Baseball players love keeping tradition alive. If it’s not like it was, “white”, then there’s a problem. Hispanic players have come to the majors and brought their own way of playing while giving us major highlights, historic moments and adding to the game in general.
To say that you wouldn’t build a baseball team around a Hispanic player is ridiculous. You wouldn’t build around A-Rod, Miguel Cabrera, Mariano Rivera, David Ortiz etc. How many great Hispanic players have passed through baseball to say you won’t build around them? Then, the notion that a language barrier stops you from building around a Hispanic player? Phillies HOF Mike Schmidt thinks that and it’s a shame.
Schmidt was on 94.1 WIP’s Morning Show and he was asked about Odubel Herrera. Host Angelo Cataldi said that he’s a kind different player than Schmidt was and Schmidt’s response was, “almost exact opposite”.
Then, he was asked if you build around a player like Odubel and he proceeded to drop this gem.
“My honest answer to that would be no because of a couple of things,.” Schmidt said. “First of all, it’s a language barrier. Because of that, I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game. Or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game. Or come over to a guy and say, ‘Man, you gotta run that ball out.’ Just can’t be — because of the language barrier — that kind of a player.”
Yeah, that isn’t racist at all. To think that Hispanic players can’t speak Spanish AND English, like we never seen it in baseball.
Maybe the language barrier can help these dudes speak Spanish. It’s good to know how to speak multiple languages.