During CBT, I knew a family whose teenage son was a talented pitcher. I had trouble with his name (in my defense, there were eight kids) but I never forgot that he was (and presumably still is) actively being scouted by the Detroit Tigers. His father mentioned this to me with a particular type of pride that I recognized across the divide of language and culture. It was pride that American parents show when their kids get into a great college. A sort of casual pride that implicitly acknowledges while this is awesome, it's something that happens to lots of people. It's something special, but not like "winning the lottery" special.
In my high school graduating class in the U.S. two students got into Harvard and another kid while another scouted by the Yankees. The kids who got into Harvard got pats on the back that showed the sort of comfortable pride I described above, while the baseball player got treated as being only slightly less important than the President of the United States.
Maybe it's a Yankees vs Tigers thing. Or maybe it's because the Dominican family I mentioned is one of achievers: the eldest daughter an abogada (lawyer) and the father is a major mover-and-shaker in the local political party. But I think this disparity in enthusiasm is due to the fact that so many Dominicans go to the grandes ligas (Big Leagues).
Dominicans go to the Big Leagues at a greater rate than Americans go to prestigious universities; than Americans go to college at all; than Dominicans go to college at all; and, last but not least at a far greater rate than Americans go to the Big Leagues. It's not even close.
There are currently about 1000 Dominicans in the MLB system. That means in a nation of 11,000,000 people, about 0.0009% play professional ball in the U.S. With 30 clubs and about 250 players on the main team and associated farm teams that makes for about 7500 players in the Big League system. Even if the remaining 6500 are all natural born citizens of Los Estados Unidos (which they are not, but let´s pretend for simplicity's sake) in my nation of 300+ million that's only 0.00002%. That extra 0? That's literally an entire order of magnitude of difference.
All this to say that preparing Dominican youth for American ball is big business here. Would a $10 million contract blow your mind? Now imagine that feeling multiplied by an exchange rate of 45:1.
There are tons of professional trainers, many MLB veterans themselves, and there are dozens of baseball camps and academies. Like anything that involves children doing the work of adults it has it's dark side. Mother Jones called the training system a "sweatshop" and unscrupulous trainers can pervert a mentoring relationship into something exploitative. This happens in the States with tiny gymnasts and teenage pop stars (paging Dr. Luke) but I daresay the stakes are higher here. Dominican parents are not blameless, but being broke is more forgivable than being merely fame hungry.
The business is quite a site to see, and I've only seen a little bit. And thankfully, what I've has so far, mostly been good.
In one corner of my pueblo, near the cemetery and there is a dusty play. The grass is mixed with weeds and trash blows around the bleachers, so I had assumed it was inactive. This puzzled me because I see kids playing pelota (which is what you call baseball when you play it with a stick and empty milk carton for a ball) in the street nearly everyday. It turns out I just went to the play on the wrong day. A friends brother is a trainer and one of the elementary teachers coaches a practice team.
I learned all of this when Major League Baseball came to host a clínica (clinic) in my isolated town in the mountains. Cat and I showed up to watch like everyone else in town, but unlike most of them I didn't know what clínica was. I assumed it was something vaguely medical, like a weigh-in for boxers or the type of "turn your head and cough" physical exam they put me through when I ran Cross Country in High School. It turns out a clínica is a miniature baseball training camp.
Like most Dominican events the clínica started an hour past the official time to allow everyone to show up. In that space Cat and I talked to a woman from MLB whose job is to improve the prospects of Dominican recruits to MLB. The big business I mentioned has a history of producing technically expert players with no emotional intelligence or critical thinking capabilities. They make poor decisions when in the heat of the moment and explode in the dugout afterwards. They may be professionals, but their personal development is arrested at the age they entered the system.
Players "released" from their contracts be retained by the Grandes Ligas as técnicos (technical trainers), managers, etc. and some will bounce around in the international leagues - not a horrible fate- but many, being booted from MLB is the end. With have no job experience and no other skills they have no future. Improving their prospects means improving education.
In addition to equipment, MLB donates books and scholarships to schools. They are also raising their internal standards. You can't play if haven't graduated high school, and you need to learn English - one of the most valuable job skills in the DR. And your parents need to be involved, from the beginning, and until you are an adult.
She says she watches the game now differently. She knows the players and their stories. When a Dominican player fouls a play and the camera zooms in for the reaction shot of his pained face she knows what he has to to through to get there and the problems that pain him back home.
Learning all this from her I looked again at the tecnicos as they put the boys through their paces. Some were retirement age and some were still young. I wondered about their stories.
After the clínica I learned that last year a local boy had been released from his contract before he even made it to the States. He had been using his pending fame to chat up women, something prohibited during training. Clearly, he still had some growing up to do.
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