BASEBALL: A DOMINICAN CULTURAL OBSESSION

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 SANTO DOMINGO 004776

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, CA

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: DR SOCI CVIS
SUBJECT: BASEBALL: A DOMINICAN CULTURAL OBSESSION



1. Baseball season has begun in the Dominican Republic.
Baseball is much more than a sport or even a national
pastime; it represents the pulse of the Dominican culture.
Baseball began as a recreational activity for sugar cane
workers and has become the most famous Dominican export. One
in six players in the American League is from Latin America,
the majority of them coming from the towns located on the
southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic. About 750
Dominican baseball players are currently playing in the
United States with 140 in the major leagues. In addition to
being a popular pastime, baseball offers the hope of a way
out of poverty to many young Dominicans.

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History of Dominican Baseball
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2. Caribbean baseball began in 1866 on the island of Cuba
when American sailors taught Cubans baseball. During the
Cuban ten-year war (1868-1878) many Cubans fled to the
Dominican Republic, bringing with them the game of baseball.
In the sugar mill towns of San Pedro de Macoris and La
Romana, Dominican and American mill operators encouraged
their sugarcane workers to participate in baseball during the
six-month &dead season8 when sugar cane requires the least
maintenance. Soon various sugar mill teams began competing
against one another in organized leagues for championships.

3. Dominican baseball was forever changed under the
1930-1961 dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. With
Trujillo,s involvement, baseball soon began to resemble more
of an industry than a sport. In 1936 he changed the name of
the capital city to &Ciudad Trujillo8, a year later
Trujillo merged the two rival teams from Santo Domingo (Licey
and Escojido) and renamed the team "Ciudad Trujillo Dragons8
for the 1937 baseball series. The three-team league of 1937
brought together some of the best players money could buy.
The managers acquired skilled players from throughout the
Western Hemisphere. Trujillo spent large sums on developing
the Cuidad Trujillo Dragons. They won the series, but this
win came at the cost of much sacrifice for the country.

4. Pro baseball did not return to the island for 14 years,
until 1951, with the assistance of a few wealthy Dominicans.
Dominicans have just observed the 50th anniversary of the
opening of the first baseball stadium -- in 1955 dictator
Trujillo commissioned the undertaking, which was constructed
at the cost of 3.2 million pesos -- including the 1 million
pesos paid to Trujillo's wife Maria for land that she had
acquired shortly before at one-fifth of the price. Trujillo
Stadium was equipped with eight stands of high-intensity
lighting. It had a capacity of 14, 065 spectators but
regularly received as many as 24,000. The same year,
Dominican pro baseball changed its schedule to a winter
series. This allowed an amateur league to flourish during
the summer, but provided valuable opportunities to the
players, because now U.S. pro leagues and the Dominican
league were on separate schedules.

5. Today the professional Dominican league consists of six
teams: Tigres del Licey, and Leones de Escojido of Santo
Domingo; Estrellas Orientales of San Pedro de Macoris;
Aguilas del Cibao of Santiago; Azucareros del Este of La
Romana; and the Pollos Nacionales of San Francisco de
Macoris. Each team plays a sixty-game schedule that begins
the end of October and runs through February. This winter
season starts after the end of U.S. play and many
Dominican-American baseball superstars return to the
Dominican Republic to play. For example, New York Mets
superstar, Pedro Martinez will pitch for the Tigres de Licey
this season.
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Baseball Academies
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6. In the 1970,s entrepreneurs developed baseball training
facilities in the Dominican Republic to train Dominican youth
and to assist with full-time recruitment. These &baseball
academies8 are factories of dreams, following a step-by-step
process of recruiting talented athletes, challenging and
refining them through training, and then exporting them as
professional players to major and minor league teams in the
United States.

7. The migration of talented baseball players benefits the
sport in both countries, because often players return to play
in Dominican leagues. They participate in the remittance
economy. In 2005 Dominican Republic,s remittances, or
&remesas,8 were 17.4 percent of the gross domestic product
(GDP),the 4th largest in Latin America.

8. The overwhelming popularity of baseball is due in part to
a lack of viable career choices for young Dominicans with
little education from poor families. Those who succeed
receive a signing bonus and a first-year salary that is
approximately seven times more than the average Dominican
salary. In addition to their salaries they receive food,
lodging and health care.

9. All 32 major league teams have scouting organizations in
the Dominican Republic and 31 have baseball academies. Even
the Tokyo Yamiyouri Giants of the Japanese League have an
academy in the Dominican Republic. Scouts from these teams
search throughout the island, holding multiple try-outs. The
lucky few are usually between the ages of 17 and 18. Many
candidates and even successful selectees manage to obtain
birth certificates that have been altered to present them as
younger than their actual ages.


10. The U.S. consulate processes visa applications for all
U.S.-bound players. In 2004 consular officers detected a new
scam: newly-recruited players were accepting money to enter
into marriages of convenience, so their &spouses8 could
ride into the United States on the visas. As a result, some
promising players had their fraudulent visa applications
turned down, a permanent bar to their desired careers.

11. Today baseball players of humble origins such as Sammy
Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and Manny Ramirez, are products of
Dominican baseball camps, and they are some of the wealthiest
Dominicans.

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Conclusion
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12. As baseball season begins another year, it continues to
be more than a sport. It is central to Dominican culture and
perhaps more influential than any other cultural element,
even including Catholicism and merengue music. Dominicans
follow professional baseball closely. During the U.S. season
the sports sections of all Dominican newspapers regularly
carry entire articles dedicated to the performance and
development of individual Dominican players on their
respective teams. Dominicans have plenty to be proud of.
The last two American League Most Valuable Players (MVPs) are
Dominican: Miguel Tejada (2004) and Vladimir Guerrero (2005).


13. But for every Dominican player who makes it to the major
leagues, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of little boys
without shoes swinging bats made from tree limbs and using
gloves made from scraps of canvas, practicing and hoping
they, too, can escape poverty by making it to the big leagues.
KUBISKE