Try to imagine the Commissioner of Baseball walking
up to the podium while on live television, motioning to the raucous crown to calm
down, and grabbing the microphone. He clears his throat and speaks into the
mike.
“With the twelfth pick in the MLB draft, the New
York Mets pick shortstop Joe Blow, who dropped out of middle school when he was
13-years old.”
Not going to happen, right? Well, welcome to major league baseball’s
dirty little secret.
Major League Baseball, for reasons no one wants to
discuss, allows their baseball teams to recruit and sign under-aged,
under-educated, 16-year olds outside of the United States and Puerto Rico.
Most ballplayers come from poor families who loan
their sons out to ex-professional baseball prospects who are the closest thing
to what we call an agent. The word for it is buscon.
A buscon
is far less than an agent and more like a surrogate father. They start with
kids as young as 13-years old and pretty much take them completely under their
wing. They feed them, put clothes on their back, teach them what fundamentals
they have learned along the way, and expose them to the Dominican version of
professional baseball. In return, they receive up to 30% of the signing bonus
these kids get if they sign someday with a professional baseball team.
There is basically no regulation or control placed
on them by MLB so the buscones don’t
stop there. Instead, they forge documents, change the age of the players, skim
additional bonus money, and introduce the kids to steroids.
One of the juicing tricks is to shoot up a player
with steroids a few weeks prior to a scheduled tryout with a major league team.
The kid that “hits” 90 during the tryout returns after cashing the bonus check,
barely hitting 85.
The annual income in the Dominican Republic is
around $2,400, so try and understand the attraction and appeal one would have
pursuing a possible seven figure signing bonus. Baseball is played by every boy
in every village, so it’s not like anyone has to learn something new. It’s not
hard to find out who the best players are in each town. Next comes a visit to
the player’s home and, once a parent or guardian goes along with this process
the child is whisked away to the Dominican version of “baseball camp”.
There’s only one restriction major league baseball
adheres to and that is the minimum 16-years old rule. Try and imagine the
uproar if you turned on ESPN and found out that the New York Yankees just
signed a ballplayer your son plays against in his high school conference. Then,
you realize that the kid signed is in his sophomore year.
In the past, no one kept any records, so two years
ago 16-year old that didn’t impress anyone is… well, he’s 16 again, using a new
name, a new birth record, and, boy, does he look ripped.
Lying about a kid’s age was easy before 9-11;
however, many of the recent stars (Pedro Feliz,
Bartolo Colon, Elvin
Santana) of the game got busted due to stricter verification of the ID
papers they use to go back to and out of their native country.
Baseball began to address this and on December 16,
2011, when Sandy Alderson was added, by the
MLB, to a committee being formed to look into the possibility of a world draft[i] For
years, only American players had to live with this restriction, but Canada and
Puerto Rico were added in 1990.
These was a considerable amount of bad press back
than about the fact that an American territory (Puerto Rico) allowed 16-year
olds to leave school and play professional baseball stateside. Puerto Rico was,
by far, the dominating Latin American nationality in the league and every roster
had their share of all-stars.
Now, 22-years later, there are less than 20 Puerto
Rican major league players in all of baseball, their own winter league is down
to only four team, and the Puerto Rican Baseball League[ii]
doesn’t even field a team in the capital city of San Juan.
The good news is 16-year olds aren’t leaving school
to play professional baseball. The bad news is these same 16-year olds can’t be
drafted for two more years and have to compete with their American counterparts
with their huge athletic programs in place.
Converting countries like the Dominican Republic and
Venezuela to the same condition as America could easily result in the same
devastating loss of talent now dissipating in Puerto Rico.
There is a lot of baseball talent in these countries
and they simply can’t complete on a level plane with players in America.
Why can’t players from all Latin American countries still
be allowed to sign at 16 but be forced to play at least two years in their
local DSL or VSL leagues? The entire bonus could be invested, including the controlled
share to the buscones, until they
play these two seasons.
You could also go back and allow players from Puerto
Rico to join them, as players from Panama, Columbia, and other countries already
do.
The 16-18 year olds can play and train in
state-of-the art- complexes like the once recently built by the Mets in the
Dominican.
Then, after their 18th birthday, the ones
that earned it can be granted a legitimate visa after full verification of
their name and real date of birth, and the passage of three extensive drug
tests that would take place randomly in their last Latin season.
This is cake and eat it baseball for third world
countries.
I remember talking a few years ago with legendary
Aussie scout, Trevor Barrett. He had just signed a handful of 16-year olds to
Mets contracts and I asked him where he thought they would start their first
season under a Mets contract.
Trevor assured me that they might get a visit for a
week to St. Lucie, but they wouldn't come stateside to play until their education
was completed. See, you don’t always
need steadfast rules, but Australia is not the Dominican Republic.
We can make this work so both baseball, the players,
and even the buscones all benefit.
2 comments:
This is a fantastic article, Mack.
What Stephen said.
+
In the U.S., the buscones run AAU basketball.
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