clipped from www.iht.com

Brazil does have a national amateur team, and at its training center, the squad has been preparing for months for the Pan American Games, which open July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.

"Brazilians like rooting for their fellow countrymen, so once we get a Brazilian playing in Major League Baseball, that will help popularize the sport,"

"Just look what happened with tennis when Gustavo Kuerten was doing well, or with the NBA when Brazilian players like Anderson Varej�o, Nen� Hilario and Leandro Barbosa showed up."

Baseball came here, in contrast to other Latin American countries, not from the United States but from Japan. Brazil has the largest population of Japanese descent of any country outside Japan, about 2 million people, and baseball has traditionally been played primarily, if not exclusively, in the three states where the bulk of the Japanese community has settled.