Outfield communication

Dick Bremer brought it up, when Gomez streaked over and seemed to take
a ball away from Delmon Young. Made me think of the classic baseball
story that I first read in Roger Angells "Five Seasons" which I
recommend to all you younger baseball fans. One of the chapters is
about Angell coming to the Twin Cities to cover the 1965 World
Series. He does a nice job capturing the Twin Cities, The old Met,
and farm animals grazing past the outfield fence.


http://paxarcana.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/how-the-mets-gave-yo-la-teng...heir-na

Here’s the story in a peanut shell:

Kranepool was on the Mets during their inaugural 1962 season, in which
they were one of the worst teams in the history of baseball.
Centerfielder Richie Ashburn (a future Hall of Famer) and shortstop
Elio Chacon had difficulty communicating on several shallow pop-ups
because Chacon spoke almost no English. Another player suggested
Ashburn learn the phrase “Yo la tengo!” which translates to “I got
it!” in Spanish, to avoid collisions. Soon after, a pop-up to shallow
left brought Ashburn screaming in toward the infield, shouting “Yo la
tengo! Yo la tengo!” Chacon backed off, but Ashburn crashed hard into
leftfielder Frank Thomas, who did not speak Spanish and had no idea
what Ashburn was yelling about.

In college we had a Japanese guy who didn’t speak much English,
either. Instead of learning the Japanese for “I got it!” though, we
just let him get everything. Man, that kid worked hard for his roster
spot.