Major League Baseball in Latin America:

A Lottery Ticket Out of Poverty

Andrew Coatsworth
Professor Tony Lucero
Honors 394 B: Borderlands of Western Civilization
June 9th, 2014

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A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your
flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a
political project. It might rest on something simpler, too, like a habit that promises to induce in
you an improved way of being. These kinds of optimistic relation are not inherently cruel. They
become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment impedes the aim that brought you
to it initially. Lauren Berlant in Cruel Optimism1
I. Introduction
Baseball is commonly referred to the pastime of the United States, going hand in hand
with hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. However, today, it is no longer possible to consider the
sport the United States game. After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League
Baseball in 1947 when he began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the demographic of the MLB
was forever altered. Although Louis Castro is credited as being the first Hispanic player to reach
the Major Leagues, playing for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1902, it wasnt until Robinson broke
the color barrier that there became a more widespread movement of Hispanic talent. Prior to
1947, dark skinned Hispanics were prohibited from taking part in the MLB. While over time this
talent began to trickle into the MLB, it pales in comparison to the modern day influx of Hispanic
players. The 2014 MLB Racial and Gender Report Card reveals that 28.4 percent of players on
this years opening day rosters are Hispanic while almost half of all minor league players are of
Latin descent2. Currently, 95 percent of the MLBs Hall of Fame inductees were born in the
United States while only three percent were born in Latin America3. Although the Hall of Fame
is currently dominated by U.S. born members, players are only eligible for induction if they have
been retired for six or more years and the vast majority of inductees were involved in the sport
prior to the shift in demographic. More recent statistics suggest that the racial breakdown of the
Hall of Fame will begin to change. For example, 11 out of the previous 40 Most Valuable
Players in both the American and National Leagues (a 20 year span) were born in Latin America.
Also, nearly 20 percent of the previous 40 Cy Young award winners were born in Latin America.

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Finally, just over 30% of players voted to the previous three All-Star games were born in Latin
America4. Yet, despite the shift in professional talent, it can be argued that the MLB is, as
Berlant describes, a form of cruel optimism for Latino baseball players. Hopeful players from
countries such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba rely on baseball as their ticket out of
poverty. Yet the success rates of MLB players are extremely low. An all-star caliber hitter fails
his job, getting a hit, around 70 percent of the time. However, for these ballplayers, on field
success is only a small fraction of the challenge that they must overcome in search of baseball
immortality.
II. An Intertwined History of Baseball
Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general, is credited with inventing the game of baseball in
1839 in Cooperstown, New York. Later, in 1845, Alexander Joy Cartwright played a key role in
the first publishing of the formal rulebook of baseball. The sport began to gain popularity when
the first official game took place in 1846 between the Knickerbocker Baseball Club and a group
of cricket players5. The origins of the MLB can be traced back to 1869 when the first
professional team was formed, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. By 1900, both the American and
National Leagues were established and in 1903, the Boston Pilgrims and Pittsburgh Pirates
competed for the first World Series title6. Today, Major League Baseball has grown to be a
multibillion-dollar worldwide monopoly. In 2013, arguably the most popular MLB franchise, the
New York Yankees, brought in $471 million in revenue7 while spending just under $200 million
in players salary8. Despite the strong tendency to label baseball as the Great American Sport,
it has always been heavily influenced and impacted by Latin America.
In the 1860s, prior to the creation of the first professional team in the United States,
expatriated Cubans returned to their homeland and introduced the island to the game of baseball.

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To many Cubans, according to historian Louis A. Prez Jr., baseball marked a paradigm of
progress. The sport symbolized the islands movement into modernity as well the adoption of a
more democratic society. Cuba finally began to move on from Spanish colonialism. In Cuba,
unlike the United States, baseball was multiracial. Each winter, Cuba hosted the best North
American baseball players, both black and white, to play in the Liga Cubana. The Liga Cubana
was the only place in the world that allowed players of different races and ethnicities to compete.
As a result of the success of baseball in Cuba, it began to spread to other Latin American
countries such as the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Mexico. These various
leagues coexisted without issue until 1937 when the president of the Dominican Republic, Rafael
Trujillo, attempted to improve his team, Los Leones del Ciudad Trujillo. In quest of their first
Dominican baseball title, Trujillo ordered government workers to find American players to
bolster the roster of Los Leones. Nine players from the Negro League powerhouse, the
Pittsburgh Crawfords, travelled south and led Los Leones to their first title. These players
included future Hall of Fame inductees Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson. This
emigration doomed the future of the Crawford franchise.
A Mexican entrepreneur, Jorge Pasquel, posed a second major threat to baseball in North
America. Pasquel recruited the most talented members of the Negro and Cuban Leagues to play
in the Mexican League during World War II. After the conclusion of the war, Pasquel continued
his attempt to bolster the Mexican League when he began to recruit players from the MLB.
Pasquel offered competitive pay and a personal connection with players, something that MLB
executives lacked. Also, this league offered a racially progressive environment. In response to
Pasquels actions, the MLB blacklisted players who left for Mexico and advised Cuban teams
against cooperating with Pasquel. The MLBs persuasion prevented the Cuban league from

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joining forces with Pasquel, leaving him with massive financial losses and a failed attempt to
challenge the MLB. With Pasquel bowing out of the race for baseball dominance, the MLB
became the world power for the sport. They determined the conditions for their players,
including Latin Americans, to take part in the Caribbean winter leagues. As result of these
actions, the Mexican league maintained only a summer schedule. Although Cuba isolated itself
from the MLBs control during the countrys revolution, Latin America remains a pivotal
geographic area in the world of professional baseball9.
III. Baseball: A Contact Zone
In her book, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Mary Louise Pratt
describes a contact zone as: the space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples
geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish
ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable
contact. This zone invokes the space and time where subjects previously separated by
geography and history are co-present, the point at which their trajectories now interact. The
zone of contact treats the relations among colonizers and colonized not in terms of
separateness, but in terms of co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices,
and often within radically asymmetrical relations of power10. The current state as well as
history of the MLB perfectly fits Pratts definition of a contact zone. A clash of cultures has
developed a borderland, especially between Latin America and North America. Hopeful Latin
American baseball players are forced to dive into the unknown as they attempt to conquer the
contact zone of professional baseball. Within this unknown world, Hispanic players will
discover a poorly regulated as well as unethical market for Latino talent and the draining of a
valuable natural resource from their homeland, their own baseball talent. With all of these

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factors combined, it becomes difficult to support the actions of the MLB in Latin America. This
borderland has further established the worldwide dominance of Western culture and negatively
impacted countries such as the Dominican Republic.
IV. A Sense of Cruel Optimism
With the improvement of technology and information sharing, baseball scouting has
become a much more in depth process. Major League prospects are commonly ranked and
projected for future success. Perhaps the most popular ranking organization is Baseball America.
Scott McKinney, a baseball blogger, conducted a research experiment to determine the success
rate of players ranked on Baseball Americas top prospect list. While these lists can greatly vary
from organization to organization, McKinneys study depicted a commonly accepted ideology
relating to baseball; it is a very difficult sport. Using Baseball Americas rankings from 1990 to
2003, and judging players on their average Wins Above Replacement (WAR, a modern statistic
that attempts to measure a players overall contribution to his team), McKinney labeled roughly
70 percent of players as busts, and about 30 percent of players as successes. Of the successes,
17 percent were considered to be superior. McKinney labeled a bust as a player worth an
average of less than .5 to 1.49 WAR per season and a success as a player worth 1.5 to 4.5 or
higher per season. Within the success category, McKinney added the subset superior.
Superior players were worth 2.5 to 4.5 or above WAR per season. FanGraphs, a popular baseball
statistics website, determined the following table of WAR values11:
Scrub
Role Player
Solid Starter
Good Player
All-Star
Superstar
MVP

0-1 WAR
1-2 WAR
2-3 WAR
3-4 WAR
4-5 WAR
5-6 WAR
6+ WAR

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Although McKinneys study doesnt take into account nationality or aberrations such as
Robinson Can (Can never appeared on Baseball Americas top 100 prospects list yet has gone
onto become a Hall of Fame caliber second baseman), it can be concluded that the most talented
baseball prospects in the world fail at a very high rate12. When paired with the cultural
borderland between North American baseball and Hispanic hopefuls, the MLB becomes a form
of cruel optimism. By relying solely on the MLB as a ticket out of poverty, Hispanic baseball
players are left with very few secondary options if they find themselves falling into the category
of bust. For many of these prospects, the task of leaving their homeland for the U.S. is the first
major obstacle for them to overcome.
V. Hispanic Talent: An Unethical Market
A high demand for talent from the third world has led to an unethical market for foreign
baseball players. Players born in the United States and Canada are eligible for the First-Year
Player Draft, also known as the Rule 4 Draft. These players can be selected after they have
graduated high school or if they begin college, they must either be 21 or have completed their
junior or senior year in order to be draft eligible13. In order to keep expenses low for MLB
franchises, the league has instituted an allotment system for the draft. The MLB calculates a
limit for each draft selection. For example, in the 2014 draft, the Houston Astros were allotted
just under $8 million for the signing bonus of the first overall pick. These allotments decline for
later picks. The final pick of the first round in this years draft, held by the St. Louis Cardinals,
is capped at a $1,650,400 bonus. In addition to valuing each pick, every team has a limited pool
of funds to spend on all of their signing bonuses. The Marlins hold the largest pool this year at
just over $14 million while the Baltimore Orioles have the smallest at $2.2 million14. If teams
exceed their bonus allotments, they are subject to steep tax penalties. While international free

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agents are not subject to a draft, the MLB has instituted a similar allotment system for signing
bonuses. For international free agents, they can sign once they are 16 years old. The signing
period occurs begins July 2nd and closes June 15th of the following year15. Although MLB
franchises are likely to sign more players from the Rule 4 Draft, the bonuses for international
players are capped at much lower values. The MLB calculates these values as if there were to be
an international draft. They allotted the Astros $3.3 million for the first slot of the international
signing period16. These bonuses decline at a much more rapid pace than those of the Rule 4
Draft. The allotted money only exceeds $1 million for the first 11 slots. Alex Rodriguez is an
example of a player with Dominican heritage benefiting from U.S. citizenship. Selected first
overall by the Seattle Mariners in 1993, Rodriguez understands the difference between being
drafted and signing as an international free agent. Im really grateful I was born and raised in
the United States...Im sure I would have been a top prospect in the Dominican, but maybe I
would have gotten $5,000, I would have been on a much tougher road17. While there is no
sufficient data to show that U.S. born players are any more successful than their Hispanic
teammates, they are compensated as if they have a brighter baseball future. Although foreign
players can pose a greater risk for MLB organizations as they are surrounded by unknowns, this
gap in payout depicts the asymmetrical power that Pratt describes in the contact zone. Unfair
compensation strengthens the borderland that has been created between the MLB and Hispanic
players. Although these bonuses obviously favor North American players, monetary disparity
hardly describes the complexity of this unethical market.
A. Lack of Regulation: Identity Fraud and Steroid Use
MLB organizations are willing to pay a premium for young Hispanic talent, most
prominently Dominican talent. At the beginning of the 2014 MLB season, Dominicans

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accounted for 11 percent of players on MLB rosters18. This statistic is staggering considering
that the Dominicans total population is roughly 30 times smaller than that of the U.S.19. In order
to maximize potential signing bonuses, many Dominican hopefuls turn to identity fraud or
steroid abuse in order to meet the demands of MLB teams. The market value for Hispanic
prospects sharply declines after the age of 16. It is thus in a players best interest to use any
means necessary to be a physically mature 16 year old. This can be accomplished through a
combination of identity fraud and steroid use. Adding to their woes, stimates suggest that more
than 40% of the Dominicans population (just under 10 million) live below the poverty line20.
With baseball players abandoning school for baseball usually between the ages of 12 and 14,
many utilize questionable means to accelerate their path out of poverty. In 2012, 31 out of 105
total suspensions for steroids in the minor leagues were for players from the Dominican21.
Author, David Fidler describes the root of the problem as stemming from buscones, personal
trainers in the Dominican who can demand up to 40 percent of a players signing bonus.
Although the MLB is responding to the steroid issue and created the International Talent
Committee in response to the Ballplayer: Pelotero, an all or nothing mentality still exists in the
minds of Dominican prospects. Charles S. Farrell, co-founder of the Dominican Republic Sports
and Education Academy, describes the issues with this mindset. Even when I talk to kids 98
percent will not make it to the majors but its almost like every kid is sitting there saying, well
Im part of the 2 percent, Farrell said. If they see that baseball is not the only way out, youll
see a dramatic drop in use of steroids because the win-at-all-cost mentality will disappear21.
In addition to steroid use, players take advantage of poor regulation within their
homeland to alter their age or identity. In July of 2006, the Washington Nationals signed a 16year old shortstop, Esmailyn Gonzalez for a $1.4 million signing bonus. However, an MLB

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investigation uncovered Gonzalez to actually be Carlos David Alvarez Lugo, born in November
of 1985, four years older than initially reported22. Identity fraud is not limited to minor league
players. Recently, two players in the MLB, Leo Nez and Fausto Carmona were discovered to
be Juan Carlos Olviedo and Roberto Hernndez. The difficult path to overcome the borderland
that has developed between the MLB and Caribbean athletes is eased by illegal actions. This,
rather than beginning to breakdown the border, further reinforces it. This border has come to be
defined by the unethical actions of parties on either side. This unfortunate consequence of the
MLBs desire for international talent is exemplified by the case of Jean Carlos Batista.
1. Jean Carlos Batista: 9 for two years
Jean Carlos Batista, born November 15, 1991 in Los Mulos, Dominican Republic, is an
example of the poor regulation hampering Dominican prospects. Batista, an MLB hopeful, spent
the bulk of his time training with his buscone, Astn Jacobo. Jacobo compared Dominican
prospects to harvesting crops. Baseball When you deal in baseball, young kids, its like when
you go harvest the land. You put the seed in the land, and then you put water in it, clear it, you
do all of this and then when it grows, you sell it. Its just the way it is. As Batista began to
garner interest from MLB scouts, the pressure began to mount. Batista claimed, I need to sign
so I can help get my mom out of here. Jacobo described his relationship with Batista in
Ballplayer: Pelotero. Me and Jean Carlos see his mother probably once a week. Sometimes
two weeks and he doesnt see his mother but he sees me every day and he spends 7, 8, 10 hours a
day with me. We eat together, we write together, we sing together, we are in the field together.
He tells me, You know I dont have a father so you [you are] my father. On July 1st, when
MLB organizations begin negotiations with international prospects, the Houston Astros offered
Batista a $450,000 signing bonus, a far cry from the desired $1.5 million. Jacobo fielded the

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phone calls that day, yet once the offer was on the table, Batista demanded the phone and began
negotiating on his own behalf. Jacobo responded by saying, Thats my boy. I love him, I really
love him. However, the two sides failed to come to an agreement. Then, everything began to
change. The MLBs investigation of Batista came back inconclusive. When Jacobo attempted to
uncover the root of the issue, he found that Batistas birth year changed from 1991 when he was
in third grade to 1992 when he was in fourth grade. Batista claimed that this was an oversight
made by his father who was very sick at the time. No matter the cause of the issue, the MLB
suspended Batista for a year preventing him from signing with the Astros. No longer did Batista
and Jacobo share a father-son relationship. Jacobo repeatedly called Batista a liar and cut off
communication between the two. The following year, Batista signed with the Astros for
$200,00023. Batista is currently playing for the Douglas Diablos, a member of the independent
(non MLB affiliated) league24. Jean Carlos has become an unfortunate example of the
asymmetrical distribution of power even before coming in contact with the borderland of the
MLB. Both Batista and Jacobo became victims of the buscone-player relationship. Batista,
negatively impacted by both identity fraud and the lost support of Jacobo, was forced to cope
with two more obstacles in his attempt to play in the MLB.
B. Black Market
In 2009, the Washington Nationals agreed to terms with Yewri Guilln, a 16-year old
shortstop for $30,000. However, the MLB suspended Guilln for a year upon discovering the
falsification of his birth certificate. During the suspension, Guilln trained at the Nationals
Dominican facility without pay. Finally, when his contract was approved in 2011, Guilln began
to experience headaches. One of the Nationals coaches called Guilln out by claiming that
baseball players dont sit out for having headaches. When symptoms worsened, a trainer gave

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Guilln aspirin and tea. As symptoms continued to grow progressively worse, Guillns family
rushed him to the highly regarded Clnica Abreu. Yet the family couldnt afford the $1,300 fee
or tap into Guillns health insurance as the contract had yet to be finalized. At a more affordable
clinic, doctors diagnosed Guilln with bacterial meningitis. Surgery to remove fluid from his
brain, as a result of the delayed diagnosis, proved to be ineffective. Guilln passed away on
April 15th, 2011, the day he was scheduled to report to the Nationals rookie league in the U.S.
This story was simply a blip on the radar of the MLB, which responded by asserting that they
followed proper protocols. Despite these claims, the Nationals facility lacked certified athletic
trainers or doctors at the time of Guillns death. Unfortunately, Guilln is only one example of
MLB hopefuls negatively impacted by the questionable market for Hispanic talent25. Guillns
story exemplifies the power disparity between the impoverished Hispanic prospects and the
corporate giants of the MLB. Resulting from a lack of negotiation power, Guilln suffered.
Guilln lacked options at the time of his illness and the Nationals failure to take proper actions
ultimately led to Guillns tragic death. This disparity further defines the borderland of the
MLB.
1. Miguel San: Once in a Generation
Miguel ngel San, born on May 11, 1993 in San Pedro de Macors, Dominican
Republic, began to capture the attention of professional scouts at an early age. Sans 16th
birthday was a major holiday for his friends and family as he became eligible to sign with an
MLB team, something that he had been training for since the age of 12. Moreno Tejada, Sans
personal trainer, described San as valuable. Many speculated that San would break the
record for the largest signing bonus for an international free agent, a record previously held by
pitcher Michael Ynoa who earned $4.25 million from the Oakland Athletics. As an elite talent,

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San benefited from having a true agent to advocate for him. Prior to signing, Sans agent, Rob
Plummer, moved San and eight of his family members from the rundown shack that they called
home into a much more luxurious house. No longer sleeping on rotted out mattresses, the
lifestyle of the rich and famous became a much more realistic outcome for San. However, Rene
Gayo, a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates, began to raise questions regarding Sans true age after a
private tryout held at Tejadas training facility. Gayo saw a player that he believed too talented
and physically mature to be a 16 year old. Gayos concerns led to the publishing of an ESPN
article questioning Sans true age. In order to prevent identity fraud with international
prospects, the MLB conducts extensive background checks for each prospective signee. In the
case of San, the MLB ordered a bone scan as well as a DNA test to confirm that San was
related to his alleged mother. The bone scan confirmed that San was between the ages of 16
and 17 and the DNA test matched San with his mother at 99.348 percent certainty. Plummer
described Sans situation as, guilty until proven innocent. Despite these results, the MLB did
not conclude its investigation until after the July 2nd opening of the signing period. The MLB
announced in late July that they could not determine Sans real age. However, they cleared
teams to sign him at their own risk. If San turned out to be lying about his age, he would be
suspended for one year thus losing a year of development with his new team. Prior to this
announcement, Gayo offered Sans family an ultimatum: sign with the Pirates for $2 million
and he would take care of the issues with the MLB. Gayo claimed that San would not be able
to sign with anyone else and he would leverage his power with the MLB to avoid suspension. In
a secretly recorded meeting with Sans mother, Gayo told her that, Unfortunately this is a
country of lies, and even though you are telling the truth, you have to pay for that. Eventually,
after all of the drama, San signed with the Minnesota Twins agreeing to a $3.15 million signing

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bonus. It has been speculated that Gayo raised concerns regarding Sans age in an attempt to
sign him for much less than the estimated $6 million that it would take. Gayo responded to the
San situation by saying, Everyone involved was guilty of doing what their job descriptions
demand and unfortunately this created confusion for the San family. The unethical actions of
Gayo cost the San family millions of dollars and a great deal of heartache and stress23. San is
currently on the disabled list after undergoing Tommy John surgery prior to the 2014 MLB
season to repair a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow26. Despite this
setback, Baseball America rated San as the sixth ranked MLB prospect for the 2014 season27.
With both San and the MLB attempting to leverage their power against one another, San for
financial gain and the MLB attempting to sign an elite talent at minimal cost, the borderland
strengthens. These opposing interests create a gap between Hispanic talent and the MLB. Yet,
the MLB will always prove to be victorious as they have the upper hand in the asymmetrical
power distribution of the borderland. In addition to having the upper hand, as Pratt cautions
there will be instances of coercion, just as Gayo attempted to coerce San into a premature
signing.
2. Yasiel Puig: Human Trafficking to Baseball Superstardom
In the MLB there has been a recent push for Cuban talent. The relationship between the
United States and Cuba poses a life-threatening situation for Cuban players attempting to take
their talents to the MLB. Yasiel Puig, a Cuban born baseball legend, eventually defected from
his homeland in 2012 after four failed attempts. While playing in the state run Cuban league,
Puig earned $17 per month. His final journey to the United States began in Matanzas, a northern
province of Cuba just 90 miles from Florida. Here he met a cigarette boat run by member of Los
Zetas drug cartel. In order to avoid the U.S. Coast Guard, the boat travelled 350 miles to the

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Yucatn Peninsula where Puig would attempt to gain Mexican citizenship. The MLB along with
the U.S. Department of Treasury requires Cuban defectors to gain citizenship in a third country
before signing with an MLB club. Puigs plans became complicated when the financier of his
defection, a small time crook in Miami, Raul Pacheco, failed to pay the agreed upon $250,000
fee to Los Zetas. Pacheco viewed Puig as an investment opportunity. Puig agreed to pay
Pacheco 20 percent of his MLB contract. When the cartel learned of Pachecos inability to make
payment, they began raising the fee. After weeks of being held in a rundown motel, the cartel
began to make threats, including cutting off Puigs limbs to ensure that he would never again
play baseball. With the fee rising north of $400,000, Los Zetas decided to auction off Puig.
Before they agreed to a deal, Pacheco organized a group of financiers from Miami, burst into the
hotel where Puig was being held and staged a kidnapping. Upon liberation from the cartel, Puig
began to audition for teams in Mexico City and eventually sign a seven-year, $42 million
contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Puig has become an iconic player in the United States,
known for his unmatched hustle on the field as well as occasional instances of immaturity. As a
result of a lifelong geographic separation, Puig struggled to adapt to his new life in the U.S. For
example, in December of 2013, Puig was pulled over for driving 110 mph in Florida. Puig was
recorded by the police officers camera shouting at himself. He told himself, You have to learn,
compadre (translated from Spanish). At the time, Puigs son was just 20 days old. One of
Puigs favorite Cuban sayings, Dormir es cuando te toca a morir, roughly translating to, sleep
is when its your turn to die perfectly sums up his all or nothing approach to life28. Although
Puig is a rare case of a Hispanic player achieving fame and fortune in the MLB, he put
everything on the line in the process and unfortunately he has struggled to move on from his risk
taking ways.

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VI. Colonization: An Extraction of Hispanic Talent
In her paper, Baseball as an Intersection of Popular Culture and North American

Exploitation in the Dominican Republic, Tiffany Gurprasad asserts, the MLB indulges in the
Caribbeans colonial past, extracting talent from the Dominican without regard for the country
itself17. Within the Dominican, Major League franchises have developed baseball academies for
their signees to attend. The Toronto Blue Jays were the first organization to establish a
Dominican academy in 1977. Teams began extracting this talent prior to establishing these
outposts yet they began to ramp up their effort in response to the success of Dominican players
on the 1962 San Francisco Giants. The Giants signed four of the first Dominican baseball
players, Felipe and Matty Alou, Manny Mota and Juan Marichal. While the Giants signed U.S.
born prospects for $60,000 bonuses, the bonuses of these four Dominicans totaled just $5,000.
The Alous, Mota and Marichal led the 62 Giants to the National League pennant and went on to
play in a combined 16 All Star games23.
These academies differ from those of buscones as they are the first true connection
Dominican players have to the MLB. While MLB academies used to resemble the ill maintained
fields of the buscones, teams are beginning to invest millions to improve their Dominican
facilities. In 2000, the MLB ordered an investigation of these facilities. One of the hired
investigators, Charles S. Farrell described most as being horrible, we found bugs in the rooms,
cheese sandwiches for dinner21. Author of Stealing Lives, Arturo J. Moreno told the story of 19
boys sharing a room designed for 2-3 occupants along with a single bathroom lacking running
water in the Dominican in 1997. These players dealt with an inebriated coach who at one point
threatened them with a gun. A second story from Morenos book is when a street doctor nearly
crippled a players arm when he stomped on it in an attempt to reset the bone. In response to

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these revolting conditions, MLB teams have begun to build multimillion-dollar facilities in the
Dominican. Prior to the 2014 season, the Mariners opened their new $7 million facility which
includes two fields with room to build a third, a dormitory, dining hall, classrooms and a
computer lab29. Although the upgrades of facilities have led to an improvement of basic human
rights for Hispanic prospects, Charlie Drysdale of Minor League Ball still describes them as an
Ellis Island for these players. They mark a checkpoint that funnels players from all over Latin
America to determine if they are talented enough to move onto the rookie leagues held in the
United States. With all of these factors combined, the hierarchy of power in the MLB
international free agent system resembles that of colonization. Alan Klein, the author of
Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream sums up the purpose of these academies:
it finds the raw materials (talented athletes), refines them (trains the athletes), and ships abroad
the finished product (baseball players) 17. Guprasad furthers Kleins point in her essay, The
academies commoditize young athletes and take advantage of Dominican talent while
undermining baseball in the nation they are based in17. Although the MLB academies provide
Hispanic prospects with an opportunity to begin their professional baseball careers, in the end
they simply reaffirm the dominance of the Western world. The monopoly that the MLB has
created forces Hispanic players to attend these academies in order to find success in the
professional baseball world. Not until recently have they begun to improve their facilities.
These two factors combined perfectly depict how the MLB has taken complete advantage of
Hispanic prospects.
VII. Conclusion
Despite the improvements made to the international free agent market such as the
upgrades to Dominican academies, stricter standards for signing players and the implementation

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of the International Talent Committee, the market for Hispanic prospects remains fundamentally
flawed. The new academies provide a better working environment for players yet they must first
sign with an organization to utilize these facilities. Although the standards have become stricter,
players will still attempt to work the system in order to maximize their bonuses. Also, the talent
committee, run by two United States born MLB executives, Rob Manfred and Michael Weiner30,
will struggle to fully understand the culture surrounding professional baseball in Latin America.
As MLB executives, it is in their best interest to maximize the profits of the MLB. This involves
driving down the prices organizations must pay to sign top Hispanic talent. Also, while MLB
academies include education in their programs, many of these prospects abandoned school for
the baseball diamond around the age of 12. When these young boys see Dominican heroes such
as Albert Pujols and Robinson Can signing 10 year contracts worth nearly a quarter of a billion
dollars, it develops a mentality of why not me? Klein reaffirms this mindset, Many
Dominican boys see baseball as their only escape, and the inordinate pull of the sport over them
is strengthened by the astounding success that the best Dominican players have achieved in
North American professional baseball17. Unfortunately, this is something that MLB regulation
cannot fix. The capitalist society of the United States has developed profit hungry executives in
professional baseball who are willing to sign players to ludicrous contracts in order to win. As
long as players are signing these contracts, there will be a strong desire for Hispanic players to
take their talents to the MLB. As exemplified in the case of Yasiel Puig, these players are willing
to put their lives on the line in order to play in North America. To add to downside of the
situation, professional baseball, although a multi-billion dollar industry, is simply a game. The
game is played mainly to entertain the people of North America. After all of the risks Hispanic
prospects have taken, and only a fraction of the original hopefuls are fortunate enough to take the

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field for an MLB organization, their fans never get to know them as people. If they are traded to
anther team or fail to produce, they simply become an afterthought.
In order to achieve meaningful change, Latin American countries need to take it upon
themselves to change the mentality of professional baseball being the only way out of poverty.
This will require more organizations such as Farrells Dominican Republic Sports and Education
Academy. Here, Farrell teaches athletes that there is life beyond sports. Farrell emphasizes that
failing to play in the MLB doesnt define failure in life. Baseball does not need to be a form of
cruel optimism. However, until this becomes a commonly accepted belief among Hispanic
prospects, the MLB will continue to take advantage of the international market baseball talent
thus reinforcing the borderland between baseball in the Caribbean and United States.

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