Manoo Satyavrat<\/a> came in third place for rookie of the year in the 3L. He is the first Indian-born player to play in any league of the USBA. The following is the first hand account of GM Kyle Norton\u2019s pursuit of the \u201cBahmani Bomber\u201d and his subsequent development.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I stepped off the plane in New Delhi the first thing I noticed was the heat. The sun was beaming down on me. I paused for a moment to put on my sunglasses. As I approached the car, my driver smiled and said, \u201cWelcome to India, Mr. Norton.\u201d<\/p>\n I soon found myself out of my depth. This was my first ever visit to India. I had been in Asia before to see prospects, but mostly I found myself in eastern Asia. Korea, Japan, Taiwan and even China are places I have become very familiar with in my time working in baseball. But this was something different all together. The city was crowded and dense just like the cities of East Asia, but the sights, smells, and sounds were very different. The first time I saw an elephant in the street I was so surprised I jumped out of my seat. I wasn\u2019t here to take in culture however. I was here to see a 16-year-old two-sport phenom swing a bat.<\/p>\n I drove out to Prelad pur Bangar, a province north of Delhi. I was hesitant at first, we get leads that turn out to be nothing all the time, but my head scout told me I needed to be out here in person. How we found Manoo is a funny story. One of my area guys got a random tip off about some 15 year old cricket star who might play some baseball on the side. I was so skeptical, and I thought I was wasting money sending scout after scout out there, but guys kept gushing about this kid. My head scout came back and told me, do whatever it takes. I knew what he meant, but I wasn\u2019t going to drop 10+ million on someone I had never seen from a country that doesn\u2019t produce major league talent. So that\u2019s how I found myself sweating my ass off in a field in India.<\/p>\n There were some other scouts there; word gets around in this business. First we watched him run through some standard drills, and he was crazy quick. Athletic build and very fast, we have worked with prospects like that before. Sometimes you can teach a guy to play baseball, sometimes you can\u2019t. It\u2019s a mixed bag. Then I saw him hit. That\u2019s when it clicked. His fundamentals weren\u2019t bad. He could actually swing a bat, and when he connected he was going long every time.<\/p>\n Over the next week he did multiple work outs for us and impressed us every time. He was so versatile. Showed promise in every facet of the game. He impressed in interviews too. Humble and sharp as a tack. I was sold. Our biggest challenge would be convincing him to move halfway around the world and play a sport he had done as a hobby previously. He had interest from other baseball clubs for sure, but he was also getting offers from every cricket team in the Indian premier league.<\/p>\n Our offer had to beat all of these contenders. So yes there was a lot of money involved. But I think what really sold him on us was our level of commitment. We promised to make him a priority in our organization. We let him stay in India for 3 more years, and sent him a dedicated tutor to manage his development. He was a hard worker and always wanted to learn more. We moved him to Delaware at age 19 and that was a huge shock. I took him out to dinner one night and accidentally took him to a steak house. Totally slipped my mind that he didn\u2019t eat beef. The biggest change was the cold though. He hated it. When you\u2019re from India, Delaware in the winter seems like Antarctica. He still hates the snow, but at least now he\u2019s more used to it. Luckily we only play in the summer.<\/p>\n He adjusted to the minors way faster than he adjusted to America. Crushed single and double A<\/a>. My manager in Atlantic City said he should be playing in the majors. He was bored destroying opponents weekly. So we made the decision to let him come to spring training just to see what he could do. Again he was incredible. We couldn\u2019t waste a year with him in Scranton. We had to give him a roster spot. What we didn\u2019t expect was that he would have the highest WAR of any batter on the team.<\/p>\n You find talent in the weirdest places. Sometimes it\u2019s on the best college team in America and sometimes it\u2019s in a village in one of the hottest places I\u2019ve ever been. Manoo is set up for an incredible career and I couldn\u2019t be happier my scout dragged me out there 6 years ago. His English is progressing slower than his bat, but if he puts the same amount of devotion into that as he did to learning to hit and field, I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll be getting an award for public speaking or writing a book in the next few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Manoo Satyavrat came in third place for rookie of the year in the 3L. He is the first Indian-born player to play in any league of the USBA. The following is the first hand account of GM Kyle Norton\u2019s pursuit of the \u201cBahmani Bomber\u201d and his subsequent development. When I stepped off the plane\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usba14.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}