Nick, when I write something on these threads…Allison and Chris (and I’ve told her this in person) are my ideal readers. Of course, they’re not going to read everything I write, but that’s not important…it’s their conscience I’m conversing with.

what does that mean?

He owns a Cuban sandwich shop on Yawkey Way, you can catch him there before games. He is the sweetest man ever.

“If a man put a gun to my head and said I’m going to pull the trigger if you lose this game, I’d want Luis Tiant to pitch that game.” – Boston Red Sox Manager Darrell Johnson

btw, I want to especially thank my man Nick for the research on this thread.

I just thought of my first Latin baseball love: Luis Tiant! I loved him!- with that huge bulge in his cheek.

You are the teammates I hope to play with as we forge ahead…celebrating and confronting the challenges of a globalized world.

Or we could just have a beer together sometime.

So my question is: is this true, and if so, why? Is it driven by changing economics of the teams (realizing that investing in baseball academies is a net benefit to the teams)? Is it driven by declining interest among American youth, driving a need to recruit outside the US for the best talent? Are American sports as a whole simply becoming more international, for whatever reason (i.e., the rise of European stars in basketball and Japanese stars in baseball, along with a potentially increasing Dominican influence)?

Some in the Asian baseball world have been trying to enter into a post-season series with MLB (a true World Series), but MLB hasn’t been up to it. The farthest they’ve gotten is organizing in all-Asian series which includes clubs from Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China.

I’ve been reading “National Pastimes” over the weekend, and the difference in how MLB acts and how other national soccer leagues act is striking. Unlike soccer, there is no worldwide authority along the lines of FIFA in the baseball world. MLB, as the biggest kid on the block, is the default world baseball authority. Essentially, what is does is right, because it can. And, as rc21 has pointed out, it rightly does things in its best interest, not in the best interest of the people of the DR, or any other country.

Nother turned me on to this, but back in 2002, when MLB and the players’ association were negotiating a labor agreement (negotiated again last year), they were talking about a “worldwide draft” to include players from at least Latin America. At the time (I’m not so sure about recent developments), the talks were only between MLB and the MLBPA and didn’t include representatives from countries whose citizens would be drafted. Granted, a Latin player couldn’t be drafted without their prior consent, but instituting a worldwide draft seems like an act of a worldwide governing body, like FIFA, not a single professional league, like MLB.

It is not the job of MLB nor should it be to see to the needs of the citizens of the DR. That is the job of the government and or each individual who lives in the DR.

By the way I do not believe anyone has been forced to attend these academies,but I could be mistaken.

It is important to always question the ramifications of the actions of those in power. Especially when very disempowered or desperate people are involved. Questioning may lead to satisfactory answers and we can all sit back comfortably and enjoy the action. Or it may not. But if you aren’t willing to question those in power, then you are equally accountable for any diliterious impacts.

So, have the academies been set up in such a way that they don’t take into account the negative ramifications it can have on those that don’t make in MLB? What happens to them?

“Almost every major league team has an academy on the island, where kids as young as fourteen drop out of school and devote their lives to baseball. Street agents, or buscones, scour the poor neighborhoods for talented children — many as young as nine years old.

These same talented children, most of whom will never make it north, bear a heavy burden: the weight of desperate hope for a family ticket out of poverty.”

It’s the dropping out of school when most will never see a benefit form the baseball academy that leads me to questions. When they give up that education, have they placed all their eggs in one lottery basket that leaves them destitute and hopeless if they don’t hold the winning ticket?

If the academies include programs that make sure these children maintain the level of education needed to make them employable outside of the MLB down the road, that’s awesome. If not, I’d be concerned.