Why Can't Guerrero Speak One Word of English?

t3a · Jul 9, 2007

Come on, he has been in the Majors for over 10 years, so at least that long being surrounded by English speaking teammates, being exposed to TV etc in this country and he is unable to even say 'thank you' after winning the HR derby?

He has no problem taking millions of American dollars, how hard is to learn a few phrases to answer an interview? I would bet the vast majority of English speaking Americans could say "gracias" if they were in a Spanish speaking country winning an award of some type

I think I remember Robbie Alomar not being able to speak English, but Sandy Alomar could. I dont get it, is it something to do with playing for teams in Canada at the beginning of your career?

In the immortal words of Chico Escuala:
"baseball been berry berry good to me"

RobFunk · Jul 9, 2007

t3a said:
In the immortal words of Chico Escuala:
"baseball been berry berry good to me"

Didnt Sammy Sosa say this too?

CapNWatch · Jul 9, 2007

I think dsethi is about right on this one. Don't think vlad gives a fuck. Don't give a fuck about batting gloves either.

CAPNCRUNCH · Jul 9, 2007

Because they don't want to make a mistake and sound stupid in front of millions of fans around the world.

BigAFan · Jul 9, 2007

Because Vlad is making the bucks without it.

roach23 · Jul 9, 2007

He's paid to his baseballs, not study english. If i was getting paid to play a sport in Japan I would practice my sport and play...i wouldn't waste my time learning the language, i'd hire a translator when i needed.

GreenDoberman · Jul 9, 2007

He plays in California. Orange County/L.A. specifically. He has no functional use for English there in everyday life. Spanish is the native language.

RobFunk · Jul 9, 2007

The entire MLB would be 80% Cuban, Hispanic and Oriental if it were easier for them to come here.

Be thankful for the words you can understand. lol.

dmmd98 · Jul 9, 2007

He can speak English, broken albeit but he understands it. He speaks spanish because he is media shy so not speaking English publicly helps him avoid most of the media.

Romanowski · Jul 9, 2007

not having to deal with the media is a huge burden lifted from anyones shoulders

id do the same thing

roach23 · Jul 9, 2007

Vlad looks straight grimey

t3a · Jul 9, 2007

roach23 said:
He's paid to his baseballs, not study english. If i was getting paid to play a sport in Japan I would practice my sport and play...i wouldn't waste my time learning the language, i'd hire a translator when i needed.

I'm not saying he should study it to be able to give a speech like President Bush, but just travelling around and playing in this country for 10 years how do you not figure out how to say stuff like "please" or "thank you" or "blow job" . I have heard some of the guys who played in Japan actually do learn some Japanese, I think that is harder since Americans typically dont play there for 10 or more years and of course Japanese is much harder to learn (j/k)

I bet Ichiro can say a few words of English.

fhmesq44 · Jul 9, 2007

He probably doesn't speak it well enough to be comfortable giving an interview. He also played 6 years in Montreal where he was more likely to learn French than English and played with a latin manager and a ton of latin players (look at their rosters). I can probably speak more spanish than he speaks english and there is no f*ing way I would give an interview in spanish.

t3a · Jul 9, 2007

fhmesq44 said:
He probably doesn't speak it well enough to be comfortable giving an interview. He also played 6 years in Montreal where he was more likely to learn French than English and played with a latin manager and a ton of latin players (look at their rosters).

fair enough, I wasnt suggesting he give an interview but how about "thanks" when they hand him the trophy?

The Montreal connection might be right, Robbie Alomar used to live in an apartment at the stadium when he played for Toronto, and I remember seeing him needing an interpretor but his brother Sandy didnt. Maybe that is part of the reason

BigAFan · Jul 9, 2007

Mike Scoscia learned spanish to talk to him.

Doug · Jul 9, 2007

t3a said:
I'm not saying he should study it to be able to give a speech like President Bush, but just travelling around and playing in this country for 10 years how do you not figure out how to say stuff like "please" or "thank you" or "blow job" . I have heard some of the guys who played in Japan actually do learn some Japanese, I think that is harder since Americans typically dont play there for 10 or more years and of course Japanese is much harder to learn (j/k)

I bet Ichiro can say a few words of English.

Bush is the best example you could think of ?

oldirtyku · Jul 9, 2007

maybe he hates white people...

t3a · Jul 10, 2007

Let me try that again one time for Doug -

Because it is vocally oriented, sarcasm can be difficult to grasp in written form and is easily misinterpreted. To prevent this some people emphasize words with italics, bold, capitalization, and/or underlining (e.g. that’s just great); sarcastic comments on the Internet with an emoticon; or surround them with a made-up markup language tag, e.g. *sarcasm*, <sarcasm> or <snicker>.

t3a said:
President Bush
:banger:

MesaChaser · Jul 10, 2007

He could at least learn the Sammy Sosa phrase " I like to hit home runs" and then give a big shitty Sammy grin.

docmercer · Jul 10, 2007

Vlad (grade 2 education) had some very basic English when he was with the Expos. He did an interview with pre-scripted questions with the Mets announcers and struggled badly with one response. The Mets announcers were pretty merciless in mocking his one attempted reply in English - and from my understanding, Vlad pretty much swore off doing any English interviews again.

We met him and his mom and kid at Disneyland 2 years ago and I asked him in English how the Angels were going to do this year and he said "good - if we can stay healthy"

He knows some English - but he has super low self confidence using it and I doubt you'll ever see him speak a word in English on TV again.