![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/rinksingh.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sure, it\u2019s a nice story, interesting concept, and a legitimately good, plausible idea.\u00a0 But it would have been an even better one, had the real, actual results amounted to any actual success.<\/span><\/p>\n SPOILER ALERT<\/strong>: the two Indian guys that\u00a0Million Dollar Arm<\/em>\u00a0is about didn\u2019t amount to anything in professional baseball.\u00a0 Neither of them advanced beyond the low minor leagues, and for all intents and purposes are no longer pitching professionally; Dinesh Patel flamed out in 2010, and Rinku Singh may or may not still be pitching, but not for anyone in the United States, and hasn\u2019t since 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, baseball is a beautiful and wonderful game, and it is often hard to not romanticize the analogies and the metaphors that the game provides, which makes it easy for there to be a demand to make movies about the sport.\u00a0 Regardless, that kind of realistic information isn\u2019t going to stop Hollywood, or Disney from making a film to exploit the story of how such results came to fruition, without actually getting to that part.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n After all, one of the guys glorified in\u00a0Moneyball<\/em>, a guy named Jeremy Brown, was given the royal treatment in plot, but nothing is mentioned of his eventual reality, which was floundering in the minor leagues for six years, before calling it quits in 2007; but at least he got to sniff the major leagues for a handful of games, replacing someone who was injured, before getting sent right back as soon as they were activated again.<\/span><\/p>\n The irony is that I would bet money that Million Dollar Arm isn\u2019t going to give enough focus on the two guys playing the discovered Indian pitchers who chased an outlandish dream to America, as much as the cameras are going to be rolling on Mr. McHugeDong himself, Jon Hamm.\u00a0 I like\u00a0Mad Men<\/em>\u00a0and Jon Hamm for the matter, but ultimately the story is not about him, but the idea that a country with a population as high as the country of India\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be able to procure a handful of individuals with the natural athletic prowess to throw a baseball with high velocity and accuracy.\u00a0 I have a jaded suspicion that the film will be produced in a manner that takes a little too much away from the original plot, and finds ways to ensure an inordinate amount of screen time for Hamm and his McHugeDong.<\/span><\/p>\n I have to imagine that they\u2019re really not going to have much choice than to go that route, because of the way the story actually transpires.\u00a0 Jeremy Brown\u2019s role in Moneyball was kind of a melancholy footnote, but definitely not the main plot of the entire movie.\u00a0 That\u2019s not the case with Million Dollar Arm.<\/span><\/p>\n People who sort of know how minor league baseball works, tend to have at least heard about the \u201cA-system,\u201d and how there\u2019s A, AA, and AAA, before making it to the major leagues.\u00a0 In reality, there are typically a total of\u00a0six or seven<\/em>\u00a0levels for most organizations, starting with a coastal league, rookie league, short-season A, Low-A, High-A, AA, and AAA.<\/span><\/p>\n Dinesh Patel spent two years in the Gulf Coast League, which is the lowest rung of the professional baseball.\u00a0 He appeared in a grand total of a whopping 15 games, and his earned run average 5.27, which for all intents and purposes is not good.\u00a0 He was cut and although Wikipedia states he\u2019s trying to teach baseball to youths back in India, it\u2019s safe to say he\u2019s done.<\/span><\/p>\n Rinku Singh fared a little better than Patel did, lasting four seasons in American pros before vanishing.\u00a0 He ascended through the Gulf Coast League, short-season A, and made it all the way to Low-A, where he played parts of two seasons with the West Virginia Power, before his eventual cut.\u00a0 Overall his numbers weren\u2019t terrible; they were vastly better than Patel\u2019s numbers, which makes it obvious to why he lasted two more years, but in the grand spectrum of the game, they weren\u2019t so spectacular, that he had any chance to be a difference maker with the Pirates organization.\u00a0 He struck out three guys for every one he walked, which isn\u2019t bad, and his ERA was 2.99 which also isn\u2019t bad, but \u201cisn\u2019t bad\u201d also isn\u2019t what the major leagues are looking for, because they\u2019re looking for \u201cvery good\u201d and better.\u00a0 Singh was eventually cut, and persevered by going to play professionally in Australia, but there\u2019s no further word on what he\u2019s doing today.<\/span><\/p>\n The point is, the original concept and story was an interesting one, and one definitely worth trying, but it was still ultimately driven by greed.\u00a0 If it were truly about the pursuit of making baseball into an actual global sport, that would be one thing, but the underlying ambition was that there was lots of potential money to be made from the country of India.\u00a0 Sure, Dinesh didn\u2019t look like he was going anywhere, but as far as Patel was actually concerned, I\u2019ve seen many, many worse relief pitchers take the mound than what Patel could have accomplished had he continued to develop and grow.\u00a0 But I think when MLB realized that low-A baseball is kind of hard for people in India to actually watch, considering it\u2019s not televised, and when the investment wasn\u2019t panning out, he got the axe.<\/span><\/p>\n This wouldn\u2019t be the first time in professional sport that a league has exploited a country\u2019s citizen to draw his fellow countrymen into ratings, web hits and potential merchandise, only to cut them in the 11th<\/sup>\u00a0hour, when they\u2019ve felt like they\u2019ve bilked enough without having to actually commit.<\/span><\/p>\n I bet they won\u2019t talk about that reality in Million Dollar Arm, either.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sure, it\u2019s a nice story, interesting concept, and a legitimately good, plausible idea.\u00a0 But it would have been an even better one, had the real, actual results amounted to any actual success. SPOILER ALERT: the two Indian guys that\u00a0Million Dollar Arm\u00a0is about didn\u2019t amount to anything in professional baseball.\u00a0 Neither of them advanced beyond the … Continue reading Disney\u2019s Million Dollar Spoiler Alert<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,41,15],"class_list":["post-39093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-movies","tag-og"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39095,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39093\/revisions\/39095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}