This weekend’s new movie Million Dollar Arm tells the story of sports agent J.B. Bernstein and his two athletic discoveries from India. Bernstein was a struggling sports agent who was inspired to hold a pitching contest for Indian cricket players called “Million Dollar Arm.” The two winners, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel came to the States to try out for MLB, and Singh got signed to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Gulf Coast League team.
With the movie coming out, I got to talk to the real Bernstein and Singh about the true story. It might be a little different than the movie, but it’s close. Bernstein really did hold a disastrous tryout at a Tempe, AZ strip mall, and he really did yell at the boys for cutting their hands in a cooking accident, as depicted in the film. Rinku really does stand like a flamingo before he pitches, as he was also an Olympic javelin competitor.
CraveOnline: J.B., was it really watching Susan Boyle and cricket that inspired “Million Dollar Arm?”
J.B. Bernstein: Yes and no. In reality, my business partners and I came up with this idea. Our goal was to find Yao Ming, so we needed a country with a billion people where they never had anybody successful in sports in the United States so that led us to India. And then watching the cricket match, it just kinda clicked. Hey, they have all these cricket players there and they obviously can’t all play professional cricket and I bet some of these guys can throw. So the question then becomes we want to go to India and try and find the kid who can throw fast from this huge pool of cricket players.
So the question is how do you do it? And for that, we stole Simon Cowell’s idea. When you’re looking for talent in masses, this “American Idol” is a great format. You do a TV show. You have talent turn out and instead of singing, we tried to find people who could throw as fast as they could. It wasn’t me in a vacuum sitting on the couch flipping back and forth between these two shows, but in essence, that’s a pretty good encapsulation of the two things that really inspired us to go do this. It works better in the movie than reality, but at the end of the day those are the two things that inspire this.
Rinku, did you play cricket?
Rinku Singh: I did play for fun but it wasn’t my favorite sport.
Can you explain to us how the flamingo stance helps you pitch?
Rinku Singh: The flamingo style came from javelin. In javelin, we have to stand on yoga position. So that’s what I think really made me throw hard, comparing javelin to baseball. Javelin is almost one pound and baseball is like five ounces.
Did you ever pursue javelin further after the Olympics?
Rinku Singh: No, no, it’s going to be six years that I haven’t touched a javelin.
J.B. Bernstein: Rinku was and is, when we found him, an amazing athlete. So the fact that he was able to transition from javelin to pitching is not surprising to me, plus he’s also kinda got that American gym rat mentality. He’s in the gym. He loves to work out and loves to train. He’s also a very good physical learner, the sort of athlete that just can learn things physically. So he had a lot of those qualities that you can probably thank javelin for.
This is an example of how little I understand sports. I was shocked in the beginning of the movie when that athlete asked for a million dollar signing bonus just to be his agent.
J.B. Bernstein: I was shocked too.
Don’t athletes make their money after they perform?
J.B. Bernstein: They definitely do and again, I was surprised but I think that’s another encapsulation of how jaded I had become to the business and how estranged I had become from being an agent, because the reality is that in a lot of ways does happen and to me, it was never something that I was willing to do. Ethically, from a business standpoint but more and more that type of situation of an agent having to play to get clients becomes more and more prevalent.
Are you saying signing bonuses made you estranged or you had to keep up with the trends?
J.B. Bernstein: That’s the sort of thing that I personally became estranged from the business as a result of. I am very confident in my abilities as an agent. I’ve got a great track record. I was never going to pay some rookie for the right to represent them, especially since if they chose me to represent them, they were going to make a ton of money and then I was going to take my cut. Call me a traditionalist, but that’s how I saw it working and it’s not to say that a relationship couldn’t work out on a long term basis between a client and an agent with that type of transaction at the start, but for me, I just couldn’t see myself doing that.
Was there actually a cooking accident where they cut their fingers? Maybe in the film you overreact to a cut finger, but if they were surgeons you would be protective of their hands too. It is somewhat reasonable to be worried about a pitcher’s hands.
J.B. Bernstein: So can I give you my wife’s phone number? Sounds like you’re on my side. You may be the only one in America who doesn’t think I overreacted there. It did actually happen. Rinku did cut his finger. It wasn’t serious but the point I think my character was making in the movie was that could’ve been catastrophic. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t Rinku’s fault. Everything’s always my fault. I’m the guy who’s supposed to be watching out for this stuff. So I think that that is a critical moment in the story, maybe more so than it was in real life, but yes, the answer to your question is it did happen. He cut his finger. I don’t think he was making fajitas. I can’t remember what he was making.
Rinku Singh: I was making pork.
J.B. Bernstein: He was making pork, there you go. The end of that story is Rinku then resided himself to plastic silverware for three months, and then I think a plastic fork broke and he almost swallowed one of the tines. Then we went back to metal forks but not knives.
Rinku Singh: Oh no, dude.
J.B. Bernstein: I’m just kidding. No, but he went with plastic for a long time after that.
Rinku Singh: I did cut my finger cutting pork, but it was in India so I used a plastic fork for a long time.
Rinku, did you really enjoy pizza when you came to the States?
Rinku Singh: Yeah, I did. I still love pizza. Oh man, back in the day, mm.
Are you playing this year?
Rinku Singh: Yes, yes. I’m rehabbing at the moment but I’ll be back in August.
Still for Pittsburgh?
Rinku Singh: Yes, the Pirates.
J.B., have any Million Dollar Arm contestants gone pro?
J.B. Bernstein: Rinku is the closest. Dinesh played for two years and then was released. The next season of the contest will be this fall which we’re really hopeful. We’ve been looking at everything coming out that we’ll get to see an enormous talent pool. I’m so confident though that there’s literally thousands of guys in India who have the raw talent to be able to do it, and we’re so committed, our business, to finding those guys. I really feel like it’s just a matter of time, but I believe that Rinku will be the first professional pitcher in the history of his country. I think that he’s got it in him. He’s obviously got a big head start over everybody else and I think he’s right at the cusp right now where he has this chance to really break through.
What do you think of that, Rinku?
Rinku Singh: J.B.’s right. I’m working. I’m not doubting my work ethic. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future but right now, as J.B.’s saying, the way I’ve been working out, the way I believe in myself, it’s going to happen one day. I’m going to continue to be honest with my work ethic, be honest with myself, be honest with my faith and we’ll see where I’m going to end up.
What made the difference between the tryout that J.B. admits was a mistake in the Tempe, AZ strip mall and the second? What made you pitch badly in Tempe and better the second time.
Rinku Singh: The mistake was just something that we were not used to it. We always pitched, since day one, until tryout, we always trained in the USC [field]. Then all of a sudden we get a different mound. So it wasn’t J.B.’s fault or anybody’s fault. We weren’t used to that mound so we got killed the first time. Then we got a second chance and we had familiarity with the mound where we used to train. And we got signed.
I bet you could have done it in Tempe if you’d had time to practice on that mound.
Rinku Singh: You are right. That’s what I’m explaining right now. We didn’t have the facility where we were used to training. We were training at USC on their mound which for us was like taking a baby step, not knowing anything about baseball. So think about sleeping in an old bed for seven months and all of a sudden you have to sleep in somebody else’s bed for one night. How would you feel?
