That was Marina del Rey. The energy of the city, the tranquility of the ocean, and the luxury of its wealthy inhabitants made it a paradise where I was almost able to forget how lonely I was.
During the Fourth of July holiday, I got a call from my friend Tony Phills, who also works with Barry Bonds, inviting me to a party. While attending a private aviation show, he and Barry had met a woman who was hosting the party on her roof deck in Marina del Rey that she said had the city’s best view of the Fourth of July fireworks. I reminded Tony that I also lived in Marina del Rey, and that, with all due respect to this woman, there was no way she had a better view of the marina than I did. Still, I was game.
When Tony told me where to meet him, I thought there was a mistake. “That’s my address,” I said. It turned out the party was in my building, right across the quadrangle, sixty feet away from where I lived.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight or fate or any of that stuff. But meeting Brenda Paauwe-Navori was a serious test of my belief system. From the first moment we spoke to each other, there was palpable chemistry, but more striking were the strange coincidences. Not only did she live in my building, Brenda had also moved to LA from Bradenton, Florida, where Rinku and Dinesh were currently located. If I had believed in fate, it would certainly seem that we were destined to meet.
However, at her party, I was more interested in her long, strawberry-colored hair, full lips, long legs, and kind brown eyes than in destiny, so I asked her out. Over dinner, I got her life story. She grew up in Michigan, the daughter of an entrepreneur and big outdoorsman, who rode horses from an early age. She was accomplished enough in riding to win an American saddlebred (a breed of show horse) world championship. Her impressive accomplishments extended to the professional arena as well. Following in her father’s footsteps, Brenda started her own business arranging in-flight services for VIPs traveling privately. She made seven figures a year, drove a Porsche 911, and owned a yacht.
When the economy started taking a downturn in 2008, the private aviation market, like so many other markets, dried up, and she closed her company. In doing so, she paid off every tax she owed, and every employee she had. A lot of people would have declared bankruptcy and left everyone hanging. But that wasn’t Brenda’s way.
Before Brenda, I had never dated anyone with any substance, and that’s how I liked it. My relationships were designed to be disposable. Brenda, however, was what’s known as a keeper. It wasn’t enough for me to call Brenda my equal; she was far superior. From the day we met, I couldn’t get enough of her. I wanted to be around her all the time.
I have a unique gift: if I am headed down the wrong road, I can recognize it. I knew it as an agent when I encountered the young athlete who wanted $1 million in a duffel, and I knew it when sex with strangers was no longer satisfying. My old life was not where I wanted to be anymore, and I knew I had to go in a different direction. I was just lucky that my path crossed with Brenda’s and that someone as amazing as her agreed to be with a guy like me.
While I was in India with Rinku and Dinesh, Brenda moved across the quadrangle, out of her apartment and into mine. That Christmas, during a trip to visit her family, I popped the question at a Starbucks in the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The only thing romantic about it was that it was completely spontaneous and utterly from the heart.
“You are going to marry me, right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, right before ordering her skinny latte. That’s what I love about Brenda: nothing rattles her.
Although I didn’t propose on bended knee with a violin playing and a bottle of champagne chilling at the ready, I fulfilled my obligations with respect to jewelry. In addition to the wedding ring, I also got her a really nice bracelet for the big day of our wedding. As it turned out, Brenda got me a wedding present, too. May 22, 2010, was a big day for more than one reason: that morning, Brenda took a pregnancy test, and it came out positive. Nine months later, our daughter, Delphine, was born.
When Brenda and I were dating, she didn’t care that I didn’t sleep much. She would go to bed around nine at night and loved that she had the whole bed to herself. It’s true what they say about there being a lid for eve
ry pot, because Brenda was the only woman who wasn’t offended that I didn’t want to drift off to sleep in each other’s arms.
After Delphine was born, Brenda, who like any good entrepreneur knows how to turn things to her advantage, put my lack of sleep habits to even better use. “I’m getting a breast pump!” she announced. “I’m not getting up in the middle of the night if you are already up.” So, like that, Delphine and I bonded during the middle of the night. When she was a newborn, every two hours, like clockwork, I gave her a bottle. I sat in her room watching her sleep, so that she didn’t even have to cry for her milk. As soon as she woke up, I scooped her into my arms and fed her until she was soothed again and back asleep. The guy who swore he would never get married and never have kids now stayed up all night staring at his gorgeous, perfect baby instead of firing off emails (although I got a few of those in, too).
When Rinku and Dinesh came to the United States for the first time in 2008, I got a chance to experience so much through them as though for the first time. A trip in an airplane, the ocean undertow, a heaping Denny’s breakfast, a bedroom to oneself in a beautiful house, a fastball landing with a thwok! into the mitt after striking out a hitter—all these things and more took on the breath of fresh life. My daughter was an opportunity for all of that and so much more. We taught her sign language so she could communicate as an infant, and my knees literally buckled when at six months the first sign she mastered was “Daddy.” With her, I got in on the ground floor of her tasting macaroni and cheese, riding a pony, saying her first words, smiling, being tickled by the ocean’s undertow.
* * *
Unfortunately, being close to people isn’t all trips to the beach and perfect fastballs. When you get attached, you also share the pain and hurt that is part of every life.
After Rinku’s and Dinesh’s first year in rookie ball, I got the letters for both boys that the team sends out to agents of international players at the end of the season. These confirm that the athletes have jobs playing a professional sport so that they can get their visas renewed. But after their second year, I received a letter only for Rinku. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
At the end of Dinesh’s second season, the Pirates let him go. He pitched well with the opportunities he was given. In his first year, he had an outstanding 1.42 ERA and finished with a 1-0 record in 6.1 innings. His second season, unfortunately, didn’t go quite as well. Over 9 games, he had an 8.59 ERA and was released by the Pirates in December 2010.
Some might consider him as having a failed career in baseball, but I would trump that argument any day. Very few guys can say they’ve recorded wins at the pro level, and even fewer perform well enough for a second season. His name is in the record books forever as the first-ever Indian-born pitcher to record a strikeout in professional baseball. He made it to the pros, and he made enough money to change his family’s life and become a legend in his village. No one can call that a failure.
Dinesh was able to walk away from pro baseball with his head held high, which he did. It wasn’t easy to be let go by the Pirates, but he had the natural gift of perspective that so many others lack. The way he looked at it, bad things happen from time to time, but one has to stay focused on the positive. Dinesh had already experienced way more than he ever imagined when he gave up the $100 javelin contest for the Million Dollar Arm finals in Mumbai. He had experienced America, learned how to play baseball, and made a hell of a lot more than $100. The world would be a better place if there were more men like Dinesh.
It’s not just about the money. The chance to travel to the United States, to China, to have so many new experiences is certainly a lot more than untold millions of his fellow countrymen, who live in places devoid of opportunity, like Manoj, the sixteen-year-old with a ton of natural talent and the heartbreak of my life. After the finals, I had hoped to get him on the plane with Rinku and Dinesh, but I couldn’t make it happen. I was so angry at the bureaucracy standing in his way that I refused to give up.
Finally, a year and a half after the contest, we convinced Major League Baseball International to let Manoj train at a facility it owned in Italy. MLB paid for a first-class plane ticket and agreed to cover all of Manoj’s expenses once he got there. It was an amazing deal, way better than what we were offering him with Million Dollar Arm. They put the offer in writing, and, as a result, Manoj was finally able to get a passport and a visa. After all the work it took to make it happen combined with the initial disappointment that Manoj felt about being left behind, I was on top of the world with this resolution.
But when Manoj showed up for his flight, the ticketing agent took one look at him, and, seeing a kid from the slums trying to board a plane, figured that something must be wrong. Citing a rule that a passenger needed to have a certain amount of cash to fly to another country, the agent refused to let Manoj, who had less than a dollar’s worth of rupees in his pocket, on the plane. Manoj called Ash, who would have been happy to wire whatever money he needed, but it was nighttime in India, and there was no way to get the money there until the next day. So the plane left without him.
The people at MLB International were furious with us. They had jumped through a lot of hoops to get Manoj to Italy and couldn’t understand why he had missed his flight. They assumed that he had flaked out and that we were trying to cover for him. The story we told them was inconceivable, and, frankly, I don’t blame them for balking. It is inconceivable. How could a technicality stand in the way of a young kid’s being given a chance to do something special? It was as if the social order couldn’t be upended, even for one innocent kid. By this point, Manoj was eighteen. Even if we were able to figure out another way to get him out of the country, realistically, by then it was too late for him to start his training. The end of his story was crushingly sad, awful, and stupid. He never left India.
Dinesh had the presence of mind to know that although his playing career had ended, his life was only beginning. Back in his home village, he could see the fruits of his success. His family renovated their home into a solid-concrete house with six rooms, while Dinesh bought himself a plot of land where he planned to construct another house one day. The money he earned in America also paid for his younger sister’s wedding. As he told a reporter back in India, “My family gathered self-esteem and respect in society. It is always good to see your near and dear ones happy.”
He returned to school to resume the education he abandoned temporarily for America, but Dinesh didn’t completely give up on baseball. He not only taught schoolkids in Delhi the sport but also worked as a pitching instructor for season two of Million Dollar Arm. When Ash, Will, and I got the next round of competitions off the ground (which went much smoother than the first; the second time of anything is always easier), Dinesh was a natural—albeit slightly ironic—choice to help train the winner, which he did both in India and at a Major League Baseball training facility in China.
Dinesh wasn’t the only one furthering the cause of baseball back in India. Deepesh, his and Rinku’s chaperone and translator, was once again working at CKT University in Mumbai. There he put his time in America to good use, coaching the college’s baseball team. While Deepesh was in the States, I made good on our promise to get him NCAA certified both as a baseball umpire and a coach, which might make him the only person in India with those qualifications. The whole time Deepesh was in America, he was on a mission to accrue as much baseball knowledge as possible. With the kind of access to coaches and information he was afforded, he wanted to bring back as much wisdom as he was able to cram into his head.
Apparently he was successful in his mission, because the CKT University team was champion for three consecutive years. Not only were they undefeated, but over the course of those three years, not one opponent scored a single run against them. They were like India’s answer to the 1927 Yankees.
Rinku, who remained in the States to play in the minor-league Pirates chain, also meant something to baseball in India. At
first it took him a while to hit his stride. He finished his first season with a 1-2 record and a 5.84 ERA in 11 games. The fact that he was a lefty, however, worked to his advantage. There are a lot of righty starters, but when it’s time to bring in a reliever, coaches usually want to change things up and bring in a lefty. As a result, Rinku got a lot more reps than Dinesh ever did. In his second season, he went 2-0 with a 2.61 ERA in 13 games. Because of his improved performance, he was promoted from the Pirates’ Rookie League affiliate to the Class A Short-Season team, the State College (Pennsylvania) Spikes.
In the winter of 2011, Rinku spent over a month working with sixty-nine-year-old Jim Lefebvre, a Dodgers infielder for eight seasons and the 1965 National League Rookie of the Year. He’d also managed the Mariners, Brewers, and the Chicago Cubs. Jim, a close friend of Will Chang’s and an early and avid supporter of Million Dollar Arm, had generously invited Rinku to stay with his family in Scottsdale, Arizona, while Rinku was trained by Jim and Brent Strom, pitching coach for the Houston Astros. The results were clear: Rinku was in top physical shape and came back with a noticeably improved fastball, curveball, and slider, all of which helped him get to the next level.
Through baseball, Rinku went places that no one, least of all him, could have expected. After his second season, he spent his off-season pitching in Australia for the Canberra Cavalry in the first year of the Australian Baseball League. He also opened the 2011 season in the Dominican Republic, pitching a couple of weeks for the summer league of that baseball-obsessed country. In his second off-season pitching in Australia, Rinku made the All-Star team. His transformation has been remarkable. The guy who used to hit batters left and right is long gone. With impeccable control, he strikes out three or four players for every time he gives up a walk. His off-speed stuff is major league ready, and his fastball can get up into the mid-90s.
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