Draft dodgers no more - Can the Dominican Republic avoid Puerto Rico’s fate?

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Baseball in Latin America

Draft dodgers no more

Can the Dominican Republic avoid Puerto Rico’s fate?

Feb 4th 2012 | SANTO DOMINGO | from the print edition

 

Try a cricket bat instead SEEN from the air, much of Puerto Rico’s northern coast is a mosaic of rooftops and treetops dotted with countless baseball diamonds. The island of 4m has sent a total of 234 players to America’s Major League Baseball (MLB)—twice as many as Mexico. Its Baseball Hall of Fame, just outside San Juan, features a salon full of life-size statues of Puerto Rico’s athletic pantheon. It even includes a famous broadcaster seated at his microphone.

Today, however, the fields are mostly used for football. Just 2.6% of MLB players are Puerto Rican, down from 4.3% in 2001. The island’s renowned winter baseball league cancelled its season in 2007. A typical game now draws fewer spectators than nearby women’s volleyball matches. Its four teams are on the block for around $750,000 each. No one is buying. Several factors account for this decline. They include better job opportunities outside sports and competition from basketball, reggaetón music, multiplexes and malls. But the biggest was MLB’s inclusion of the island in its amateur draft in 1990.

Every year, MLB teams select 1,500 players from schools and universities. The clubs get to pick in reverse order of their finish in the league the previous season. Draftees can negotiate only with the team that chooses them. Officially, the draft is meant to help the worst teams by giving them the best young talent. But all clubs love it because it reduces signing bonuses.

When the draft began in 1965, only Americans were eligible. But 25 years later MLB extended it to Canada and Puerto Rico. In theory, this should not have affected the number of Puerto Ricans signed, since undrafted players become free agents, who can sign with any team they wish. But in practice, MLB clubs rarely sign them; they tell them to go to university and try their luck in the draft later on. The draft thus forced Puerto Ricans to compete with Americans for a fixed number of places.

Moreover, whereas Puerto Ricans could previously be signed at age 16, a high-school degree (usually given at 18) is required for the draft. Since the island’s schools do not have baseball teams, its 16- and 17-year-olds had nowhere to train. As a result, the number of Puerto Rican MLB signings fell by 13% in 1991-92. Meanwhile, players from the Dominican Republic (DR) and Venezuela remained free agents. Their numbers soared (see chart).

Now those countries may be facing Puerto Rico’s fate. As more clubs started to recruit in Latin America, signing bonuses took off: the average payout in the DR rose from $29,000 in 2004 to $108,000 in 2008. In response, teams tried to cut costs. In November MLB’s teams and its players’ union reached a deal that levies a tax on clubs whose spending on foreign free agents exceeds a cap. It also sets up a committee to institute an international draft by 2014.

In the DR, MLB’s biggest source of foreign players, the reaction has been apoplectic. Baseball is big business there: MLB’s direct value to the economy is $125m-150m a year (0.3% of GDP). Its 30 clubs all have training academies for their players, mainly in poor rural areas. They employ 1,200 people, many in new professions like groundskeeper and sports nutritionist. And in response to criticism that they exploit youngsters, they are offering better education. The Pittsburgh Pirates require four hours of class a day, and last year granted 13 high-school degrees.

The indirect benefits are bigger still. An estimated 2,000-3,000 scouts and trainers, called buscones, scour the country for players and house, feed and instruct them until they sign an MLB contract. They charge 30% of the bonus. Some buscones employ dozens of workers. The winter league plays nearly 200 games a year, each drawing thousands of fans. Casa de Campo, a golf resort, now has a Latino Baseball Hall of Fame. Many players also have charities: Pedro Martínez, a star pitcher, has built a youth centre offering art, cooking and computer classes to 300 students. A draft could put all this in peril, by reducing bonuses and possibly the number of contracts.

Rafael Pérez, MLB’s director of Dominican operations, insists that MLB wants at least to maintain the current number of foreign signings. But many buscones accuse MLB of selling out Latinos to protect American players’ jobs. They note there is just one Latino on MLB’s international-talent committee—who, as the son of an MLB player, mostly grew up in America. “I feel like we’re being invaded, like it’s 1965 all over again,” says Astin Jacobo, a buscón, referring to America’s occupation of the DR. “We’re only number one in one thing, and that’s baseball. We can’t give that away.”

A group of Dominican buscones has already held anti-draft protests. They might convince MLB to set up a separate draft for foreigners with an eligibility age of 16, which would be less disruptive than extending America’s draft abroad. But stopping the draft entirely will be hard.Many buscones talk of a strike. But they have not formed a union. Even if they do, they could not stop their players from opting to sign with MLB teams.That leaves the government. Felipe Payano, the sports minister, has already written a letter to Bud Selig, MLB’s commissioner, expressing his opposition to a draft. He says his office is investigating whether it might violate the DR’s free-trade agreement with America. Another option would be to sue MLB for collusion under Dominican antitrust law. But it would take a lot of pluck for a small, poor, baseball-dependent country to pick a fight like that.