The wait is finally over. Our favorite Indian pitching hopefuls, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel — who we have followed throughout their journey to America — have been signed to a minor league contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Makes sense. Nothing else works for the Bucs, so why not trot out a couple of guys who didn’t know what Denny’s was until two weeks ago?

(The guy in the middle is probably getting signed by the Mariners)

But not so fast. The news of the signings came from YAHOO! JAPAN, and was written in, you know, Japanese. So it’s not entirely clear if they have actually signed on the dotted lines. The Pirates have not announced anything official, and Pirates GM Neal Huntington is being a bit elusive about what exactly is going on. Either the deal isn’t done, or the Bucs are wary of becoming a punchline for signing the dynamic duo.

We got the news from WALKOFF WALK, which immediately takes the punchline route:

With the sorry state of that franchise, Rinku and Dinesh are automatically the most talented pitching prospects in the entire organization.

They got the story from a Japanese baseball blog called NPB TRACKER, which cited the YAHOO! JAPAN report. But when MLB.COM’s Jenifer Langosch got in touch with the Pirate organization, there was no confirmation that anything is actually done:

When asked about the validity of this report, Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said that he was unable to confirm the signings. Huntington did, though, confirm the team’s interest in both.

“We have seen the pitchers and are very interested in signing them,” Huntington said.

Dinesh and Rinku actually impressed scouts with their tryout a couple of weeks ago, and it would likely be a huge financial windfall for them (relatively speaking) even if they only caught on with a low-A affiliate. There’s no news of their signing on the Million Dollar Arm site, nor on the players’ blog, which hasn’t been updated since Friday.

Speaking of the blog, one of my favorite things is to check in on their reaction to American films. We reported earlier that Wanted has replaced Bad Boys as their favorite film, but it appears as if Rock N Rolla isn’t going to be getting any awards from the boys:

We then went to a movie that was very bad called Rock and Rolla.  it was supposed to be big action, but it was no action at all.  At least the seats were very comfortable and the theater was very clean.

We’ll be tracking this story as it develops. I hear they’ve got Stealth at the top of their Netflix queue. Oh, and I guess we’ll also be tracking whether or not they get signed to a contract too.