As originally aired on the Rochester Press Box
I have seen the future and it was on display at the All-Star Game’s Home Run Derby. It didn’t directly involve any of the eight participants. This is about a name you probably won’t recognize.
Alden Gonzalez was a Miami kid of Cuban decent. He dreamed of becoming a major league baseball player despite the fact that he struggled to make his high school team. It wasn’t until his dad told him he was no good, an opinion Alden eventually came to share, that he focused on another aspect of the game. He is a baseball writer for ESPN.com.
He was assigned television field duty by ESPN during the home run derby. Five of the eight participants were of Latin decent. Gonzalez speaks fluent Spanish. He was doing the interviews on the field, asking the players questions in English and Spanish, and then translating the response back in English for the ESPN audience. Flawlessly. At least as far as I could tell. The whole interpreter thing is a little awkward. Old guard baseball journalists are not largely bilingual and they don’t come off looking good when painfully forced to speak with a Latin American athlete. Gonzalez was one of the real stars on the field that night.
The thing is, the sports world is getting smaller. Shohei Ohtani is without question the top baseball player. He is Japanese. Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old basketball sensation, is French. The best players in his sport hail from Serbia and Greece. Call it career insurance, the ability to speak multiple languages has never been a more useful skill. On and off the field. In all walks of life.
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