U.S. baseball coach finds field of dreams in China

For 27 years, Rick Dell was a fixture at the College of New Jersey as its baseball coach, plotting strategy and instilling baseball fundamentals in his young players.

But in 2007, Dell decided he was ready for a change -- and quite a change it was. He journeyed to China to become the director of baseball operations in Asia for Major League Baseball (MLB), the world's top baseball league.

"I feel fortunate to have this job. This is the dream job for me," Dell said during an interview in his office in downtown Beijing.

For Dell, the abrupt career move was not a total surprise. He has been a "baseball ambassador" of sorts since 1989, when he worked in the former Soviet Union and later in Italy. He started to work exclusively with the MLB in 1994, teaching summer courses and coaching in 16 Asian countries as of 2007.

The decision to move a world away was made easier when his entire family and colleagues strongly encouraged him to do so.

"Nobody around me, the people at the College of New Jersey or my family, never hesitated to say 'you've got to do it.' So that was pretty good," Dell recalled.

When he left for China, Dell told people that the baseball aspect of the job would be easy. The bigger challenge would be building relationships and learning about the culture, which would entail understanding the local people and demonstrating his cultural awareness.

"Baseball is always the easy part," the 58-year-old coach said. "The challenge is that you've got to develop relationships and you have to develop trust."

During his first two years in China, he worked quite hard, but in his mind, he didn't see a lot of return for his efforts.

But the veteran coach didn't get frustrated. A true man of the world -- he has been to 74 countries -- Dell is accustomed to handling challenging environments.

Things began to change almost magically when he hit his third year. All of a sudden, people began to respond to him differently. When he showed up and did something, there were more people there to welcome him, and there were more efforts to listen to what he had to say.

"I never came to China to leave. I think once people recognized that, they started to trust me more," he said.

"You put good baseball people on the field and players are going to be better. It's the relationship that allows you to put those people on the field, because you've got to develop trust," he added.

Since he first came to China to teach a baseball course in the summer of 2000, Dell has seen significant changes in how the country perceives baseball.

More Chinese kids have started to play the sport and more support facilities have been built across the country. The MLB has established two development centers in the cities of Wuxi and Changzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

But as Dell has discovered, one of the biggest problems that has hindered China's ability to produce world-class baseball players is the fact that kids start playing the game much later than their U.S. or Japanese peers.

"The skill of throwing a baseball, the arm strength, those are developing in the years between the ages of 6 and 14. So someone who starts to play baseball at 13 can become very good, but they will probably never develop professional arm strength," he said.

Although Dell had a fairly successful career as a college coach, he now has a different way to gauge his success in China -- and it definitely isn't about counting wins.

When frustrated young players come to him for advice, he tells them to look at where they are today and where they were last year or the year before -- the same way he judges his own progress in China.

Dell said his work in China has gained him respect and credibility, adding that he has relished his experience in China.

"To be able to make an impact on the country of this size at this point in history, it's sort of like having been able to live in ancient Rome and been able to make an impact there," he said.