Brazilian Heritage on a Kachi Glove

Brazil is a soccer country with a quietly growing baseball footprint. The pipeline is small, the talent is real, and the flag belongs on the gear of the players carrying it forward.

The country in baseball

Baseball in Brazil traces back to early twentieth-century Japanese immigration to São Paulo state — particularly the agricultural communities around Marília, Mogi das Cruzes, and the Liberdade district of São Paulo city — and the country's baseball culture remains concentrated heaviest in that community. Brazil runs a national federation, the Confederação Brasileira de Beisebol e Softbol (CBBS), and competes in the World Baseball Classic, where it qualified for the main tournament for the first time in 2013 by winning a qualifying group that included Panama. In that 2013 main tournament, Brazil beat host Japan in an exhibition and held its own in pool play before being eliminated. The pipeline is modest in size but has produced legitimate MLB-level talent, with most Brazilian MLB players coming through the country's Japanese-Brazilian baseball academies before being signed by international scouting departments.

A moment that defined the country in MLB

July 17, 2018, Nationals Park, Washington. Yan Gomes, catching for the Cleveland Indians, was named to the AL roster for the All-Star Game — the first Brazilian-born player ever selected to an MLB All-Star Game. The following year, Gomes caught the final out of the 2019 World Series for the Washington Nationals, becoming the first Brazilian-born player to win a World Series ring as a starter on a championship team. (Paulo Orlando, with the 2015 Royals, had won a ring in a complementary role four years earlier.) Gomes's All-Star nod is the cleanest single moment of Brazilian MLB arrival.

Notable players

• Yan Gomes — the first Brazilian-born MLB All-Star (2018), 2019 World Series champion with the Washington Nationals, longtime Indians/Nationals/Cubs catcher.
• Paulo Orlando — MLB outfielder for the Kansas City Royals, World Series champion with the Royals in 2015, 2016 AL leader in triples.
• André Rienzo — first Brazilian-born MLB starting pitcher (Chicago White Sox debut, July 2013).
• Thyago Vieira — Brazilian-born right-handed reliever, multi-season MLB service with the Mariners and White Sox.

The Kachi flag option

The Brazilian flag — green and yellow with the blue celestial sphere and "Ordem e Progresso" banner — is embroidered on the wrist strap or pinky of your custom glove at no additional cost, in matched colors. Brazil isn't on the configurator at most glove brands. It's on the configurator at Kachi because the country's small MLB footprint — and the very specific Japanese-Brazilian academy network that feeds it — is exactly the kind of pipeline that a configurator built around all eleven Latin American baseball heritages should not skip. Pick your placement at checkout and it goes on with the rest of the build.