Monday, October 22, 2012

Corruption of the Youth, and Manipulation of the Poor


As a person with a degree in History I love to read books and watch documentaries.  Documentaries, to me, are the true reality TV.  Sometimes it is tough to find a real good documentary, but they are out there.  Some of my favorites are "Waiting for Superman" by Davis Guggenheim, "9/11" by Gedeon and Jules Naudet and "Civil War" by Ken Burns.  Although sometimes documentaries can be so far off base that it makes it painful to watch, such as "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Michael Moore Hates America", where the film makers agenda takes precedent over the facts and the truth is distorted.  Also as a person who has been involved in coaching youth sports for almost 25 years, I have a special place for sports documentaries and that's why I love the 30 for 30 series on ESPN, mainly because it is depicts stories that I grew up.

As I was browsing my online Netflix account the other day to watch something while I did some application testing for work I came across a documentary called "Ballplayer: Pelotero".  It is a documentary about the increasing number of baseball players from the Dominican Republic and what they go through to get signed by Major League Baseball teams.  It was done very well and shows the poverty that these young players come from and the pressure that is on them to sign the big contract so they can pull their family from poverty.  It also shows the corruption, manipulation and downright dirty business there is in the Dominican Republic, where it has been declared the Wild West as far amateur baseball is concerned.

The 1962 San Francisco Giants had four players on its roster that were from the Dominican Republic in which they paid a total $5,000 to play.  One happened to be Hall of Famer Juan Marichal and he led them to the World Series crown that year.  In the 1980's Major League teams began to sink millions of dollars into the Dominican Republic by increasing their scouting staffs and building training facilities on the island to be able to pick up the next big star.  Twenty percent of professional baseball players are from the Dominican Republic, that's a country with a population which equates to two percent of The United States of America.

Major League Baseball instituted a rule that no team can sign a player from the Dominican until he is 16 years of age, and they cannot sign until July 2 of that year.  So they need to be 16 on July 2.  If a player does not sign when they are 16 then the chances of them sign a lucrative deal are slim, if signing at all.  This leads to players families falsifying birth records, identities and injecting their children with Human Growth Hormones (HGH) to be ready to sign that deal when they are 16 years of age.  This has led Major League Baseball to have an investigation office right on the island.

The documentary follows two young players who go to two different baseball academies where coaches are training players for the pros.  The first player was Jean Carlos Batista who is being trained by Astin Jacobo and the second is Miguel Angel Sano, who is considered the best player in the Dominican and will command the largest bonus signing in the history of the island.  Sano is trained by Moreno Tejada.  The movie follows these boys through their training and shows the poverty their families come from.  There is major buzz about Sano, scouts are constantly surrounding him.

It was easy for me to determine that the corruption and manipulation of these players and their families would come from these trainers.  The documentary shows that both trainers are pretty straight laced and are a clueless to the process as the players.  The trainers don't receive money until the player’s sign, so it is in the best interest that these trainers are as rule abiding as the player.

A couple months before the signing deadline a scout from the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, as it turned out, gave a false tip to MLB Investigations on Sano's age, which would eventually drive the price down for the young star.  Sano and his family were put through the ringer, blood tests, urine tests, bone density tests.  They organized all the papers that proved his correct age and that it still wasn't enough.  According, to Sano's family member, MLB told Sano to sign with the Pirates and the investigation would close.  The family later videotaped the scout from the Pirates and got him saying they need him to get this to go away.

With all this going on it was Batista that lied about his age.  Apparently his father had changed his age when he was 10 years old, right before he died.  Batista continued to claim his innocence and blamed his dead father for making a mistake, and blaming it on his illness.  It led to a falling out with his trainer and a lawsuit for monies spent on Batista after he served his suspension mandated by the MLB.

This was a powerful documentary, not as powerful of the ones I mentioned at the beginning, but powerful enough to understand what goes on behind the scenes.  The system that has been created by the MLB which has created this monster.  Forcing kids to lie about who they are and do things to their body to better their family's situation.  The one thing that the movie did not mention was schooling, it did not say whether they were attending school or not.  It does say they had attended at one point, but once they started training for their Major League careers it's not even discussed.

I recommend this movie to anyone who likes documentaries.  It is a true documentary about what goes behind the scenes of America's past-time.  Major League Baseball needs to fix this situation or we are going to see 12 year old kids pumping up on steroids looking for the next big pay check.  They need to work with the MLB Players Union to institute and International Draft.  Over the past few years it's been the bidding on the International Players that has demanded the most money, while young prospects in the United States are required to enter the MLB Draft and then negotiate with only the team that owns their rights.  

Ballplayer: Pelotero.  Check it out.

3D
If you don't take it from me, ask my wife.

No comments:

Post a Comment