Best foreign born players in each country – Part 2 of 4

More than 1,800 of the nearly 17,000 players to appear in a Major League game, dating back to 1871, were born outside of the United States.  BaseballReference.com identifies 56 foreign countries and territories from which those players hailed.  Roughly half of the foreign-born players are natives of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or Venezuela.

In this four-part series, we’ll look at the three best players from each of those countries, from Afghanistan to Wales.  For our purposes, we’ll combine entities like West Germany and Germany which are now part of the same nation.

For Part Two, we’ll look, alphabetically, from Canada through Finland.

Agree or disagree with our picks?  Leave a comment.

Canada (217) – Players from the United States’ neighbor to the north have been competing in the big leagues since 1875, and standouts like Jason Bay, Justin Morneau, Russell Martin and Rich Harden are among the 18 on rosters this year.  Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins won 284 games and struck out nearly 3,200 batters in his 19-year career to earn the top spot here.  Though some of his numbers were augmented by his having played in Coors Field for a decade, Larry Walker and his 383 career homers place him second.  The third slot is a tough pick, but for now I’ll go with mostly-forgotten 1940′s-era Indians outfielder Jeff Heath, a two-time All-Star who twice led the league in triples and hit a composite .293 in 14 years.  But the current crop of Canadians, which also includes Joey Votto and Ryan Dempster, are all poised to move past Heath within a couple of years.

China (1) – Harry Kingman (no relation to Dave), whose career career was limited to three hitless at bats in four games with the Yankees in 1914, was born in Tientsin, China, as his father was a New York Congregationalist missionary.  Kingman later returned to China to serve as a missionary there in the 1920s, then had a distinguished career at the University of California Berkeley and as a civil rights activist.

Colombia (7) –  Slick-fielding shortstops have been the specialty from this South American country, with current Big Leaguers Edgar Renteria and Orlando Cabrera at the top of the list.  Renteria and his five All-Star appearances get the edge here, but only by a bit, as Cabrera has proven to be a sometimes under-appreciated player in his 13 years with five teams (including three in the last three years).  The third spot probably goes to Jolbert Cabrera, who came up with the Indians at the beginning of this decade but didn’t really fulfill early promise.  Jackie Gutierrez may have merited consideration, but he committed more than 50 errors in a season and a half as the Red Sox’ regular SS in the mid 1980s and hit just .237 overall.

Cuba (159) – The small island nation has a long and storied history with the game.  The only Hall of Famer in the bunch, Tony Perez, gets the nod though his numbers (379 home runs, .279 average, .341 on base pct.) fall short of those of Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco, two Cuban-born stars whose careers have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs.  Heading a strong group of pitchers that would rival many country’s best are our-time 20-game winner Luis Tiant (229 victories) who many feel merits Hall of Fame consideration, Camilo Pascual (174 wins, seven All-Star selections), Mike Cuellar (185 wins, .587 winning pct.) and the Hernandez brothers, Livan and Orlando.  I’ll go with Tiant for the second spot and Palmeiro for the third.  It’s hard to predict exactly what PEDs do for players’ numbers, but Palmeiro’s smooth stroke and Gold Glove-level fielding were likely enough without them.

Curacao/Netherlands Antilles (10) – His precipitous drop from perennial All-Star to .200 hitter notwithstanding, Andruw Jones and his 385 career home runs and electrifying defense over his first decade in center field make him the clear pick from Curacao.  But three others are making their marks in the majors today, including Jair Jurrjens (13-10, 3.68 ERA in 2008, 9-7, 2.67 so far this year for the Braves), Shairon Martis (5-3 for Washington this year) and Wladimir Balentien, a semi-regular outfielder for the Mariners the past two seasons.  Jurrjens is slightly ahead of Martis at this point, and thus takes the No. 2 slot.

Czech Republic/Slovakia (5) – Five players born in what was then Czechoslovakia have played in the majors, with 20-year performer Elmer Valo the most prominent.  Valo toiled on the mostly awful Philadelphia Athletics teams in the 1940s and early 1950s, accompanying the team on its 1955 relocation to Kansas City, when he hit .364 in 112 games.  He also had the distinction of moving with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to L.A. and with Washington to Minnesota.  He played on seven teams from 1956-1961, becoming an accomplished pinch-hitter.  Amos Cross, who hit .268 in 117 games with Louisville of the old American Association from 1885-1887 and Joe Hovlik, who was 2-0 with a 3.62 ERA in 16 games with the Senators and White Sox from 1909-1911, were the only other Czechoslovakia natives to appear in more than four major league contests.

Dominican Republic (482) – Where to begin?  The D.R. has more than double the number of major leaguers of any country, other than the U.S.  Pinning it down to three leaves out dozens of superstars, but we’ll stick to the formula.  To date, only one Hall of Famer, Juan Marichal, was born in the Dominican, but that number is likely to increase as current stars like Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez and Vladimir Guerrero are likely Cooperstown enshrinees down the line – not to mention Hanley Ramirez, Sammy Sosa and David Ortiz.  Pujols is the best player in the game at a time when the overall talent level is probably the highest it’s ever been, so I’ll take him at the No. 1 spot.  I won’t wait for Pedro to be elected to give him the No. 2 position – his 214-99 composite record is impressive enough, but his 1997-2003 stretch when his ERA+ numbers ranged from a LOW of 163 to a high of an incomprehensible 291 (!) clinches it.  Marichal is third for now, but that spot is precarious as Ramirez (538 HRs) continues his assault on National League pitching.

Denmark (1) – Just one Dane, Olaf Henriksen, a part-time outfielder on the excellent Red Sox teams from 1911-1917.  Henriksen, nicknamed “Swede” despite being from a different Scandinavian country (early 20th-century nicknames tended to ignore such subtleties), hit over .300 in his first three years but hit just .214 in his last four years.  He was on three World Series champions, and once pinch hit for Babe Ruth, then a young pitcher, drawing a walk.

England (33) – It may seem surprising that so many major leaguers hail from England, but all but six are pre-1928 and half finished up before the turn of the 20th century.  I was tempted to lump Scotland and Wales in for a UK category, but I’ve instead kept them separate.  There is a Hall of Famer in the bunch, the immortal Harry Wright, born in Sheffield in 1835.  His numbers seem rather ordinary – .272 average in four “full” seasons, comprised of less than 200 games, but he is credited as the founder of the first team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and managed for 23 years.   So Wright doesn’t place in the top three as a player.  Instead, I’ll go with Liverpool’s Tom Brown, an early slugger for 17 years on 10 teams in three leagues and once scored 323 runs in a two-year span from 1890-1891.  Reconstruction era outfielder George Hall hit .322 as a regular for several National Association and NL clubs to earn the second spot.  Among players who didn’t ride a horse and buggy to the game, Danny Cox and his 74 victories and 3.64 ERA over 11 years puts him third.

Finland (1) – Born in Taivalkoski, Finland, John Michaelson had the ultimate “cup of coffee” with the White Sox in 1921, pitching 2 2/3 innings of relief in two games.

To see the first installment, Afghanistan to Belize, click here.

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Topics: Hall of Fame, International, top players

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