[Wang] Wang strikes out in Chinatown

[xiemark (aisinjuro)]

Wang strikes out in Chinatown, where baseball is just ‘too
slow’

By Lucas Mann

When Chien-Ming Wang takes the mound at Yankee Stadium, he
shoulders more of a burden than just being one of the few
bright spots on a disappointing team. Wang is just the third
Major League Baseball player from Taiwan, and the fourth
from China over all. (The only MLB player born in mainland
China, Harry Kingman was the son of Western missionaries;
his career lasted a total of four games with the 1914
Yankees.)

In short, Wang — who was last year’s runner-up for the
American League Cy Young Award — is the first real baseball
superstar in America of Chinese descent. Halfway around the
world, kids are beginning to learn about this promising
young pitcher with a devastating sinking fastball.

But what about the fans in Wang’s new home? For years,
Manny Ramirez has been an icon to every young
Dominican-American baseball player in Washington Heights.
Could Wang climb up on a similar pedestal for kids in
Manhattan’s Chinatown?

“I don’t know what it is,” said David McWater, who
founded and runs the Lower East Side Gauchos, a youth
baseball organization. “I have never had a single Asian kid
try out for any of my teams.” Indeed, Chinatown, unlike
almost all of the neighborhoods surrounding it — from
Tribeca, to Greenwich Village, to the Lower East Side and
East Village — is without a Little League, despite its
large youth population. “One of the things I’ve always
wanted to do is establish a Little League [in Chinatown],”
McWater said. “I mean, that’s like 40,000 kids right
there, if there’s any interest. There should be one there
already.”

To look at Chinatown, however, it is easy to see one glaring
problem when it comes to playing baseball.

“A lot of kids born in Chinatown grow up interested in
baseball and they love Wang, but we have no park space, so
it’s hard to maintain an interest,” said Jonathan Choy,
president of the United East Athletic Association in
Chinatown and owner of a sporting goods store in the
neighborhood. “The two main parks, Columbus Park and Sarah
Delano Roosevelt Park, don’t have the space for a baseball
field. Basketball and soccer are much cheaper and easier.
The main baseball field is at Murry Bergtraum High School,
which you need a permit for and it’s always booked by
baseball and softball teams from out of the neighborhood; so
Chinatown kids can’t use the fields they have.”

It is, of course, a slow process to build interest in a new
activity among a community not rooted in that tradition at
all. Basketball, soccer and badminton are all followed with
intensity in China, with global competitions being routinely
televised.

“And those are all similar in that they’re fast sports,”
Choy pointed out. “I think for a lot of immigrants who don
’t know baseball, the slowness doesn’t make sense.” Still
Choy said that a gradually growing interest is already
apparent. For kids born in Chinatown, they’re now growing
up watching Wang and the Yankees and that exposure has had
some effect.

“We have had more [Chinese-American] boys come out for the
team than ever before,” said John Carlesi, head coach of
Stuyvesant High School’s baseball team. “Stuyvesant has
always had a high Chinese population, but not on the team,
but that’s changing slowly. I haven’t heard anyone
directly mention Wang, but I would think that his presence
has something to do with it,” Carlesi said. “I mean, most
of the Chinese kids who come out are pitchers.”

Coach Rafael Lajara, at Bronx High School of Science,
another school with a high Chinese-American student
population, has noticed a similar trend.

“I honestly don’t know if they’re Chinese or Korean or
what, but we do have a lot more Asian students trying out,”
Lajara said. “I have five Asian players on my team right
now, and in the past, a few years ago, it was one or two.”

If baseball is catching on with young Chinese-Americans, it
’s clearly at a slow pace. Yet, more and more exposure of
Wang’s success, along with Major League Baseball’s plan to
start a training academy in China, should change the outlook
on baseball in Chinese communities. Right now, however, the
game and Wang need all the hype they can get.

“Wang has nowhere near the impact of a Yao Ming,” Choy
said, referring to the Houston Rockets basketball star.
“Immigrants don’t come to the U.S. from China with a
built-in interest in baseball. People come knowing who Yao
Ming is because basketball is popular and always broadcast
in China.”


Fast sports rule

A growing interest in a sport also is dependent on having
adequate facilities to nurture talent. There are now two
YMCA branches serving Chinatown — the new Y on E. Houston
St. and one on Hester St. — with plenty of basketball
courts where kids can freely emulate Yao. Val Duval, who
works at the sports camp the YMCA offers, says that baseball
is just not a presence.

“They love to play sports, and basketball and handball are
definitely the favorites,” he noted. “The kids don’t seem
to like baseball too much.”

Marshal Coleman, who runs the Majors Division of the
Downtown Little League, one of the youth baseball leagues
closest geographically to Chinatown, said, “I think
Chinese-American kids always enjoyed participating in
baseball. I myself have coached several Chinese-American
kids in eight years.” However, “several” kids over the
better part of a decade still reflects just how slow a
process the assimilation of baseball into the New York
Chinese community is.

At Columbus Park, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, kids who
had just gotten out of school were getting ready to play
pickup games. The park features a playground for smaller
children, two full-court basketball courts and two
half-court ones and a mini-soccer field squeezed into a
patch of artificial grass at the back. Each space was
filling up in a hurry. Three boys had beaten the rush and
were shooting around on one of the half-court hoops. Holding
a basketball in his hand, 11-year-old Aaron said he guessed
baseball was O.K.

“I like basketball, though,” he said eagerly. When asked
if he’d ever play in a baseball Little League he said,
“No, definitely never.” He said he has one friend who
follows the Yankees, and he’s heard of Chien-Ming Wang. But
baseball does not particularly interest him or his friends,
who — upon overhearing the conversation about baseball —
became bored and returned to their game.

All over Chinatown, people were out and the courts were
filled.

In S.D.R. Park, on the south side of Grand St., between
Forsyth and Chrystie Sts., there are four basketball courts
and two handball courts. Each had a game going on, with kids
waiting on the sides to play next. On the north side of
Grand, there’s a small soccer field, where a pickup game
had formed. The one baseball field in the area, Murry
Bergtraum’s new complex, along the F.D.R. Drive by the
Manhattan Bridge, was empty. Its base paths were pristine,
its fancy new scoreboard shut off. Down the block, at the
intersection of Monroe and Market Sts., a small public
softball field — with no bases and patchy outfield grass —
was also conspicuously empty.

Meanwhile, the handball courts behind the field were seeing
plenty of action. Two young boys, one named Jin, the other
James (although he made a point of claiming that “James”
was a fake name) waited their turn on the court. James wore
a clean new Yankees cap.

“Oh, this,” he said, pointing to his hat. “It’s just for
style. And, I mean, I’m a New Yorker.” James claimed to
completely dislike baseball. Jin was less harsh, but
acknowledged that he couldn’t really get into it.

“People I know don’t mind [baseball],” Jin said, “but
the most popular sports are probably basketball and
handball.” The disconnect that Choy spoke of was readily
apparent in the way the pair described baseball.

“Too slow, not enough scoring, takes too long, boring,”
James said, with finality. His friends, including another
four kids standing around the court, nodded in agreement.

But what about Wang? Both boys knew who he was and said they
thought most of their peers did, as well. But asked if they
cared how well Wang did, they laughed.

“Sorry,” Jin said, “it’s just not that interesting.
People talk about him, but not like the way they talk about
Yao — and Yao’s not even that good anymore. He’s got no
hops.”

One boy on the handball court wanted to know if Wang was
really Chinese. He had figured that the pitcher, like Hideki
Matsui, an outfielder for the Yankees, was Japanese.

None of the kids at the court ever had played baseball on a
team.


Wang makes Time 100 list

All of this is striking, considering that Wang was just
named to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential
people of 2007, for the potential effect his success could
have on the global landscape of baseball. While Wang may
indeed change the way future generations of
Chinese-Americans, especially those in the Yankees’ home
city, look at baseball, one gets the sense it will be a long
process.

Of course, the tastes of an entire immigrant group cannot be
lumped together. Yuri Akiyama, who teaches English as a
Second Language at Murry Bergtraum High School, pointed out,
“Most of my immigrant students are from Downtown Manhattan,
which means they are originally from Canton or Fuzhou, where
they do not know anything about baseball. Immigrants from
Taiwan are more concentrated in Flushing, Queens, and I’m
sure you would get completely different opinions from them.
”

Indeed, her Chinese immigrant students all gave blank
expressions when asked about Wang. Asked if they felt pride
about having a Taiwanese baseball star gaining success in
America, one said, “We really don’t care at all.” These
high schoolers, all originally from Canton or Macau, in
southern China, liked sports and said they regularly played
basketball and ping-pong after school. They followed the
National Basketball Association and liked watching soccer
and badminton, as well. But, they couldn’t see baseball
ever catching on in their neighborhood. As one junior said,
“We just don’t really get it.”

Back at the playground at Monroe and Market Sts., James and
Jin got ready to take their turn on the handball court. As
he walked to the game, Yankee cap still on his head, James
was asked for his last name. He stopped and smiled.

“Actually,” he said, “it’s Wang.”

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推 ceendy:這個記者第一段就在搞統戰喔 @_@
推 jieping:統媒不可信 另外華人=Chinese
推 aromatics:the fourth from China over all.這三小?
推 leddy:還好啦, 後面有指出原因台灣來的移民不住在chinatown
推 Annrod:請問這篇文章的出處是？
推 Annrod:找到了，難怪覺得有幾段內容滿眼熟的
推 decorum:老美一般都分不清楚日韓華人，一概以Asian稱之，何況兩岸?
推 Romulus:等等 第一個中國球員打球的年代中共還沒誕生咧 XDDDD
推 parabird:請問一下出處?
推 Annrod:http://www.thevillager.com/villager_214/wangstrikesout
→ Annrod:rikesoutin.html    抱歉不會縮..冏"
→ Annrod:老美分不清楚，所以我們就更應該要跟他們解釋清楚吧
推 parabird:幫縮   http://0rz.tw/792L0
推 Annrod:感謝樓上QQ