Chico Escuela Knows How Very, Very Good Baseball Can Be
To Both Successful Players and to a Country’s GDP
Soon, the latest annual Dominican Summer League of 50+ teams will come to their season’s close.
Which got me to thinking how beneficial baseball is to baseball-avid Dominican Republic fiscally, and how other neighboring Caribbean countries fail to similarly benefit fiscally by adopting baseball with the same level of passion
I read this:
“Haiti is a country in the Caribbean, occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Its capital and largest city is Port-au-Prince.
But while the Dominican Republic has long been a hotbed of baseball, producing hundreds of major leaguers, neighboring Haiti has rarely produced any minor leaguers and has never produced a major leaguer, although there have been a number of players of Haitian background, such as Estevan Florial, Juan Pierre, Jesen Therrien and Touki Toussaint. Williams Louico were born there.”
Those two adjoining countries have virtually identical populations approximating 12 million.
Baseball can be a boon to countries like the Dominican Republic that realize it can be a huge contributor to GDP, in various ways.
In that regard, I read this in Wikipedia: “The rise of baseball in the Dominican Republic has also had a massive impact on the economy of the country as a whole, generating around $1 billion per year via training facilities and professional games.” And I imagine highly successful major league players invest a lot back in their homeland.
I also read this:
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are two Caribbean countries that share the same island, Hispaniola. However, despite sharing the same island, the two nations have developed very differently in recent decades. In 1990, Dominicans had twice the GDP per capita of Haitians. 32 years later, they are seven times richer than Haitians.
The chart shows both trajectories. While the Dominican Republic experienced sustained growth during the three decades, Haiti’s GDP per capita has barely grown and, at times, even slightly decreased.
That article’s chart showed that a few years ago, the DR’s GDP was close to $20,000 per person, but Haiti’s GDP was below $3,000 per person.
So it seems that many countries like Haiti, Columbia, and Brazil are making a huge fiscal mistake by not adopting baseball as a country growth industry.
| Rank | Country (or possession) | # | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  United States | 1,081 | 73.5% |
| 2 |  Dominican Republic | 144 | 9.8% |
| 3 |  Venezuela | 93 | 6.3% |
| 4 |  Cuba | 34 | 2.3% |
| 5 |  Puerto Rico | 27 | 1.8% |
| 6 |  Canada | 22 | 1.5% |
| 7 |  Mexico | 15 | 1% |
| 8 |  Japan | 13 | 0.9% |
| 9 |  Colombia | 8 | 0.5% |
| 10 |  Panama | 6 | 0.4% |
| 11 |  South Korea | 5 | 0.3% |
| 11 |  Curaçao[a] | 4 | 0.3% |
| 13 |  Nicaragua | 3 | 0.2% |
| 14 |  Aruba[b] | 2 | 0.1% |
 Australia | 2 | 0.1% | |
 Germany | 2 | 0.1% | |
 Italy | 2 | 0.1% | |
 Taiwan | 2 | 0.1% | |
| 19 |  Bahamas | 1 | 0.1% |
 Honduras | 1 | 0.1% | |
 Peru | 1 | 0.1% | |
 Portugal | 1 | 0.1% | |
 South Africa | 1 | 0.1% | |
 United Kingdom | 1 | 0.1% |
14 comments:
Morning Tom
The DR majors in producing shortstops.
Haiti majors in producing crime.
Asian countries will increase 2-3 fold in the next decade
Us Irish will major in smuggling munitions and eating potatoes
My brother's wake is today in Floral Park. Poor health prevents me from attending but my daughter will deliver my eulogy.
You would be proud of my words, Tom.
I’m sure I would be proud of those words.
The Mets are always on the lookout for the next Kodai Senga. Kidding aside, they could get this slugger Sato if they move the fences in to accommodate power.
Haiti has never been “baseball conducive”, in large part due to being governed by a series of dudes named Dick Tater. .
I have a more expansive “baseball” article at 8 AM today…but I thought this one was an interesting topic.
It's a horrible country governed by horrible corrupt people
Oh... not Senga
I expected to see a higher % of DR players
I guess the higher % just refers to great players
This is a very interesting post Tom, and well worth pointing out. I would suggest that everyone exercise some modesty in offering up explanations of the differences, as well as in offering advise about how to proceed. I will avoid discussion of the former and simply point out that the demand for baseball players is not inelastic, that is, at a certain point, there are far more players than are needed, which will drive the price down, and will disincentivize investments. So the more countries that make investments now which has very high initial costs for them, the less wise that investment is for them and so on. We can easily trace the expected outcomes. This phenomenon helps us understand the advantage of being a first mover. First movers incur risks. Some bets made early are good ones, as in the DR, other early investments at other times are not so good ones. To use an example, all the early investments made in Legal Tech after the development of early Ai like chatGTP, have proven, almost without exception to be poor investments. I can give you my predictions about investments that Private Equity is now making in Data Centers creating mortgages/leases for Ai companies will have terrible consequences for PE, the companies, and the public. The reasons in every case are somewhat different. The structure of the problem is the same. Explanations of causes and predictions of collateral consequences are probably best left to others.
DR and Japan and South Korea as well as Venezuela and to a lesser extent Puerto Rico and Cuba were early movers who benefitted and took chances that others were unprepared to for a wide range of reasons, and they have beneffitted accordingly. That's interesting enough in my book.
No need to assert that others didn't for reasons that reflect poorly on them. After all, Cuba did invest and did so under two different forms of less than ideal political leadership.
Mack, I am sure it pains you that you cannot attend your brother's funeral today. This will be a tough day emotionally and otherwise. Your daughter will represent you fully and everyone there will understand why you are not there. No one would have understood it any better than your brother would have!
Oh, he will be there.
He wouldn't dare miss his own wake.
There was that Indian baseball movie with Jon Hamm, which was quite interesting. Seems only a few guys reached the minors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Dollar_Arm
Yan and Senga. The 2027 bullpen is now set.
if Yan throws strikes and Senga doesn't implode. Let's see if they follow my suggestions about Tong. I am hopeful that Davis can one day be a starter if he gets his control under control. Tong could be an incredibly valuable late innings guy, and someday a closer.
I think next year's bullpen is taking shape now: Perhaps Senga, Williams, Yan and Lavender (the lefties) and several others including Nunez, Duarte and Megill and Garrett working back from injuries. I would just feel a bit better if one of our late inning leverage guys was a calm veteran, which is what we had in Weaver, Minter and Raley. Neither Yan, Senga nor Lavender have that combination of attributes.
Minter and Raley should be open as free agents in 2027 if the Mets are interested.
Great article Tom. Very interesting how two nations can share an island and still be so different.
I think one of them may make sense as a calm veteran who is comfortable in the role
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