New player collection

[nevermore]

I was actually looking forward to the release of Bowman Chrome this year which is never the case for me. This year's set features the first licensed cards of Dinesh Kumar Patel, one of the two Indian players to be signed by the Pirates. I had been wanting to pick up his cards since I first heard that he and Rinku Singh had been signed by the Pirates earlier this year.

Being Indian myself, and also having the last name Patel, Dinesh was someone I wanted to collect. There have been Indian players in the minors before but they were Indian-American like me and were raised in the States. In fact, one of them was also named Patel (yes, it is a fairly common name). However, there has never been anyone signed directly from India before. It came as a huge surprise to me that the Pirates had two guys from India since only cricket is played in India. No one even follows baseball there.

The other Patel I was referring to earlier is Manny (Manish) Patel who had bounced around in the minors during the 90s. If anyone is willing to break up their 1994 Appleton Foxes sets (featuring Arod), I could use cards of Manny Patel from there as well as other releases. Unlike Dinesh, he was never featured in any major releases.

Dinesh has been doing alright so far and has had 6 innings of work. He is only 20, and I hope he eventually gets to pitch in the majors one day.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/statistics/players/cards/?pl_id=90293

I am looking forward to building a Bowman Chrome rainbow something which I never had the opportunity to do before. As of now, I am open to trading some PC stuff for the rarer cards so please let me know if you have any of his stuff available.

 

[mlbme22]

Not sure if you know the story behind those two guys- they did a tv show in India, something like "who wants to be a millionaire", they were looking for the person who could throw the hardest in India. They figured that since Cricket was so big & no one really even knew baseball, & the fact that India has millions of "potential" players, they held "tryouts" where people could come throw & those two guys were the winners, with one of them (cant remember which one) was the overall winner. Then they came to the States & worked with Tom House (famous pitching coach) for months. They were basically starting from scratch, as they didn't know a thing about baseball. Once Tom felt like they were ready, he held a pro workout where MLB scouts came & the Pirates ended up signing both guys. Pretty cool story- Maybe if you do a search on google or something, you will get the whole story. I'm sure that I got some parts wrong, but that is how I remembered in when I heard about it.
Best of luck with the collection!!
Mike

 

[nevermore]

Thanks Mike,

Yes, I did hear about the contest. Pretty unique way to get a baseball contract. For a pitching coach it must be work with someone who is a blank slate and teach them how to pitch.

 

[David K.]

I was wondering why your last name matched the player's last name. Now I know why

 

[theplasticman]

Nice! Best of luck on getting each card.

 

[bzickefoose1]

Pretty cool idea! It's be crazy if they ended up making it big!

 

[nevermore]

David K. - Haha, that doesn't happen too often. Thanks again for the trade and kicking off the collection for me!

theplasticman - Thanks! Shouldn't be too hard...it's only 12 cards right?

bzickefoose1 - It would be nice to see them both get called up and pitch a few games in the majors. After all, they are playing for the Pirates so the odds do favor that happening. Anything else beyond that would be incing on the cake.

 

[Tim Carroll]

There should be a link somewhere to the "Outside the Lines" story that was on ESPN a few months ago. The other guys has the last name Singh. Very neat. I love rooting for the underdogs, so I hope they make it BIG!


Tim

 

[rynofan23]

That's pretty cool that you can now collect someone from your country. I have three people from India that work with me, and they were all shocked when I told them that a couple of people from India signed to play for a baseball team.

Tai

 

[worldwideed]

I was actually looking forward to the release of Bowman Chrome this year which is never the case for me. This year's set features the first licensed cards of Dinesh Kumar Patel, one of the two Indian players to be signed by the Pirates. I had been wanting to pick up his cards since I first heard that he and Rinku Singh had been signed by the Pirates earlier this year.

Being Indian myself, and also having the last name Patel, Dinesh was someone I wanted to collect. There have been Indian players in the minors before but they were Indian-American like me and were raised in the States. In fact, one of them was also named Patel (yes, it is a fairly common name). However, there has never been anyone signed directly from India before. It came as a huge surprise to me that the Pirates had two guys from India since only cricket is played in India. No one even follows baseball there.

The other Patel I was referring to earlier is Manny (Manish) Patel who had bounced around in the minors during the 90s. If anyone is willing to break up their 1994 Appleton Foxes sets (featuring Arod), I could use cards of Manny Patel from there as well as other releases. Unlike Dinesh, he was never featured in any major releases.

Dinesh has been doing alright so far and has had 6 innings of work. He is only 20, and I hope he eventually gets to pitch in the majors one day.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/statistics/players/cards/?pl_id=90293

I am looking forward to building a Bowman Chrome rainbow something which I never had the opportunity to do before. As of now, I am open to trading some PC stuff for the rarer cards so please let me know if you have any of his stuff available.

I don't have any cards for you but last offseason I read a great article about the whole tryout process and the winners early impressions of baseball. The thing I recall most was that upon watching their first game (I believe it was a winter league game), they wanted to know what the SS had done wrong to not get his own base. Funny the things that see so common and easy for fan to understand my not be that way to anyone else.

 

[bdmac1]

I think I saw on Beckett.com that someone pulled a red refractor.


Brian

 

[nevermore]

bdmac1 - Brian, thanks for the heads up. I tried searching Beckett best I could but didn't find it. Maybe it was the other guy, Singh? He had a red that recently came up for auction. Do you remember the link?

worldwideed - Haha that's great, I hadn't heard that story before.

rynofan23 - Tai, many of my friends were also surprised when I told them that. It's nice to have a collection of an athlete who you can connect to on a personal level whether it is same college, same nationality, same state, same hometown, etc. This will be my first collection of that sort so it will be nice.

Tim Carrol - Tim, I did see the piece before, in fact that was the first I read about these guys.

 

[Yanks21]

You know my eyes are peeled for ya!

 

[rynofan23]

How are they celebrated in India? Have they piqued the country's interest in baseball at all?

Tai

 

[nevermore]

Yanks21 - Kevin, thanks I always appreciate your help.

rynofan23 - Tai, there has been some coverage of these guys in the Indian media but I don't know how much of a following they actually have. Probably very minimal because they have not really made it big yet to garner a following like Ichiro and Matsui have over in Japan. If they start doing well and if baseball might be televised regularly over in India they might get a decent following.