Published: July 08, 2009 10:42 pm      

Ricardo seeks fluency on diamond

BLUEFIELD — Learning four languages has turned out to be simpler for Dashenko Ricardo than moving up through the baseball minor leagues.

The Bluefield Orioles’ 160-pound multilingual catcher, who was born on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, is in his third year as a pro — and in a place he didn’t expect to be.

He was assigned Baltimore’s mid-level Class A team in the South Atlantic League, the Delmarva (Md.) Shorebirds, to start 2009. He played six games, going 2-for-16 at bat, before breaking his finger in April.

“I was at first in Maryland, and then I broke my finger,” he said Tuesday. “They sent me back to Florida to do my re-hab and then I came here (to Bluefield) with the team.”

He was upset about the injury because it took him “a couple of weeks out of the game, so I can’t play. I have to sit out. I have to do that until my finger is better. And then to start again, that was, for me, the worst thing.”

He outlined the thinking that put him in Bluefield by saying, “They want me to play my whole season. They don’t want to send me up there (to Delmarva) to just sit. They want me to play my season; they want to evaluate me.”

His work behind the plate has been solid. His batting is still a work in progress.

In 2007, he played for the Dominican Summer League. Last season, he was in the Gulf Coast League with a .169 batting average and 33 strikeouts in 136 at-bats.

Through Tuesday of this week, his batting average in Appalachian League play was .200 (8-for-40) with four runs batted in and five strikeouts.

As for competition in Appy League, he said, “right now the level (of play) is very good. Sometimes it’s a little hard because you have to think before you do something. For me, it’s easy right now.”

He also works easily with his teammates — especially pitchers, which is a must for a catcher.

He said, “All the pitchers, I catch them in extended (spring training) in Florida first. I know how they throw, and how they are. So it’s not hard work, you know?”

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Ricardo’s hometown is Willemstad, a city of about 125,000 people and the capital of Curaçao. The Little League all-star team from Curaçao has gone deep into the organization’s world series through most of this decade.

Ricardo played for the 2004 Willemstad team, the year before the squad from that city won the Little League world championship.

He said an Orioles’ scout for the Caribbean region watched him play as an amateur in Puerto Rico and then in Willemstad.

Ricardo said, “He kept in touch with me. He talked with my father and my family. Then he went to Curaçao and saw me again.” The teenager signed in the fall of 2006.

“Since I signed, it’s something different,” he said of the sport. “I like it. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes not, but it’s a good thing.”

He had an immediate response to the observation that he is getting paid to do something he enjoys. “Yes, but they pay you to do the thing right. That’s why they pay you. They don’t pay you because they like you. You have to be able to work, too.”

His assessment of Bluefield is similar to that of many teammates. “It’s a small town,” he said. “There’s nothing, really, to do. But it’s a really nice town. ... Curaçao’s not big, but there’s more to do than here. But, it’s OK.”

He spends most of his off-duty hours at his apartment, he said. The routine is to “chat, chill, hang out with the friends. Maybe go out and play some pool.”

Prior to reporting to the field for Tuesday’s practice, he joined many of his teammates watching coverage of a memorial service for singer Michael Jackson on the clubhouse television.

“I like his songs,” he said. “That’s why I was (there) in front of the TV. I wanted to see that.”

• • •

Among Major League Baseball players from Curaçao are Andruw Jones, now playing for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta’s Jair Jurrjens and Seattle outfielder Wladimir Balentien.

Ricardo’s first language was the native language of the island, Papiamento, but learning Dutch is mandatory in schools there — the island is part of a territory governed by the Netherlands — and he also picked up fluency in Spanish and English.

Asked about his decision to learn English, he said, “Since I was a child, I liked it a lot — the English, how they talked. That’s why I wanted to learn more.”

Knowing both Spanish and English has “helped me a lot,” he said. “I can talk with the pitchers and my teammates.

“When some Spanish guy is out there and can’t speak English, I can go out and tell him how they need to do that. The coaches ask me all the time to help them to tell the Spanish guys how to do that.”

His plan for baseball is simple: “To work hard, to get back, maybe, to where I was first, to Delmarva. And then, hopefully, I can work hard again to make the Major League team, maybe.”

Concerning Bluefield’s chances to contend this season in the Appalachian League, he said, “A couple of teams, they’ve been playing really good. We have a good team, too.”

— Contact Tom Bone at

tbone@bdtonline.com