GOOD FASTBALL, GOOD SLIDER, HIS GOOGLY IS HIS OUT PITCH...:

Yeah, but can Brian Wilson play cricket? (Andrew Baggarly, July 30th, 2008, Extra Baggs)

Remember the spring training story about Brian Wilson going to India over the winter to teach a clinic on pitching? It was part of a contest to find a “million dollar arm” amid a country with more than a billion people.

Well, the top two finishers – Rinku Singh and Dinesh Kumar Patel — were at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday. They’re both teenagers from the Mumbai area. They’ve been in the U.S. for about 10 weeks and received instruction from former major leaguer Tom House. Singh won the first place prize of $100,000 but wasn’t able to throw three consecutive strikes at more than 95 mph to claim the $1 million grand jackpot. We’ll see if either pitcher progresses enough to earn a pro contract when their year of instruction is up. (Cleveland, perhaps?)

I thought it was interesting that both young men are javelin competitors; so was Felipe Alou, who was in the Pan Am Games for the Dominican Republic and headed for a career in medicine before he was offered a contract to play baseball.