SAO PAULO, Brazil – In 2010, the Brazilian brothers who hope to boost the sport of baseball in their native country began to watch young ballplayers in their hometown of Marilia, the site where the Tampa Bay Rays’ academy was then set to be built.
One day, they say, Edno and Adriano De Souza saw the makings of a professional player in a sinewy boy, aged 12, named Joao Vitor Ayres. At that point in his life, he’d played for a couple years at the only place he knew – a Japanese-run club in the town. He later lamented that he played no more than 20 games per year. He played with sub-standard equipment. It became clear to see he was talented but lacking in age-appropriate experience.
There is hope for Brazilian baseball, hope that the passionate few will be able to spread the sport to the capable many and, in time, create a Latin American power on the level of Venezuela. There is also fear that it all will fail, fear because of the absence of a unified push to grow.
Viewing themselves as sporting vigilantes, attempting to fight the way the Brazilian baseball and softball federation operated, the De Souzas opted to pull Ayres out of the Japanese style he had been practicing in and coach him privately, increasing his exposure to the game. To ensure they wouldn’t have to compete with other MLB franchises to sign him when he came of age, the De Souzas told him not to attend the annual Elite Camp showcases at the federation’s oasis-like facility in Ibiuna, adding friction to the relationship between the Rays and the establishment.
The brothers felt it necessary and prudent. Tampa Bay employed Adriano as a scout, and Tampa Bay might want this young ballplayer. Indeed, Ayres signed with the Rays at 17, not a top prospect but one with potential. In this year’s Venezuelan Summer League, he’s playing third base and posting a healthy on-base percentage as one of the better Brazilian talents in the minors.
A burly 19-year-old Mariners left-hander named Luiz Gohara, oft-compared to C.C. Sabathia, remains the top talent; No. 2 is a slight 19-year-old right-hander named Daniel Missaki, the youngest player to participate in the 2013 World Baseball Classic. Missaki opened 2015 dominating older hitters for the Mariners’ Low-A affiliate before requiring Tommy John surgery in May. The third-best prospect might be Tampa Bay’s slick-fielding shortstop Leonardo Reginatto, who has reached Triple-A this season.
Andres Reiner, something of a scouting savant and the man who got much of this started, is 79, uninvolved in baseball and living in Fort Worth. He retired from his position as a special assistant with Tampa Bay around the same time the Rays’ first Brazilian venture failed and acquiesced to responding to recent inquiries only via email.
While he worked for the Astros in 1989, he started the Venezuelan revolution, signing Bobby Abreu, Melvin Mora and Johan Santana, among others. A decade later, roughly two dozen MLB teams had established academies in the country.
That has changed in recent months with the continued political crisis in the country. Earlier this year, Venezuela issued a new rule: Every American visitor must be granted a visa before entering. The Wall Street Journal reported in May only four teams are keeping their academies open. They will still scout there, but they will instead send their Venezuelan signees to their Dominican Republic locales. It’s conceivable Brazil could benefit from Venezuela’s struggles; MLB organizations are no less dedicated to the search for talent and now facing a lesser source.
In Reiner’s previous ventures, he was always confident there would be elite athletes available for teams to sign in Brazil. While the quantity has failed to meet his expectations, he has an explanation.
“In Venezuela and Dominican Republic, there were no problems with the Federations and the baseball industry developed by themselves what was needed to successfully scout and develop players,” Reiner wrote. “In those countries baseball existed. In Brazil, no, so what has to be done is a lot more difficult. You have to get the game to the masses of youngsters and introduce them to the game.”
The De Souzas maintain they are trying to do that. The federation does the same. One certainty is that they are trying in wildly divergent ways.
“They do a more rigorous program of development for the individual player,” said Bob Engle, a Dodgers executive, of the federation, with whom he’s had a relationship for 15 years, most of which he spent working for the Mariners. “Some of the things they do with some of the younger players, we would probably wait to do until they’re 16.”
So much of the early-teenage training the federation does in Ibiuna is unrelated to baseball skills. Their coaches have long taught discipline, asserting its importance; they have not taught how to pick up on pickoff moves.
“Here, I just learned how to throw the ball and how to hit it,” Royals outfielder Paulo Orlando said over the winter in Brazil. “In the Dominican, I learned how to catch it, where to throw it. But I was 19. It was late.”
Orlando attributes making his major-league debut for Kansas City this season, at age 29, to that fact. After he played baseball in the Japanese style from age 11 to 14, he hardly played for the next four years, focusing instead on track, thinking he’d have a greater chance of making it in that sport, for which he received competent coaching.
When he was 19, the White Sox signed him as a pure upside play and told him to go learn the game in the Dominican Republic. At the risk of understating the persistence Orlando demonstrated over 1,000 minor-league games, his sprinter’s speed and technique is the main reason he made the major leagues at all, the reason he became the first big-leaguer ever to record triples as his first three big-league hits.
There remain few capable and experienced coaches in the country, which is why Elite Camp coach Steve Finley believes it may take another generation to truly change the way the sport is played – to allot time for this generation of professional Brazilian ballplayers to come home and teach the game as it’s played in America.
“Brazilian people love sports,” Marlins pitcher Andre Rienzo said. “They just don’t know anything about baseball, still.”
BIG BARRIERS
As he has for many years, the president of Brazil’s baseball and softball federation, Jorge Otsuka, claimed the biggest barrier holding Brazil back from true relevance in American baseball is distance. Venezuelan outposts, he argued, can take half as long to get to from many major-league domains as São Paulo, a city closer to Johannesburg than New York.
“Teams have thought twice about coming here because of that,” Otsuka said.
Several league executives said that is a minor issue, nothing more. Asia is a further flight for most clubs, and most have a scout or two based there.
Another, bigger, barrier is baseball’s absence from the Olympics. Brazil’s federal policy is to provide funding only to federations that represent Olympic sports, costing baseball dearly. The federation must charge the equivalent of $400 U.S. dollars per month for each athlete to attend the Ibiuna academy, a wholly unrealistic sum considering the Brazilian monthly minimum wage for a full-time job is about $260.
Many in the country are counting on baseball to return for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, a decision to be made next year. Initially, a ruling had been expected earlier, and some even held out hope baseball would be played as a transitional exhibition sport in the Summer Olympics that begin next year in Rio de Janeiro – since it’s difficult to foresee a Tokyo Games without a baseball component.
The biggest barrier, though, is the continued specter of corruption, the worry that any effort will be counter-acted by an organization that has ulterior motives.
“We can’t talk about corruption nowadays when the whole world is corrupted, but it would be essential the support from the government to freely work without the federation putting up all kind of difficulties,” wrote Reiner.
To his point, there is widespread belief teams made better offers for Gohara than Seattle’s $880,000. But, the 16-year-old chose the Mariners. Why? Seattle has been the MLB franchise with the closest ties to Japan since its inception, both because of its Nintendo ownership and because of Ichiro Suzuki, and other factors, too.
When Otsuka mentions the Mariners in an email, he tends to capitalize, such as: “Luiz Gohara of the SEATTLE MARINERS.” He does not do the same for other MLB teams. Others are simply the “Diamond Backs” or the “Red Sox.” But it’s always, curiously, the SEATTLE MARINERS.
Otsuka is also unafraid to root against the Rays’ academy publicly.
“We don’t have very much faith in what the Rays are trying to do there, that it’s going to be sustainable,” he said earlier this year. “We believe in the Rays, we just don’t believe in the De Souzas. They are less reputable.”
“I don’t have any problem with Jorge Otsuka and the (federation),” Adriano De Souza said in response. “We just have different opinions, like Democrats and Republicans.”
Told that, in America, many Democrats and Republicans do appear to have serious problems with each other, De Souza laughed. “I know,” he said.
If that analogy stands, whatever political party the federation is standing in for possesses a massive congressional majority.
“There’s no presence other than the federation, so there’s a structure in place where the better athletes that want to play baseball have to go to the federation,” said Gerry Hunsicker, who worked on the Rays’ initial Brazil project and now advises for the Dodgers. “So now you’re essentially in competition with the federation – unless you became your own federation.”
By that, he meant starting an academy, á la every major-league team in the Dominican Republic.
OWN FEDERATION
Tampa Bay’s failures showed the inherent difficulties in opening up the first academy in Brazil. Beginning in 2009, the organization dedicated thousands of man-hours to the project and extracted no value from it.
But the Rays are trying again, setting their sights 20 miles east of Marilia to a smaller town named Garça. There, preparation has already begun on a two-field complex, with a batting cage, cafeteria, locker rooms and other areas designated for physical therapy, locker rooms and school structures.
Officials speak in vague terms about when it will be ready. The Rays are attempting to keep the project secret. None of their stateside staffers will discuss it, fearing English-language publicity could again hold up the process. That was one of the issues last time.
“I didn’t want any attention being brought to it when I was with the Rays,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said of the initial attempt. “As much of a first-mover advantage as you can get is what’s important.”
Two others involved in the discussions said the team would frequently debate how big that first-mover advantage really was, and if it was proportionate to the investment. For this project, the Rays are expected to pay $5.5 million over five years – $1.5 million in Year 1, and $1 million in each year thereafter.
For most teams, that’d be a minimal outlay. But the Rays play in one of MLB’s smallest markets, in one of its worst ballparks, in its most tenuous situation. And, even for them, it’s not that much: They spent $2.95 million on one international prospect last year.
Most major-league organizations can afford such international investment. It is not a matter of that. It is a question of whether it is worth it, in money and effort. Joseph Reaves, the Dodgers’ director of international and minor-league relations, and Engle, their vice president of international scouting, don’t see the point to an academy yet.
“There are other ways to do it, like what we’re doing right now,” Reaves said. “Obviously, the Rays and other people feel differently.”
IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS
What the Dodgers are doing is the same thing the Mariners are doing. Seattle has held a “Mariners Cup” at the big facility in Ibiuna every October for several years. It’s a mini-camp of sorts, meant to develop their brand in Brazil and give them an early look at upcoming international prospects. They pay the federation a small sum for the privilege.
“When Bob came over to us three years ago, he basically wanted to take that tournament away from them,” Reaves said. “But we couldn’t.”
And so the Dodgers started their own tournament, the simply-named Dodgers Cup, held over September weekends the past two years. It’s in conjunction with the federation, which gets to profit from both teams’ efforts and tell the Brazilian government it is working with MLB franchises.
“They have a very short-minded plan, which is to make money,” Reiner wrote of the federation. “They are not interested to develop baseball in the whole country, only to impress the government to keep getting the political and economical support. In my opinion, it will be very difficult to succeed until the federation is controlled by the Japanese group.”
Asked then if the federation wasn’t already controlled by the Japanese financially, Reiner wrote back forcefully.
“That is the PROBLEM!!! That will not change. There is no way to get them out from the federation. But the government can tell them to not interfere with the teams that want to install an academy and let them do scouting, development and signing freely.”
All MLB teams operating in Brazil must do so under the assumption the interference will continue. And that will delay the development of the sport, of course. Even sans any outside interference, it’ll likely take many years for several teams to become intimately involved, for Brazilian baseball to become impactful in America.
“And, to really make it take hold, it could take an entire generation,” Friedman said. “For more talent, there’s a much shorter lead time. But in terms of it becoming a real passion where kids are growing up with a baseball attached to their hand, it’s a lot longer.”
There were nearly 25 million boys aged 14 or younger in Brazil, and there are plenty of people trying earnestly to help them learn of baseball. At each Elite Camp, MLB officials conduct a workshop for local physical education teachers to learn the game at its elementary levels, so they can then teach it to their students. Little League coaches in the country work in part on a volunteer basis. Pitch in for Baseball and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency are American-based charities attempting to send baseball equipment to Brazil for children, but finding difficulty in working with the country’s customs department. It is an ongoing battle.
The lack of serviceable equipment in the country is stunning. Most sporting-goods stores carry a limited selection of gloves, bats and balls produced by one brand. Chest protectors are rare. Each winter, Rienzo, now with the Marlins after two seasons with the White Sox, tries to bring back extras from his U.S. teams; he’s never been permitted to take through Brazilian customs all he’s brought. Amateur players tell stories about having to pay import taxes on catching gear they had shipped from the U.S. that amount to more than the cost of the equipment itself.
It can be challenging to find people who are both intimately aware of the situation in Brazil and explicitly hopeful for what could come. Every expression of optimism is tempered by a caveat.
Cleveland Indians catcher Yan Gomes, the most successful Brazilian ballplayer ever, has visited during his offseasons on goodwill trips, coaching children, making media appearances. He considers the country home, and that will not change. But he is weighing whether to continue the winter practice, considering whether the visits do any good for the children who need it.
“I hate to say this, but, personally, how much do they really want Rienzo or Orlando to establish himself in the majors?” Gomes asked of the federation. “And do they want that for Brazilian baseball, or do they want it so they can take advantage and ask them for money?
“It’s like, you want it to happen, but if it doesn’t, you’re like, ‘Eh.’ Because with these guys, it’s funny. Instead of being like, ‘Hey, let’s teach young kids how to grow,’ it’s, ‘Hey, let’s try to figure out how we can benefit from this.’”
Contact the writer: pmoura@ocregister.com
