Here’s the latest rant from Ozzie Guillen.
Guillen said Latin players on the White Sox “are lucky we speak Spanish, but some people don’t have that privilege to come here and (have that). That’s why I always criticize why Japanese players have interpreters and Latinos don’t have one. Very bad.
“Don’t take this wrong, but they take advantage of us. We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid (and say), ‘(Blank) you, you go to the minor leagues, good luck. And it’s always going to be like that. It’s never going to change. But that’s the way it is.”
Yes, no team but Chicago has Spanish speaking coaches. No teams fund academies in Latin America. I amdisappointed Ozzie is playing the victim card here. I would bet that if Miguel Cabrera asked for an interpreter as part of his contract, he would probably get one. What Ozzie misses, of course, is that the Japanese players with interpreters are stars. If US teams started signing Japanese amateurs like they do Latin-Americans, there would not be an interpreter for each player.
Kenny Williams might want to get Ozzie an interpreter, he could then filter what Ozzie can’t.
Ozzie is not too bright, that’s why he is a manager and not a GM. Teams calculate the total cost for a player when determining what they will offer. If that cost or offer is X and the player wants or needs a interpreter that costs Y, then the players salary is X-Y. That’s a bit simplified of course. The pie is only so big, if you want to slice it up into more pieces, fine. Daisuke gets first class tickets, his own limo, an apartment, interpreters, trainers, etc.
I believe there may be a tax advantage for the player for interpreters, since it would not be considered players income if on the teams payroll.
In other words, even though the team is paying for the interpreter, the player is actually paying for most of that extra slice, less any tax advantage.
As for players in the minors getting an interpreter, well think about it, how many of the players teammates are going to speak Japanese? coaches?, heck, in some of the towns they won’t have a single Japanese
person living for 100 miles. How do you coach someone if you can’t speak with them.
Also, a lot of the Dominican players spend time from an early age in teams baseball camps where they learn English, a bit of the culture, as well as being coached before being signed. There is no comparison with Japanese players who come here cold from a culture further removed from American culture than Latin America is. The social support network for Latin Americans dwarfs that of Japanese.
Ozzie is dumb, maybe worse than that.
Is there any team that does not have an Englis-Spanish bilingual person on their staff? But how many bilingual Japanese-English or Korean-English or Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese)-English players or coaches are there.
Hell, Ozzie himself speaks English & Spanish, Jorge Posada & the catching Molinas speak both.
Then again Ozzie is friends with Hugo Chavez, so I understand his stupidity.
Please. Not every Japanese player with an interpreter is a star. Major-league academies in the Dominican Republic are not only irrelevant, they’re hardly a unadulterated good. Etc.
Far worse than a minority “playing” any kind of “card” is a nonminority immediately going on the defensive and dismissing what he has to say out of hand.
Let’s try acknowledging that people of color might just have some legitimate grievances.