It reads like an impossible Bollywood fantasy: a teenager who speaks no English and four years ago worked at construction sites to fund a javelin-throwing career is now worth crores of rupees in flood-lit US baseball arenas.

Except, it’s true.

Four years ago, Dinesh Patel, then 15, worked for 25 days at sites near his dusty village of Khanpur on the outskirts of the holy city of Varanasi to collect Rs. 3,500 as admission fees to the Guru Gobind Singh Sports College in Lucknow.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/UttarPradesh/From-UP-villages-to-US-baseball-fields/Article1-354347.aspx

The Pittsburgh Pirates, whose 16th straight losing season in 2008 tied the major league record for persistent irrelevance, are not used to making news on at least three continents. Especially in November by signing two pitchers who even management knows will almost certainly never wear Pittsburgh uniforms.

The Pirates continue to travel the globe in hopes of finding players who will play at PNC Park.
Yesterday, they announced the signings of two pitchers from India.
“We’re trying to be creative internationally,” general manager Neal Huntington said.

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates hope Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel really do have million-dollar arms.
The two 20-year-old pitchers, neither of whom had picked up a baseball until earlier this year, signed free-agent contracts Monday with the Pirates. They are believed to be the first athletes from India to sign professional baseball contracts outside their country.

Singh and Patel came to the United States six months ago after being the top finishers in an Indian reality TV show called the “Million Dollar Arm” that drew about 30,000 contestants. The show sought to find athletes who could throw strikes at 85 miles per hour or faster.

On Monday, Nov. 24, 2008, the Pittsburgh Pirates made their best baseball decision since plucking Roberto Clemente from the Brooklyn Dodgers in the Rule Five Draft in 1954.

And it might turn out to be even better than that.

TEMPE, Ariz. — What took place Thursday morning on a makeshift mound next to a parking lot not too far from the Arizona State University campus shouldn’t be considered a seismic event as far as Major League Baseball is concerned. That a pair of teenagers threw off that mound didn’t even rate a tremor on the scale, despite the fact that there were representatives of nearly each of the clubs present.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Squinting into the desert sun, the scouts huddled behind a screen, their radar guns cocked.

The catcher went into his crouch as the lanky lefty pawed at the mound, then rocked and fired. The only sounds were a grunt and the pop of the ball in the mitt.

LOS ANGELES — They have never heard of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron or Jackie Robinson.
They can tell you about Sachin Tendulkar, one of India’s greatest cricket players, but would tell you Michael Jordan is a clothes designer, not a former basketball playe