Remy view lost in time
Comments out of date, not hate
NEW YORK — Times being what they are, everything gets politicized. What you say is either very far to the right or very far to the left, with no room for an in-between discussion that fleshes out both sides of the issue. But let’s try. Let’s talk about Jerry Remy, the longtime Red Sox analyst NESN who made some ill-advised comments during Tuesday night’s Sox-Yankees game after a translator appeared on the mound for a meeting between Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka and the team’s pitching coach, Larry Rothschild.
I’ll save you the blow-byblow account, other than to note that Remy said, “I don’t think that should be legal,” and that pitchers who don’t speak English should “learn baseball language. You know, learn. You know, it’s pretty simple. You break it down pretty easy between pitching coach and pitcher after a long period of time.”
What Remy said was colossally dumb. There’s no getting around that. Both the Red Sox and NESN issued statements yesterday decrying the comments, and Remy took to Twitter in an attempt to clear the air: “I sincerely apologize to those who were offended by my comments during the telecast (Tuesday) night.”
Before NESN’s telecast of last night’s Sox-Yankees game from Yankee Stadium, Remy continued his act of contrition, telling NESN viewers, “I made some comments that offended a number of people in our audience,” Remy said. “I’d like to apologize to my colleagues at NESN, to the Boston Red Sox, but most importantly to the fans who were offended by my comments. I sincerely hope you accept my apology. Thank you very much.”
Allow me to repeat: Remy was in the wrong here. He is a baseball lifer who played 10 years in the big leagues and has been in the NESN booth for more than 30 years, and he should know that the game’s international flavor is such that translators can make life a lot easier for players and coaching staffs. It was bad enough back in the day when Spanish-speaking players had to learn English on the fly, beginning in the low minors, and without translators it would be even worse for today’s Japanese, Cuban and South Korean players who are going directly to the big leagues.
Translators have been allowed to take part in mound discussions since 2013. As Sox manager John Farrell said yesterday, “Having been in that position and dealt with players (where) I only knew certain words, I think an interpreter is needed.”
Using former Red Sox pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima as examples, Farrell, a former Sox pitching coach, said, “I would have liked to have an interpreter go to the mound pre2013. We were able to have the interpreter in the bullpen sessions. So while trying to learn Japanese, which is a pretty tall challenge, you can learn certain words, or I found to learn single words like objects or numbers, but when you start talking concepts, let’s face it, communications with players is priority No. 1. So to be clear, the interpreter’s needed.” Remy missed that. But here we arrive at that place where those on the other side of the issue need to be grownups. I don’t believe Remy intended anything racist or anti-immigration. I don’t believe he’s still fighting World War II. I don’t believe he has a secret desire for all these danged foreigners to go just home. What I believe is that because Remy is a baseball lifer, he sees everything as a between-the-white-lines issue. Oh, he’ll fill in the lulls during a telecast by opining on soap operas, traffic and the infamous pizza-throwing incident of 2007, but I’ve never heard him get in a twist over left-vs.right unless it had something to do with, say, Travis Shaw facing a southpaw.
Remy’s crime Tuesday night was seeing the game through the lens of the 1970s and early’80s, when he was a dashing young player who could steal bases, provide deft defense and distinguished himself as one of the best bunters of his time.
But in his time there were no translators, not in the clubhouse and certainly not on the field. Even now, it boggles the mind to consider that a future Hall of Famer named Pedro Martinez spoke next to no English when, as an 18-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, he was sent by the Los Angeles Dodgers to Great Falls, Mont., to begin his professional career.
And now we have players from Cuba, from South Korea, from Japan, going directly to the big leagues.
If you want to say, “Tell ’em to learn English if they want to play in the USA,” yeah, you go right ahead and do that.
But I don’t believe Remy was saying that. He was just talking baseball. Unfortunately, he was talking 1970s baseball.