"No Hit" Rohit Roshon came to the Greens from the Omaha Kings of the North American Baseball League. From 1992-1995, Roshon served as the franchise's head of Asian scouting and was responsible for signing Aussies Dave Nilsson and Glenn Williams, both formerly with the New York Mastiffs. Roshon also spotted and signed injury-prone Chris Snelling, the Pete Reiser of the Greens' farm system.
Still, the best player Rohit claims to have seen never even reached the Western Hemisphere. Danji the Indian Grape Boy, was so named both for a fastball that seemed to shrink to grape-size as it zipped across the plate and because of an obsessive passion for the green and red fruit itself. Danji gained his velocity from a powerful lower body and from a whipping pitching style borrowed from his cricket background and honed under the tutelage of the Buddhist master Sidd Finch. Rohit declares that Danji could have been a star if not for the hard-line tactics of his agent, Belching Becky Walsh, who insisted not simply that Danji be offered a guaranteed contract up front but also stipulated an endorsement deal with Sunview Grapes of California, which Danji held to be the "most miraculous grapes in the world." While Sunview was willing to accommodate Danji's request, John Deere Inc. balked at the contract demands and passed on Danji, now a star pitcher for the Lucknow Lamprubbers of the Uttar Pradesh League. The prolonged negotiations with Walsh over the Danji contract robbed Roshon of some of the pleasure from scouting, and he willingly returned to America in 1995, when new manager Joe Morgan named him fielding coach for the organization at large, a position he maintains.
Since his retirement as an active player in 1985, Roshon had served as fielding coach for the Kings, a position he well deserved as the top infielder of the NABL for a number of years. Never a strong hitter, Roshon was a full-time shortstop for only two years, but he led the league in range factor both times, and he was a valuable defensive replacement throughout his career, posting the highest fielding percentage in league history for shortstops with more than 250 games played.
Roshon came to the States from India while he was still a teenager. Like Danji, his would-be protege, Rohit had played cricket at the
Bombay Anglican Boys School, excelling as a pitcher and fielder and surviving as a hitter. Rohit quickly transferred those skills from one playing field to another, though his pitching didn't make the conversion quite as well. "Perhaps it is that I got hurt worse than I thought when I intervened to resolve a dispute among some Raj teammates," Rohit explains. "What is the case is that after I came to America I did not possess the velocity as a pitcher that I had known before." His questionable bat kept him from being drafted out of Bethesda Country Day School, but he was signed as a free agent at a Louisville Pacers tryout camp in 1978. Roshon played for a number of teams in the NABL. His defensive skills earned raves, but his bat earned him the moniker he wears with good humor to this day.
While Randy Bass works with Greens' minor leaguers on power and plate discipline, Roshon concentrates on improving their glovework. For successive winters, Roshon worked Chad Hermansen, whose troubles with the glove were well chronicled. Roshon reported progress but said that "it was not possible to turn Mr. Hermansen into a good defensive player." Still, says Rohit, Hermansen even as a washed-up prospect, Hermansen, no longer in the Greens organization is "already a better hitter than I was. But what is that to say? Not very much, no."
Roshon has also pushed the Greens' scouting department to sign slick infielders and was the first to call the team's attention to Dominican shortstop Wilson Betemit, selected in the second round of the January, 2000, draft. "He is a boy man who can ply the leather with aplomb but also handle the bat, which is necessary if one is to become more than a defensive whiz." Other Greens middle infielders have prospered under Roshon's tutelage, including Andy Machado, Omar Infante, and Jose Reyes. All have also heard whispers about their erratic bats, perhaps a byproduct of too much time under the tutelage of the hacking Roshon.
Still, the Greens continue to develop as many middle infielders as possible. Some will become stars, some will become minor-league fielding coaches. "We are the Louisiana Hayride of the league, I have heard it said. Please to tell me, sir, who is this Hayride?"