Baseball, a game that looks like to cricket, comprising of batsmen, fielders, wicket-keeper, bowlers(pitchers), but despite being similar to cricket, hardly a few of us know about this world popular game! Here in India, we don’t talk much about it, we do not play it neither we have any dedicated academy or infra for it but we do have players who are representing teams outside India. Sounds strange? Rinku Singh is a big name in this game and surprisingly he hails from India, like all Indians he too was unaware of this game till 2008. He heard the name of baseball for the first time in early 2008 and appeared in Pittsburgh Pirates by the end of the year. He had no clue that, he was in the middle of a marvelous journey by a sportsman.
Rinku Singh was born on August 8, 1988, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in a poor family, his father was a truck driver living in rural area, Bhadohi. Singh was one of nine siblings who all lived in the family's one-room house. The home had electricity but relied on well water. Singh threw the javelin and played cricket as a child. He was a junior national javelin medalist. In early 2008, Singh entered an Indian reality television show, The Million Dollar Arm. The contest was created by American sports agent J. B. Bernstein and his partners Ash Vasudevan and Will Changto find the individual in the country who could throw the fastest and most accurate baseball. Having never heard of baseball before, Singh won the contest out of over 37,000 participants after throwing 87 miles per hour. The grand prize for the contest was $100,000. After winning the contest, Singh and runner-up Dinesh Patel traveled to Los Angeles where they trained with University of Southern California pitching coach Tom House, who trained pitchers such as Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. Singh said that most of his family did not agree with his decision to go to the United States. On their first day in the United States, the two attended their first baseball game at Southern California. They continued to learn the game from House and Bernstein, as well as learning English. He signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates and dutifully worked his way through the minors while embracing numerous American traditions.
Patel and Singh's story is the basis for the Walt Disney Pictures sports film, Million Dollar Arm, where Singh was portrayed by Suraj Sharma. In 2009, Columbia Pictures purchased the screen rights to the story of Singh and Patel. The project stalled and eventually producers Joe Roth and Mark Ciardi set the film up at Walt Disney Pictures. Upon acquiring Million Dollar Arm, Disney hired Tom McCarthy to write the film. Jon Hamm played J.B. Bernstein. His story has truly been an inspiration to the young crowd of India, how a man can change his fate could clearly be seen in him. He started as a poor child; living in the heart of millions of people all across the world and that defines his fate!
Our country is homing to young people and if heroes like him will emerge from every nook and corner of the country, then putting India on the world map of sports would be the easiest task to be done.
Chase Your Sport!
