(Photo-PAUL RUHTER/Gazette Staff)They call Oliver Santos “The Captain” for a number of reasons.
On the field, the Billings Mustangs’ third baseman is steady at the plate and has consistently played solid defense all year.
Santos has also been one of their sturdiest and most headstrong players. That was proven when he played in 30 consecutive games earlier in the year, a rarity at the rookie level.
But off the field, the 23-year-old Santos might be the team’s most important guy. He’s what manager Delino DeShields calls the Mustangs’ rock.
“He’s played very good baseball for us,” DeShields said. “He’s very solid. But his help with communicating with the Latin kids and being a role model and a good example for those guys has been the biggest thing for me by far.”
But off the field, the 23-year-old Santos might be the team’s most important guy. He’s what manager Delino DeShields calls the Mustangs’ rock.
“He’s played very good baseball for us,” DeShields said. “He’s very solid. But his help with communicating with the Latin kids and being a role model and a good example for those guys has been the biggest thing for me by far.”
Santos is an ambassador within the confines of the Mustangs’ clubhouse at Dehler Park. A Dominican, Santos is the only bilingual player on the roster and continually serves as a translator between the handful of Spanish-speaking players and their English-speaking teammates and coaches.
It’s not part of Santos’ job description, but it comes with the territory. And it never changes out in the real world, either.
“They’ve always got questions,” Santos said of his foreign teammates. “They want to know a lot. If they want to go to the mall and buy some stuff, or say they want to go and try to talk to some girl, stuff like that, in real life it’s not easy because they don’t have any English. So they call me.
“At first it was kind of aggravating. But what they’re asking me is to help them make themselves better. I think I’m kind of blessed to be able to speak English and Spanish at the same time. For me it’s not a problem to help them. Because I’ve been there and I know how it feels.”
Santos came to the United States in 2007 before playing at a junior college in Salkehatchie, S.C., and gaining wood-bat experience in the Coastal Plains League. He was selected in the 35th round of the 2009 draft by the Cincinnati Reds.
He spent last season with the Gulf Coast Reds, where he hit .214 in 24 games before his assignment to Billings for the 2010 campaign. Santos is currently hitting .283 through 39 games. His 22 RBIs are second-most on the club.
Defensively, Santos has made just four errors in 97 chances at third, a league-best fielding percentage of .959 among qualifying third-sackers.
“The thing with Ollie is that day in and day out he’s always a solid defensive player,” Mustangs shortstop Devin Lohman said. “I went through a little rough patch defensively and he really helped me through that. Anytime there’s a ball hit to him, he’ll catch it. No one bunts on him because he’ll bare hand the ball and throw them out. He’s just a smart player.”
When he relocated north, Santos was eager to get acclimated with American culture a few years ago, which meant putting himself through the arduous task of learning a second language.
Santos started to speak English three years ago. He took classes and saw a tutor. He taped each session on a recorder and used it to train himself.
“At first it was crazy,” Santos said. “A lot of times I’d sit down and wonder if it would ever get easier or if it would be that hard all the time. But you get kind of used to it. I had to listen. As a human being you have to adapt. And I got some English in about a year and I didn’t feel embarrassed to talk. Being around a lot of guys and socializing, it made me get better. But it’s been pretty hard.”
Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen ruffled a few feathers recently when he made controversial comments regarding the treatment of Latin American players in professional baseball.
Guillen said last week that players of Asian descent are given privileges in the United States that Latinos don’t get. For instance, Guillen, who is from Venezuela, said he believes it’s unfair that Japanese players are assigned translators when they come to the U.S. to play, but Latinos are not.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with Guillen’s point of view — which stems from his son’s current experience in the minor leagues — it raised awareness of the issue at all levels of baseball.
DeShields, for one, disagrees wholeheartedly with Guillen. Santos, though, sides with the White Sox skipper.
“I’m with him, but not in a selfish way,” said Santos, whose English bristles with a deep Spanish accent. “His point is, why does one Asian guy have a translator but 17 Latinos — whether they’re Dominican or Venezuelan or whatever — don’t have one? I think the quantity of guys makes it different. Who needs more help: the one guy or the 17? I think I’d go with the one.
“But what they think sometimes is that because you have a guy from Venezuela and a guy from Puerto Rico and a guy from the Dominican that they’re going to get along because they speak the same language. But they’re from three different universes. If you take one American guy and an Australian guy and an English guy and you send them to Germany to play soccer, you think it’s going to be good because they all speak English. But everything changes, even family-wise. Everything is different.
“What they’re doing is giving the one Asian player a translator, but what about those 17 Latino guys you have? It’s not fair for them.”
For now, Santos is the Mustangs’ unofficial interpreter for guys like the Venezuela-born Yorman Rodriguez, as well as Dominican players like Jefry Sierra, Cristobal Rodriguez and Juan Duran, who all range in age from 17 to 20.
What will the future bring to Santos? Short of scoring a job at the United Nations, he plans on working hard to achieve his goal of playing in Cincinnati one day.
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