[caption id="attachment_42" align="alignleft" width="300"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-42" src="http://baseballbrazil.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/483112_304064989708824_1759025725_n-300x171.jpg" alt="Barry Lakin - photo credit; extratime.br" width="300" height="171" /> Barry Lakin - photo credit; extratime.br[/caption]

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There’s a theory in Brazil (and now in other places) that Barry Larkin agreed to coach the Brazilian national baseball team in exchange for his daughter’s  song being featured on a popular Brazilian soap opera.

Cymber Larkin, better known as the singer CymcoLé, produced a song entitled “Bring On The Nite”, which was played on episodes of “Avenida Brazil” in 2012, the same year Barry Larkin took on the job as manager of the Brazilian national baseball team. Coincidence, perhaps? Brazilians, at least those who care about baseball, joked that it wasn’t, that it was all arranged by the mysterious forces of corrupt Brazilian politics.

Taken at face value, and understanding the degree to which institutional corruption exists in that country, one could certainly not outright dismiss the theory, except that there are a lot of things wrong with it.

First of all, the theory goes that the Brazilian Baseball Federation (CBBS) President, Jorge Otsuka, would have had to been the one to arrange for the song to get on to the show. The CBBS is a grossly underfunded organization with very little reach or influence outside of the Japanese Brazilian baseball playing community. To suggest that Otsuka had any sort of leverage whatsoever in the decision making of a multi-billion dollar company like Rede Globo (the network that televised Avenida Brazil) is extremely far-fetched.

Baseball was still a relatively unknown sport in mainstream Brazilian society in 2012 before the World Baseball Classic, so almost nobody would have known who Barry Larkin was prior to him being the skipper of Team Brazil, even despite the fact that he’s a popular MLB Hall of Fame baseball player in the U.S.  Thus, it’s difficult to imagine that executives at Rede Globo (which doesn’t even televise baseball games…MLB, NPB, local leagues or otherwise) bending over backwards the second Otsuka would have walked through the door with Barry Larkin in tow, assuming that ever happened, of course.

While it is true that Otsuka and the CBBS have been accused of rampant corruption over the years, much of those allegations have been in the form of taking huge percentage cuts out of the signing bonuses of players they have sold off to MLB and Japanese teams, not that there have been too many of those. The CBBS was also accused of blocking the Tampa Bay Rays attempts to establish a baseball academy in the city of Marília because the Rays opted to go around the CBBS instead of working through the CBBS. Even then, how much was it the CBBS's doing and how much of it was due to the fact that the mayor of Marília was eventually arrested on charges of corruption himself?

Back to the matter regarding Larkin. What probably happened is that CymcoLé’s song was picked up, independently, by the producers of Avenida Brazil, before Larkin agreed to coach Team Brazil, and it prompted CymcoLé (and by extension Larkin) to spend more time in Brazil touring in support of her song's popularity. Doesn’t sound too implausible. Avenida Brazil ran from early to late 2012. It was watched on average by 80 million Brazilians (the country’s population is approximately 200 million). It was considered the most popular soap opera in Brazil ever. In terms of ratings, it’s kind of like Friends, or Breaking Bad, were in the U.S., but way more popular.

Larkin accepted the Team Brazil coaching job around the middle of 2012 and coached the team through the WBC qualifying round in Panama in November 2012. Brazil won that round and moved on to the first round in early 2013 in Japan, where it eventually fizzled out, but not before putting Brazil and a number of up and coming young players on the global baseball map.

Larkin had been going down to Brazil with MLB International’s Elite Camp at least as early as 2011, working as an instructor with the top 15 and 16 year old players in South America. Larkin himself will say that it was due to his daughter’s success that he ended up spending more time there.  Larkin certainly didn’t need any money or any more prestige. Doesn't seem like he's the kind of guy who needed to personally help his daughter land a break in the music business either, just as he didn't need to help his son, Shane Larkin, become a dominant NCAA basketball player. Larkin's reasons for being involved in Team Brazil was probably similar to why Terry Collins coached Team China, or why Brad Ausmus coached Israel. It was a good thing to do to help spread baseball to places where it’s not as popular. Again, not a wildly implausible reason.

The people I have spoken to in the local baseball community say that while this rumor has been fun to joke around with, nobody has taken it seriously for all the reasons listed above. If no one in Brazil is taking it seriously, then one would caution anyone in the U.S. of taking it seriously either.  There are certainly a number of things wrong with baseball in Brazil, but it’s highly doubtful that Barry Larkin is one of them.

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