Mariners hope sessions on language, culture help foreign players

PEORIA, Ariz. — A young ballplayer never stops learning.

That's especially true on this night for Mariners catching prospect Israel Nunez and a dozen of his fellow minor-leaguers from Latin America. They've already spent the day blocking balls in the dirt, throwing in the bullpen and trying to hit off-speed pitches.

But now they're on to something really important. Like figuring out what they should never joke about in airports.

"Bombs!" shouts Nunez, a native of Mexico who arrived in the United States last year to play rookie-league ball.

The teacher at the front of their makeshift classroom, felt marker ready at a white board, asks him to spell the word.

"B-O-M-B-S," Nunez says, proudly, enunciating each letter.

"Wow, that was great, Israel!" replies the teacher. "Keep this up and you'll be done needing this class. You're this close!"

The players are all rookie level and Class A Mariners prospects, ages 18 to 22, sent to the evening class to work on their English and learn about life in the United States. Not just as ballplayers who have to understand on-field instruction in another language, but as civilians needing to order food in restaurants, learn local dating etiquette and figure out how not to get arrested when walking through airport security.

So, they come twice a week, to a conference room at their team motel, to meet with Becky Schnakenberg, their teacher and the founder of the Ganadores Garantizados — Spanish for "guaranteed winners" — program. Schnakenberg is the employee-assistance-program counselor for the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals and runs hourlong classes for those teams as well as four other ballclubs, including the Mariners.

"My job for the team is to prepare baseball players to assimilate well into the culture and speak English and be good citizens," says Schnakenberg, who has never allowed the media inside one of her classes before. "But on a more personal note, I hope ... they've taken something with them and can use it the rest of their lives."

Schnakenberg, a licensed counselor with a master's degree, began her business in 1997, shortly after the Angels asked her to help one of their Spanish-speaking players. She later became the team's liaison to Latin American players and figured there was a bigger market for that type of service.

On this night, she merely wants the Mariners prospects, often from impoverished backgrounds with no formal education, to know how to board the right planes and get out of airports without losing their bags. It's serious business, because they'll spend a large part of their pro baseball life flying. The list of things not to joke about at airports soon echoes throughout the classroom.

"Guns!" one voice calls out.

"Drugs!" shouts another.

"Terrorismo!" adds a third.

Schnakenberg quickly instructs the latter player to say the word in English. Although fluent in Spanish, she addresses the students only in English and insists they do the same.

The player seems stymied until a teammate whispers some help. "Ter-ro-rism" the player finally says slowly.

Schnakenberg seems pleased. "I think we should make that our new word for the day," she tells the students, in reference to a regular homework assignment in which such words must be incorporated into a complete sentence by the following class. Schnakenberg later begins an exercise in which she says an airport word in English and asks players to translate it into Spanish. She walks to the far end of the room, where 18-year-old Class A shortstop Carlos Triunfel, a prized Dominican prospect who signed for a $1.3 million bonus in 2006, is seated.

"Triunfel, how do you say 'gate'?" Schnakenberg asks.

Triunfel is the youngest in the room and he hesitates, somewhat shyly, before offering up: "Puerta."

The class bursts into loud, sustained applause.

Noise from that answer had barely subsided when Schnakenberg asked how a player should seek help finding his gate.

"What happens if you can't find your gate, you don't know where to go?" Schnakenberg asks. "What's the phrase you would say?"

"Do you speak Spanish?" a player deadpans.

That one brings the house down.

But the classes, while somewhat loose and informal, are serious business. Teams have invested thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars in players and don't need them running afoul of the law, becoming homesick or falling behind in their on-field instructions because of an inability to communicate.

Schnakenberg insists that a player who doesn't assimilate quickly will find himself lost on the field. Her students who achieved big-league success, including stars like Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez, did so only after learning to understand English and American culture.

"If they don't do it, they'll never make the big leagues," she says. "The coaches aren't going to wait for them to learn English. They aren't going to keep a translator around for every time they have to tell them something."

The class with Triunfel and Nunez is more advanced, filled with players who took the entry level course with Schnakenberg a year ago. While some still speak only fragments of English sentences, they understand enough of what is being said to perform at their baseball jobs.

Many of the players arrived in class with newly made rings, given to them that day, from their rookie-league championship season with the Peoria Mariners last summer.

They know that Schnakenberg has a ring of her own: a 2002 World Series bauble the Angels provided for her work with Rodriguez and other players. And they also know that cutting class on Schnakenberg is a no-no.

That was drilled into them the previous year by Andy Bottin, their hitting instructor at Peoria last season and now that team's manager. The Vietnam veteran and former New York Yankees minor leaguer spent 20 years as a Seattle police officer and knows about tracking down wayward players.

Schnakenberg's previous class on this night was for beginner students, players destined for Bottin's squad this year and experiencing their first weeks, even days, in the United States.

Midway through that class, Bottin arrives with a list of names he checks with Schnakenberg. Two players who are supposed to be in class haven't shown up.

Their punishment will be the "breakfast club" — a 6 a.m. wake-up call to go running with Bottin.

"After that, if they keep skipping class, they go see my boss [in the front office]," Bottin says. "And after that, if they still do it, we send them home. We don't fool around, and they usually never let it get to that point."

Bottin has coached 15 years in the Mariners system and Schnakenberg credits him for getting players to class on time. He says he has noticed a dramatic change in player behavior and a reduction in problematic off-field incidents in the seven years since the Mariners began sending their recruits to Schnakenberg.

The entry-level players are far less advanced in their classroom activities. They hear a song about the days of the week and how to say them in English. "What day of the week do you go to the disco?" Schnakenberg asks, after several rounds.

"Saturday!" a few respond, uncertainly.

"And what other day?" she asks.

"Friday!" the same few voices say, while others hold off.

Schnakenberg later teaches words they'll need on the field.

She explains "high" and "low" and "inside" and "outside," and then scrunches some paper into a ball. Crouching into a hitter's stance, pretending to wield an invisible bat, she asks one player to stand up and "pitch the ball" while another is to go behind her and catch it.

"Where did that one go?" she asks, as the pitched paper ball sails past her at eye level.

"High!" the class responds.

Another pitch comes in.

"Low!" they shout.

"I thought that was a strike," she protests.

A couple of the players get the joke.

Later on, they flip through pages in a binder designed by Schnakenberg, learning phrases like "Hurry up!" and "Back up the bases!" She uses hand gestures and draws diagrams on the white board to emphasize meaning.

"These are all phrases you're going to hear on the field," she tells the students. "Coaches are going to say them or you're going to hear a player saying them."

Toward the back of the binder are pages reserved for twice-monthly culture classes that all players in the program attend together. Players are schooled on everything from restaurant dining to professional conduct, to tax and drinking laws.

A section of the binder titled Sex Education and Dating Quiz asks players to jot down answers to questions like, "What does the word 'rape' mean?" and "How can you show a girl that you are a gentleman?" and "How old does an American girl need to be if you are going to start a romantic/sexual relationship with her?"

The players seated in front of Schnakenberg look and act like they are still boys, but they are about to enter a very adult world.

"Teacher!" says Michael Pineda, 19, a Dominican pitcher, raising his hand. "Can I have please, combo number two, no onions?"

"Wow! That was perfect," Schnakenberg tells Pineda. " 'No onions' was your word of the day last week, wasn't it?"

Small progress, to be sure. But in the team's view, it's one way of keeping today's onions from becoming tomorrow's tears.

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com