Guillen: Asian Players Get Special Treatment Over Latinos

By Benjy Lipsman in News on Aug 2, 2010 3:00PM

Ozzie Guillen's comments have remained relatively free of controversy since the little Twitter flap in spring training. But he made a stir on Sunday when he knocked MLB for a double standard among its foreign players. Guillen said he believes that the Asian players are treated better than the Latino players when they come to the U.S. to play ball. Guillen based these comments on the fact that players from Japan and Korea get translators while the Spanish speaking players receive no such benefit. "Very bad. I say, why do we have Japanese interpreters and we don't have a Spanish one. I always say that. Why do they have that privilege and we don't?" Guillen asked.

But is it a double standard or simply necessity? Major and minor league rosters are about one-quarter Latino, as are a growing number of the coaches. Guillen mentioned that when he'd visited his son Oney while he played for one of the White Sox Single A minor league teams, there were 17 Spanish speaking players on the team, "and you know who the interpreter was? Oney. Why is that? Because we have Latino coaches? Because here he is? Why? I don't have the answer."

As usual, Ozzie's rant has a point even as it gets lost inside his own bluster. We understand the line of thinking that leads teams to their current policy. With Latino players (and increasingly coaches, too) so prevalent in Major League Baseball, there is something of a built-in support system. Meanwhile, the average Asian player may be the lone speaker of Korean or Japanese on the team. In addition to needing somebody to explain instructions to him on the field, address the media off the field and help carry on life in a strange land, it's somebody to whom an Asian player can actually talk to instead of being completely isolated by language. Still, Ozzie has a point: teams aren't guaranteed to have any Latino coaches on staff and to force players to depend on each other for those issues still leaves a large language barrier to be overcome between the players and the authority figures on the team.

Ozzie also touched on the issue of PEDs in the sport:

"I'm the only one to teach the Latinos about not to use. I'm the only one and Major League Baseball doesn't [care]. All they care about -- how many times I argue with the umpires, what I say to the media. But I'm the only one in baseball to come up to the Latino kids and say not to use this and I don't get any credit for that."

He probably knew that statement, more than anything else, was likely to get MLB's attention on the issue. And it did. MLB spokesman Rich Levin told the AP:

"We spend more time and effort educating our Latin players about PED use than we do our domestic players in the United States. We test extensively in the Dominican and Venezuelan leagues, and we've increased the testing every year. We also have Sandy Alderson down in the Dominican Republic on a full-time basis and he's dealing with a lot of these issues as well."

Unfortunately, whether or not MLB takes up the language issue is another question altogether. As Ozzie himself pointed out, that attention may be fleeting because of who said it which is a shame because it's a topic deserving of attention. We wonder if Spanish translators are ever hired when necessary. Again, we can see why it's not the norm to hire each Spanish-speaking player a translator of his own. Still, is it all that outlandish to suggest at least one translator on each team? It makes sense to us, does it to you?