51s’ Roger Bernadina likes idea of reinstating Olympic baseball
It was lunchtime at the Triple 7 microbrewery at Main Street station Thursday, and 51s manager Wally Backman was talking about Roger Bernadina being a smart ballplayer.
Backman said Rogearvin Argelo Bernadina — he mostly refers to his veteran outfielder as Roger — speaks four languages fluently while he, Backman, has difficulty speaking one language fluently.
A couple of hours later, the 51s’ Rajah was asked how does one say “Play Ball” in his native language of Papiamentu — it was a day after it had been announced that baseball would be reinstated to the Olympics, beginning in 2020, so it seemed appropriate.
The last time baseball was an Olympic sport, in 2008 in Beijing, Bernadina was 23 and breaking in with the Washington Nationals. In 2020, he will be 35. While he hopes to make it back to The Show, playing in the Olympics definitely would be something that piques his interest.
“Hunga bala!”
“Oh, yeah — definitely,” said Bernadina, who went 3-for-5 with a home run and three RBIs against first-place El Paso on Monday night at Cashman Field. “It’s fun to play tournaments like that — you can see some of the culture. Playing overseas is great. It’s something I’d like to do again.”
The last time he did it was the 2013 World Baseball Classic when he helped lead Netherlands to the final four along with the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Japan. The Dominicans, led by the MVP Robinson Cano, defeated Puerto Rico 3-0 in the championship game.
The reason Bernadina plays for the Dutch is that Curacao, the island in the southern Caribbean Sea where he grew up, is under jurisdiction of the Netherlands.
Netherlands provides defense and foreign policy. Curacao provides good ballplayers — Bernadina, Andruw Jones, Jurickson Profar, Andrelton Simmons, Randall Simon, Hensley Muelens — when the international tournaments roll around. The Curacaoans provide defense, too — Simmons, of the Los Angeles Angels, is considered by many the slickest fielding of all the big league shortstops.
“A few years ago we had the World Baseball Classic in Taiwan,” said Bernadina, who has played for the Nationals, Phillies, Reds and Dodgers. “The fans were really into it, and it was really exciting to experience that (atmosphere).”
“Hunga bala!”
I mentioned what I had read about the early days of Dutch baseball, how it was considered unsportsmanlike to bunt and humiliating to take a walk — and how you were allowed to play baseball in shorts, like the 1976 Chicago White Sox.
By the time Roger Bernadina started playing baseball in the Dutch Antilles, it was no longer a disgrace to accept a walk. He said you still could play in shorts, though mostly only the Little League kids still do it.
YOU COULD LOOK IT UP
To mark the start of football practice at UNLV, here are 11 interesting facts and one about Mike Sanford gleaned from this year’s Rebels media guide:
• Randall Cunningham is the only UNLV football player to have had his jersey number (12) retired.
• The Rebels’ game at Hawaii will be televised by the Oceanic TWC network. (The guide did not say if Oceanic TWC is referred to as ESPN9 — The Nueve.)
• The photo of Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson may need updating. It shows him with rosy cheeks and sans gray hair. It was obviously taken before the Big 12 was considering poaching Boise State and Colorado State, or when Thompson was around 27.
• Future NFL quarterbacks Randall Cunningham, Jim McMahon, Drew Bledsoe, Carson Palmer, Andrew Ware, Alex Smith, Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick and Kellen Moore played at Sam Boyd Stadium, along with soccer legend Pele and Paul McCartney, after Wings broke up.
• The most distinguishing characteristics of Beauregard, UNLV’s first mascot, were a smirk and a wink.
• UNLV has three assistant coaches (Barney Cotton, John Garrison, Tony Samuel) and two graduate assistants (Ben Cotton, Tony Green) who played at Nebraska.
• The Rebels are 5-37 against ranked opponents (0-1 vs. Nebraska) but 3-0 against technical schools — they’ve beaten Cal Tech, Oregon Tech and Tennessee Tech.
• UNLV has never had an NFL first-round draft pick. Glenn Carano (1977), Aaron Mitchell (1979), Randall Cunningham (1985), Ickey Woods (1988), Anton Palepoi (2002) and Eric Wright (2007) were second-round selections. Woods is UNLV’s highest pick — he was selected 31st overall, Cunningham 37th.
• On Sept. 5, 2005, Mike Sanford became the first coach in NCAA history to successfully challenge an official’s call via instant replay.
• On Sept. 11, 1999, UNLV became the first team in NCAA history to win a game on the last play while trailing without the ball. When Baylor tried to run up the score and fumbled, the Rebels’ Kevin Thomas scooped up the ball and returned it the length of the field for the winning touchdown.
• The Rebels have had nine All-Americans. Four were punters (Randall Cunningham, Joe Kristosik, Brad Faunce, Brian Parvin).
• Keenan McCardell was the first former Rebel to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl, and Kenny Mayne was the first former Rebel to participate in ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
GUARDED OPINION
Did you see the story from the first day of UNLV practice, about how it was a priority for second-year coach Tony Sanchez to announce a starting quarterback?
Football coaches like to say how every position is just as important as the next one. But if that were true, why is it you almost never see a story about announcing the offensive guards?
NAME GAME
A few years ago, when he briefly pitched for the 51s, I recall writing about a pitcher named Marc Rzepczynski — top 10 ways to mispronounce his name, or something like that. I figured with a name like his, he wouldn’t be around baseball forever, or that he might become a sports writer.
Lo and behold, when he was summoned to go into the ballgame the other night, Ken Korach of Las Vegas and the other Oakland A’s broadcasters were saying how Rzepczynski was closing in on having pitched in 400 major league games.
Baseballreference.com had him at 398 through Friday. It said you pronounce it zep-CHIN-ski, that his nickname is “Scrabble.”
You could not spell his name with the tiles on your little wooden tile holder, even with the blanks — Scrabble players are allowed to hold only seven tiles. But one can spell 330 words from “RZEPCZYNSKI” using this Scrabble app on the internet.
One can spell 697 words from “YASTRZEMSKI,” whose nickname was not “Scrabble” but “Yaz.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
