The Eastern Stars

by Mark Kurlansky

  One of the reasons scouts have so many fields to look at in San Pedro is that there are so many buscones. Like cocolo, buscón is a word that may or may not be pejorative, depending on who says it and how. Astin Jacobo, Jr., proud of his late father’s name, did not like to be called a buscón. He said the word carried the connotation of “hustler,” which he insisted he was not. He took thirty percent of bonuses, which was by no means the highest percentage but was among the higher ones. On the other hand, he had one of the better-equipped programs.

  “Thirty percent sounds like a lot to an American,” Jacobo said in his New York English. “But I have to provide clothing, schooling, food, housing, a woman to cook them food four times a day, and a staff of eight. I have $7,000 a month overhead, plus balls and bats. I lose four balls a day: they get hit out to the street and kids grab them.

  “It costs me between 350,000 and 450,000 pesos in two and a half years to get a player signed,” he added. But those pesos would only be about $14,000 in the U.S., and while a drafted American player does not come with all the nutritional, medical, educational, and developmental issues of a Dominican player, because of the difference in economies, it still costs Major League Baseball considerably more to develop a player in the U.S.

  For Jacobo, there was no better place in the world to develop baseball players than his father’s hometown. “I’ve been all over Latin America. This is the best town I have ever seen for baseball, because we have every kind of player here. You could come by a field on a Saturday morning and you might see a few major leaguers out playing with sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds.”

  The academies were the logical outgrowth of Rafael Avila’s backyard operation in the 1970s. But by the twenty-first century they had become sprawling, sophisticated operations. Every major-league franchise operated an academy. Most of them were in the southeast, either in San Pedro; La Romana, a few miles to the east; Boca Chica, a few miles to the west; or a few miles farther west toward the capital. An academy was a place where a major-league organization could feed, train, and educate Dominican prospects, addressing all their special needs at Dominican costs, rather than those of housing, feeding, and preparing them in the United States. That higher cost of operating in the States was why clubs did not hesitate to give up on their investments and release players who were not living up to their expectations before sending them up to the States. The Dominican Summer League was established as a kind of pre- Rookie League—a last proving ground before paying to bring prospects to the United States.

  An academy also gave an organization a scouting base in the Dominican Republic. In the 1970s and 1980s it became apparent that the teams that had operations in the country were getting most of the best Dominican talent.

  But the other purpose of academies was to serve as holding tanks while Dominican players waited for their visas, a safe place where the teenagers’ sleeping, eating, and other habits could be controlled.

  To many Americans, especially New Yorkers, it seems that Dominicans can easily get visas to the U.S., because so many have. The Dominican Republic, with an estimated total population of ten million, has sent more immigrants to the United States than any other Latin American country except Mexico, with an estimated population of 103 million. But it is not easy to get a visa, especially for poor people. The U.S. Embassy requires a $100 fee just to have an appointment to discuss a tourist visa, and the majority of Dominicans do not have the $100.

  Major League Baseball generally gets its players a special visa for people who have proven to be exceptional in their field. But newly signed prospects are brought in as temporary seasonal laborers, like farmworkers, whose visas expire at the end of the season. To get these visas, it has to be established that the worker is not taking a job away from an American worker. The U.S. government limits the number of such visas. After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, these visas became even harder to get. Until the player got his visa, he was kept at an academy, where his life and training could be carefully regulated and he could be further screened. Obviously, an organization is not likely to release a pitcher with a $4 million bonus or even one who received $500,000. But a few $20,000 or even $50,000 players got weeded out for visa problems.

  These boys at the academies, whose future seemed so bright when they received their bonuses only weeks before, were under tremendous pressure. The usual practice when releasing players, whether in the Dominican Republic or in the minor-league system in the U.S., was to simply inform them that they were released without giving any explanation. Sometimes they were released for what was deemed “bad behavior.” What would happen today to a Dominican Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, or Ted Williams, all famous in their day for bad behavior? If the Dominican player was released in the U.S., he would be given a return ticket to Santo Domingo. With the termination of the job, the temporary work visa expired.

  Exactly what the ball clubs were looking for was always a little mysterious. The scouts, the academies, the organizations, were looking for someone who would make a great Major League Baseball player. When considering a sixteen-year-old, however, this usually required some guesswork.

  Traditionally, what everyone in baseball wants are the “five-tool players.” Baseball requires an unusually varied list of skills, and it is extremely rare to find someone who does everything well. Only a handful of major-league stars have been five-tool players. Playing ability has been reduced to five basic tools: a good throwing arm, speed at running, skill in fielding, the power to hit home runs, and the ability to hit consistently, which is measured by batting average.

  Dario Paulino, who grew up in San Pedro and in 2007 became the coordinator of the Atlanta Braves’ academy in San Pedro, said, “That’s what we look for in every player: a five-tool player.”

  But there were a lot of less tangible things that scouts and trainers wanted to see. Dany Santana said, “The first thing I look for is . . .” and he pointed at his head. He quoted a favorite Eddy Toledo saying: “No puede pensar, no puede jugar”—If you can’t think, you can’t play. “If you are young and smart, you can improve quickly,” Santana noted. Coming from a stable home with some education came to be considered an important asset for Dominicans, even though many great Dominican players hadn’t come from such homes. The organizations wanted boys who could learn how to speak English and get along in the United States.

  Dominicans, especially Macorisanos, generally lived their lives confined to a small world. They didn’t travel and, despite the enormous number of both local and national newspapers, knew little about what went on in the outside world. During World War II, it was said that the average Dominican knew almost nothing about the war. Most sixteen-year-old Macorisanos had seldom left San Pedro. They may have gone a few miles east to La Romana or north to Hato Mayor, both agricultural areas. If they were signed by an organization with an academy a few miles east in Boca Chica or a little farther in Santo Domingo, that alone was a huge adventure.

  Rafael Vásquez said, “I look for a good arm, how he runs, how he talks to other people. Is he a good guy with a good family?”

  Asked what he looked for, Eddy Toledo said, “Athleticism and a passion for the game. It’s hard to find now. In the past, people loved the game more than now. Kids used to play baseball because they loved the game. Now the top priority is to be rich and famous, and not because of a passion in their hearts.”

  As bonuses went up, the teams grew more cautious. They used to simply pay what the scout recommended. Then they started sending someone to take a look and decide if the player merited the investment. There was a growing feeling that the amount of money paid was adversely affecting the players.

  Toledo did not like big bonuses. As of 2009, the biggest bonus he ever got was $43,000. He said, “If you give a poor kid $300,000, this is the first rock in the way of his development. He’s not hungry anymore. I am very worried about giving kids big money, because they don’t try hard anym
ore.”

  But this was inevitable as the power of Major League Baseball to change a Dominican life became ever more dramatic. Bonny Castillo, known as Manny in the U.S. when he played Major League Baseball in the early 1980s, coached newly signed prospects for Tampa Bay in the Dominican Republic. He said, “When I was playing, $15,000 was my best-paid year. I make more money now as a coach than I ever made as a player. The minimum wage got to $35,000 and now it is $400,000. If you make $400,000, you come home a rich man if you only play four or five seasons. You get in the big league, you’ve got it made.”

  Toledo’s example of what he liked was signing José Reyes for the Mets. Reyes, who exuded a love of baseball in the way he played, got a $13,000 signing bonus. “José Reyes was a special case,” said Toledo. “I signed him in Santiago at a restaurant lunch with his family and friends. When he left and walked toward the parking lot, I said to someone, ‘Look at that. There’s a specialness you can see. It’s like a halo.’”

  But Toledo admitted that he did not often see halos. So he looked for how easily the player moved to see if he was a natural athlete, and he looked at the kind of body the boy had and imagined what it could look like with the addition of protein and conditioning. If it was a pitcher, he looked for long arms, big hands, and broad shoulders. He pointed at a tall, thin young pitcher throwing on the mound with long arms and legs. “He’s got a perfect body,” he observed. “A lot of room to fill out.” And then he shouted with great enthusiasm, “That kid could tie his shoes standing up!”

  He and a lot of others also looked for aggression—aggressive pitchers and aggressive batters. Eddy Toledo recalled spotting Mets superstar pitcher Dwight Gooden as a boy: “I said, ‘He’s Bob Gibson. He competes, the aggression is there. His body is just not finished.’ ”

  José Serra, scout and Latin American supervisor for the Cubs, said, “The secret of scouting is that, more than anything, he has to be a kid who wants to be something special.” The Cubs’ academy was in a huge complex out in the fields on a dirt road off the highway between San Pedro and Boca Chica. The complex housed academies with dormitories, workout rooms, staffed dining rooms, and other facilities for four different major-league teams, and was expanding in the hopes of drawing one or two more. As the scouting became more intense, success depended less on secrecy and more on outbidding competitors, and to adjust to this new reality, the organizations were increasingly clustering together in these large multiteam complexes rather than hiding away in small individual camps in the fields. This particular complex was built by former ballplayers, including Junior Noboa, a Dominican from Azua in the desertlands of the southwest, the poorest part of the Dominican Republic. Noboa, in an unspectacular eight years on various major-league teams, hit only one home run and never commanded huge paychecks. But he understood that for very little money he could buy a plot of undeveloped tropical brushland, clear it, build a few simple concrete buildings, landscape some baseball diamonds, and rent it for handsome prices to major-league organizations.

  Others followed. In San Pedro there was increasingly tough competition among ex-players, including George Bell, who had bought plots and were looking for major-league organizations to rent them. Salomón Torres, a native Macorisano, was most remembered for his first major-league season, 1993, when in the last game he gave up three runs in as many innings and cost the Giants first place in the division. In San Pedro he was also remembered for losing control of a fastball in 2003 and hitting fellow Macorisano Sammy Sosa in the head and shattering his batting helmet. But Torres also took a part of his major-league earnings, cleared a cane field on the edge of San Pedro, built diamonds and dormitories and offices, then rented it to the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers. He called it Baseball Towers, a play on his name, Torres, which means “towers.”

  The compound was gated, with an armed guard—one of those ubiquitous sleepy men with a beat-up pump shotgun who stood watch at most gates in the Dominican Republic. Inside it was prim and clean vanilla concrete buildings with red and blue trim, pristine interiors, and sparkling tile floors, all surrounded by careful groomed gardening—nothing too lush, but it is easy to grow things in the tropics. Of course, the grounds, like all grounds in the Dominican Republic, are grazed by chickens—free-range chickens, the national dish. Rent was $35,000 a month, food and maintenance included.

  There were four manicured diamonds, two for the Braves and two for the Rangers. The Braves’ academy, which moved to Baseball Towers in 2006, had twenty employees. Dario Paulino, coordinator of the Braves’ academy, said, “This is the first step in the Braves’ system.” It was used as a Latin American center: signed prospects from throughout the region were brought to San Pedro.

  Some academies sent players to a language school to learn English. The Braves had their own English teacher at the academy. Other courses were also taught so that the players, most of whom had dropped out of school to sign, could finish their high school education.

  “The teams are trying to make them believe that they are intelligent people who can learn,” Paulino said. “A lot of players don’t make it because they can’t speak English.

  “Most of the players here are illiterate,” Paulino continued. “They were too poor to go to school, though some have been to university. If they have never been to school, it is easier to teach them in the field. They are using a glove and you tell them it’s called a glove.”

  The first phrase of English learned by many San Pedro teenage boys is “I got it!”—grammatically questionable but important words to know if you are ever going to catch a fly ball in an English-speaking game without a collision.

  “Then, when we feel they are ready,” said Paulino, “we send them to school.” Many of the San Pedro programs use a locally produced book titled English for Dominican Baseball Players. It explains phonetically such critically important instructions as “Du nat drap de bol” as well as terms like the verb ejaculate—something all boys everywhere are told to avoid before a game.

  The young ballplayers, even those from San Pedro, sleep at the academy in bunk beds, eight boys to a room. The rooms are kept spotless, as though ready for military inspection, with shoes neatly lined up under the bunks.

  The academies all have gyms with weights for bodybuilding and trainers to guide the boys. Gary Aguirre, trainer at the Braves’ academy, said, “Many of these Dominicans, because of cultural background and nutrition, are undersized. I try to build them up.” The teams were considering a variety of protein supplements, such as energy bars. Aguirre added, “They are sixteen and seventeen when they sign and they have a very high metabolism. They can burn 1,500 to 2,500 calories a day, sometimes more.” They were fed three, four, and sometimes five times a day and encouraged to eat copiously. Most of it got burned off in exercise.

  Typically, the Braves’ academy in San Pedro had about forty-five to fifty young, signed prospects at a time. This included some from other Latin American countries, but as in most academies a few American boys were also sent there to get some additional practice.

  It all unfolded rhythmically. The big signing was July 2. Dominican Summer League ran through mid-September, then Instructional League began in October and ran until December 12, when players were either sent to farm teams in the U.S. or released and sent home. In the Braves’ camp, out of the forty-five or fifty prospects, about thirty-five would move on to the U.S.

  The program was designed to teach players by providing games for them to play. José Martínez, a Cuban who played and coached for the major leagues, now worked as special assistant to the Braves’ general manager. “You have to play these kids until you have them figured out,” he said.

  Sometimes one organization would sign so many players that they needed to create two teams. In 2006, the Braves had two Summer League, teams. José Tartabull, the manager of their instructional league, said it was “for kids who need more swings or have issues of development to work on.” Tartabull, a Cuban who played in the major leagues in
the 1960s, was famous in Boston for throwing out Chicago White Sox center fielder Ken Berry at home plate, saving the 1967 American League pennant for the Red Sox.

  Tartabull believed that Latino players had a much easier time in the major leagues than they did in his day because the academy system slowly integrated them into baseball as they came up: “Everyone thought you were trying to get their job. Today players help new guys. Back then they wouldn’t talk to you.”

  They still don’t always. No one at the end of a distinguished career enjoys seeing a kid of any nationality brought in to replace him. In a classic example, the Baltimore Orioles superstar shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr., was moved to third base so that the young Manny Alexander could try out at the shortstop position. Alexander later complained that Ripken would not talk to him. The older star, a huge, towering man, just stared at Manny with his ice-gray eyes.

  But Dominicans were becoming more accepted. Things had changed a great deal in a few decades. Dominicans were getting to Rookie League ball in the U.S. speaking a little English and having been trained in the fundamentals of the game. Older players, like Rogelio Candalario, the son of a Consuelo sugar maker, remembered how they learned baseball with little instruction: “It wasn’t like now. There was no organization. I trained myself. We used to watch American major-league ball on television and try to do what they did.”

  The Angels also had their academy in San Pedro, on the city’s east side, in the rich ocher soil of the sugar fields that stretched to La Romana. Up the dirt road, in lush tropical growth that men hacked clear with machetes, was the fenced-off, spacious compound with two big diamonds and no guard, a striking change in a country where almost everything had an armed guard.