Indian teenagers chase American baseball dream

By N.Ananthanarayanan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Two Indian teenagers are chasing an American dream as baseball professionals and their promoters hope they can stir up interest in the game in their cricket-mad homeland.

Rinku Singh, 18, and fellow javelin thrower Dinesh Patel began a year-long training stint in Los Angeles last week after winning an India-wide pitching contest, "The Million-Dollar Arm".

The boys, from poor families, used their natural shoulder strength to take the top two spots from among 8,000 participants.

Another teenager, Manoj Shukla, will receive a month's training after he came third of the 27 finalists.

The winners, who were handed their visas in a ceremony at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, will get an opportunity to be assessed by professional baseball scouts at the end of their one-year stint.

Their U.S-based promoters are hoping the youngsters can make it as professionals, saying such success would boost baseball in India in the same way that Yao Ming's move to the NBA created a fan base for basketball in China.

"Yao Ming has been a huge success in linking China and the USA in basketball and has created over 350 million new fans of the game in China over the past seven years he has played in the U.S," Jeff Bernstein, managing director of 7 Figures Management, a sports marketing and management firm, told Reuters.

"Our hope is that our contestants can duplicate that success in baseball, creating fans in India over time through following these Indian nationals in their baseball career in the USA," he said in an e-mail response to questions.