Yankees’ Latino players managing the language barrier

By Roberto Salvador Klapisch

It was at some point in the summer of 2014 when Luis Severino had an epiphany so powerful it would change the course of his baseball career, not to mention his personal life. The Yankees’ right-hander was only 20 at the time, working his way up from the lowest echelons of the club’s minor league system. Like most kids who had been drafted out of the Dominican Republic, he was struggling to learn English.

Severino had spent his first two years in the United States inching along, word by word, acquiring phrases that would at least help him communicate on the mound. Baseball terminology was easy enough: “throw strikes” is, after all, as universal as “I love you.” But he needed more ammunition for the real world of restaurants, hotels, ATM machines and even conversations in the clubhouse. Severino sought to further his education, using television as his teacher.

Friendly Conversation

Many foreign players find some comfort in front of a hi-def screen, where the programming is never judgmental. Whether it’s comedy or news or sports, it doesn’t care about your accent, or measure your progress in the pursuit of fluency. Instead, the TV’s warm glow remains a faithful companion until you’ve reached the other side. In Severino’s case, he had latched onto reruns of “Friends,” vaguely following the plot at first, slowly picking up a sentence here or there until the moment it finally struck him – English was now fully understandable to him.

“After that, I made more and more of an effort to talk to everyone,” the Bombers’ ace said recently. “It was important for me to learn English because it allowed me to communicate with everyone on my team and it also showed the fans that I was trying.”

Severino’s mastery of the language is now complete: he speaks in full sentences and is able to express complex thoughts in post-game interviews. His comprehension level is equally maxed out; there’s no slang or turn of phrase that’s beyond his grasp, putting him well beyond the need for a translator. But Severino’s success isn’t shared by everyone in the clubhouse.

Small Steps

Aroldis Chapman, for example, is still limited to two or three-word answers in English. He doubts he’ll ever achieve Severino’s mastery.

“In Cuba, we learn only the basics (in English), so it’s hard when you come here,” Chapman said in Spanish. “But I’m trying.”

Gary Sánchez is on similar unsure footing. Although he’s comfortable enough to speak English to his American teammates, he’s yet to do so with the press.

“Maybe in a year,” he said. “Or two years. Or three.”

Sánchez laughed but then more seriously said, “I really don’t know” when asked when he’ll finally be confident enough to face the cameras without the Yankees’ interpreter Marlon Abreu.

Translating the Game

A former member of the Yankees’ IT staff, the Dominican-born Abreu became a clubhouse fixture when Major League Baseball mandated each team add an interpreter in 2016. The industry has the Yankees to thank for that: after watching Michael Pineda struggle to explain himself in English after being caught using pine tar on his neck in 2014, Carlos Beltran, a Yankees teammate at the time, went on a crusade to make interpreters mandatory. That became a reality throughout the majors two years later.

Abreu now offers varying levels of assistance to Spanish-speaking players. He does full translations for Chapman, Sánchez and Miguel Andujar, leaves Severino on his own and stands at the ready in case the Venezuelan-born Gleyber Torres needs help with a missing word in English.

Torres, though, seems determined to achieve total independence. On a recent MLB Network interview, Torres wore a headset near the Yankees dugout and spoke to a panel of experts from the network’s headquarters in Secaucus NJ. The rookie star handled every question in English and, although his vocabulary is a work in progress, answered entirely in English, as well.

“That took guts, because it’s not easy when you’re standing there by yourself,” said reliever Dellin Betances, the Washington Heights native of Dominican parents. “It’s not like you’re in the clubhouse with a lot of people around you who can help. (Torres) was by himself so that shows you how confident he is.”

Language Moves

Such self-assurance is one of youth’s dividends. Torres is only 21, only a year older than Severino when he finally had his epiphany. He insisted he wasn’t nervous speaking to a national audience because, “if I was, I wouldn’t have been able to answer the questions.”

But age, nationality and education levels aren’t necessarily predictors of acquired fluency. Abreu likes to say, “learning a language is like dancing.”

In other words, some can, some can’t. It’s that simple. But not everyone is that tolerant.

Mariano Rivera, a Panamanian native who was bilingual by his rookie year in 1995, believed every Latino should be fluent in English upon his arrival in the big leagues. He was critical of Orlando Hernandez, who like Chapman, came to the U.S from Cuba without an extensive background in English or years in the minor leagues like those who come from other Latin American countries.

“If you play here, you have to speak the language that’s spoken here,” Rivera said. “There’s no excuse.”

Of course this is hardly a new campaign: owners and players decided in the 1977 Basic Agreement to offer English-as-second-language courses as long as one player required such assistance. The effort has expanded to the minor league levels, where night classes are offered to newly-drafted prospects who arrive in the U.S. with no command of English. The Yankees have academies in both the Dominican Republic and Tampa, Fla., where not only are language classes taught, but tutorials on cooking and life skills as well.

That’s no small hurdle for non-English speakers. The Puerto Rican-born Beltran recalls his early days in the Royals system, when he knew so little English his trips to fast food restaurants became a game of chance.

“I’d stand in line behind someone and wait for them to order,” he said. “If I liked what they’d chosen, I’d say ‘Same.’ If I didn’t like it, I’d go to the back of the line and stand behind someone else.”

Classes and television programs aside, the best education still comes from the clubhouse with American teammates. Betances, who was born in Washington Heights and is fully bilingual, has seen progress over the years, especially with Torres in 2018, thanks to the patience of those who wear the same uniform.

“It’s not a big deal to make a mistake with your teammate, no one is going to look at you funny,” Betances said. “You can also say, ‘how do you say this or that in English?’ and not be worried how it sounds. It comes slowly. You have to be patient. But the goal for everyone is to someday get there.”

Featured Image: Mike Stobe / Getty Images Sport