Major League Baseball and the Chicago White Sox moved on Monday to refute criticism from White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen that Asian players receive more support than Latin American ones.
Guillen said on Sunday that Asian players have translators while Spanish speakers are often left to fend for themselves and said there was little warning to Latinos about the risks of performance-enhancing drugs.
“Ozzie certainly has his own experiences as a player, coach and manager, and is entitled to his own opinions, but the Chicago White Sox believe his views are incorrect,” the American League club said in a statement.
“The White Sox do not agree with the assumptions Ozzie made in his comments. Major League Baseball and the White Sox provide a number of programs to help our foreign players with acculturation, including English language classes and Spanish language presentations related to the risks of and testing for performance-enhancing drugs ... The team also has Spanish-speaking staff assigned to serve as liaisons for our Latin American players,” the team said.
Translators often accompany Asian players, in part because they are in many cases the lone players on their team from their homeland, while Hispanic heritage players comprise nearly one-third of Major League Baseball players.
Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations, told ESPN on Monday that while there is a different approach to players from Asia and Latin America, it does not favor one group over another.
“You need to think about the bigger picture,” Manfred said. “Obviously, we have a much smaller number of players from countries like Japan and Korea. As a result of that, most of the arrangements made are player specific.”
“In contrast, because we have hundreds of players from Latin America, our approach is more programmatic,” he said.
Manfred noted that all major league clubs who operate camps in baseball hotbeds Venezuela and Dominican Republic have English classes available.
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