Mike Vorkunov

Special for USA TODAY Sports

To learn about baseball as a child, to really have it seep in, Max Kepler had to stay up late into the night. In Berlin, the sport was hardly prevalent - it was barely apparent, at least as he remembers. Here was a budding major leaguer who could barely find a game to watch.

Kepler was a Yankees fan and, more specifically, a fan of Derek Jeter. And to get to see him play, he and his family had to make an effort. They acquired NASN, a channel which broadcast American sports, and let Kepler stay up to watch games that started at two or four in the morning.

To say that Kepler’s path to Major League Baseball and the Twins is different than most of his peers is not quite sufficient. The players on Minnesota’s 40-man roster represent seven countries and all but one have a culture where baseball is embedded or readily available.

But in Kepler, the Twins have an outlier -- a right fielder with an .821 on base plus slugging and 15 home runs who is one of the top rookies in the sport and representative of an emerging market for talent.

There have been 44 German-born players in MLB history, according to historian John Thorn, with the first debuting in 1871 and the latest, Bruce Maxwell, last month. Many have been like Maxwell, born abroad because an American parent was on duty in the armed forces and eventually returned to the United States to play in this country.

Kepler, however, was born and bred in Germany, to an American mother and Polish father, two ballet dancers who met in Berlin and decided to stay and raise a family. He hardly had ambitions of baseball stardom in his youth but by the time he was 16 he became a major prospect and signed for a $775,000 bonus in 2009 -- then the largest sum ever given to an European-born player.

Three years ago, Marten Gasparini, an Italian shortstop, signed with the Royals for a reported $1.3 million. Like Kepler, Gasparini gave up soccer to pursue professional baseball.

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Baseball is increasingly looking to Europe for players now. Bill Bavasi, the head of MLB’s scouting bureau, told Baseball America this year that he sees a “growth” opportunity there and is adding emphasis to mining the continent.

And it makes sense in the plainest terms, too. As the cost of amateur talent continues to increase in Latin America, and Cuba is no longer ripe for arbitrage, and a pipeline to Korea gains a foundation, Europe could be the next untapped market. Terry Ryan, the former Twins general manager who signed Kepler, says even with every team having already deployed scouts there, interest may be growing.

“It’s not heavily saturated like Florida, Texas, the Dominican – even Australia,” he said.

Kepler did not get serious about baseball until he was almost a teenager. He played for Hertha BSC, a local soccer club, and was more focused on his professional chances. Baseball was a hobby. He began playing at seven years old, in a twice-a-week league and was fairly lax about it. Initially, he thought it was too boring and to stagnant.

“It’s not really that available to people who are looking to have their kids play sports,” he said. “You’re not going to find baseball in Germany. You really have to look baseball up and go out of your way to find some good baseball. It’s probably like soccer over here. They have it here and there but the good soccer teams you have to look for them. Like in Germany, you’ll find good soccer teams on every corner.”

Part of the calculus for him were the social aspects of playing the sport. His friends played soccer. When he would get older and go to play baseball, he was the one “frowned upon” by his friends, he said. His father had also wanted him to play soccer.

Without much of a footing for the sport in Berlin, the leagues Kepler played in tried to recreate baseball culture at the youth level. They tried to make baseball games as identical to the United States as possible, from the food to the fans. Whereas at soccer games, brats and currywurst were sold in the stands, hamburgers and hot dogs were available at Kepler’s games.

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“They’d try to Americanize and make the atmosphere seem really American even though it wasn’t,” he said. “They’d have everybody in the outfield or on the field screaming the baseball terms with the heavy German accent. It was very similar and it created a good vibe because it was everyone on the field’s dream to get to the States.”

There also wasn’t much competition. Once Kepler devoted himself to the sport, he struggled to find challenges. At 13, he started playing in men’s leagues with others 20 or older. At 15, he moved to a boarding school in Bavaria to put himself in front of more scouts, then signed with the Twins.

Kepler’s success this year may just have an effect on how popular Europe ultimately gets for teams. Kepler could be a model for the next generation of German and continental talent and for organizations hoping to acquire them. Or he could remain an exception.

Europe, Ryan said, reminds him of Australia decades ago, when it started to export players like Dave Nilsson and Graeme Lloyd. But those two remain the gold standard of Australian baseball, with just one player making it to the majors from there in the last five years.

“I know it’s getting more advanced by the year,” Ryan said. “I suspect with him and the attention it’s getting in Germany, it’s going to increase as we go forward.”

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