This is what a pimp does: He procures the use of one human's body -- usually from someone vulnerable for a variety of reasons -- for another human with promises to the former and a price from the latter, and retains much of the profit for himself. Or, in short, it is what the FBI is investigating major league baseball talent scouts for doing in the Dominican Republic, which on Sunday led to the resignation of Nationals' general manager Jim Bowden.
Baseball appeared hard-pressed to sully itself worse than it did with a generation-long steroids' scandal, in which scores of its players looking to safeguard their careers and lengthen them illegally siphoned drugs meant to help the infirmed live pain-free and longer lives. But if the FBI probe finds what it is looking for now, baseball has, indeed, found a new depth in which to wallow.
After all, what the FBI is looking into is nothing short of human exploitation. This is what Sports Illustrated reported one week ago:
"Two sources inside baseball say that a long-time scout in Latin America, Jorge Oquendo, 47, is the man who links the FBI's investigations of Bowden and his special assistant Jose Rijo to that of former Chicago White Sox senior director of player personnel David Wilder. Last May the White Sox fired Wilder and two Dominican-based scouts after allegations surfaced that they had pocketed money earmarked for player signing bonuses. Oquendo worked for Wilder in 2006 and 2007, as well as for Bowden with the Reds in 1994 and again with the Reds from 2000 through 2003. Oquendo left Cincinnati in 2005, two years after Bowden was fired [as Reds' general manager]."Every major league team except the Milwaukee Brewers (Bud Selig did do something right) have what they call academies – I think of them more as baseball plantations – in the Dominican Republic to turn young lads into young, and cheap, major league baseball players. It is a general practice for scouts in the Dominican to pay bonuses to prodigious Dominican kids and then introduce them to the major league academies. The FBI is looking into charges those scouts pocketed some of the money meant for the pockets of prospects.
It's an investment system that pays baseball Bernard Madoff-type dividends, what with a Newsday report last Saturday counting 137 of 1,381 active-roster or disabled-list major leaguers on Opening Day 2008, or roughly 10 percent, as Dominican-born. Better still, the paper found 3,356, or a whopping 47.8 percent, of 7,021 minor leaguers under contract then were born outside the United States, mostly in Spanish-speaking countries like the Dominican.
The Dominican is ripe for what the FBI is investigating. It is poor, one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean and among the poorest Spanish-speaking countries in the world. The gap between its rich minority and poor majority is vast and 42 percent of the country lives beneath the poverty line. Most of the wealth is controlled by the minority, white descendants of Spanish slave-holding settlers. Most of the poverty is in the laps of the majority, the first descendents of the African diaspora. The Dominican along with Haiti make up the island of Hispaniola, which at the dawn of the 16th century became the first stop in the transatlantic slave trade.
It is largely the Afro-Dominicans looking to escape poverty who are so aggressively pursued by major league baseball. Baseball is their proverbial ticket off their half of the island. Who knew that their physical talent and determination wouldn't be enough and that they'd have to pay a kickback to get a chance at a better life?
This is, in part, what Gary Sheffield tried to underscore a couple of seasons ago when discussing the falling numbers of black American players like him and the exploding number of Latin players. Sheffield was unsuccessful because his explanation was inarticulate.
What he meant to say wasn't that Latin players are puppets, but that they are more easily exploited by the economics of baseball than are American players because of the dire straits from which they often come and baseball's ability to secure them by the dozens for the same price as one American player. It would take a revolt of the masses to change this system, not unlike the first slave revolt in the Dominican in 1522 against a sugar grower named Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus.
Or it would take someone slipping up somewhere and being found out. We will learn whether Oquendo, Rijo, Wilder or Bowden, or someone else, was that person.
All have claimed they've done nothing wrong. Bowden told reporters in Florida on Sunday that he was sorry his name was attached to such a despicable story, which has obvious racial overtones. It isn't a story that fits a man who, after taking over the Reds following baseball's exiling of Reds' owner Marge Schott in the early 90s for several racially insensitive incidents, promoted two black men to executive positions with the Reds when black men were still rare in baseball above the clubhouse.
Whether they or someone else is charged and convicted of this heinous activity shouldn't matter in the short run, though. Baseball needs to intervene immediately and insure that nothing of the sort goes on now or in the future. It needs to set up the most-stringent of rules with the most-severe punishment for anyone under its umbrella who dares to deal in such shameful shenanigans.
Steroids' abuse in baseball is disturbing. Preying on poor people whose biggest dream is being part of the game is absolutely disgusting.
Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a frequent sports opinionist on other outlets. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-02-2009 @ 1:43PM
Bob said...
Okay, there are some disgusting scoundrels who pocketed money intended for those from a third-world country so they could benefit professionally from the wronged players services--that makes this a story about economics, where those WITH money are withholding from those WITHOUT it. So why is the story instead all about RACISM, SLAVERY, OPPRESSION--because Kevin Blackistone is writing it. Yes, the crimes are despicable and very wrong, but they would be doing the same thing to whites if that country happened to be populated by them, because of the ECONOMY, not their skin color or language! Third world countries are where you find cheap labor, and they also happen to be populated by people who look and speak differently than most natural-born Americans. It's a great idea to expose those scumbags who promised something and then cheated those people, but then you had to do your usual and bring in racism, slavery, plantations, etc.--no wonder racism won't go away in this country. This story is about the rich taking advantage of the poor, nothing more, so how about reporting it that way.
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3-02-2009 @ 4:59PM
pghcream said...
Bob,
Do you really know the meaning of the word "racism"? If you truly knew then you wouldn't have wrote your myopic comments. Yes there has been some abuses of the very meaning of the word, but in this case & my opinion, this is nothing but racism. You said, " Yes, the crimes are despicable and very wrong, but they would be doing the same thing to whites if that country happened to be populated by them, because of the ECONOMY, not their skin color or language". I'll reply to this hypothetical example by saying, "if your aut was a man, she'd be your uncle". Think about it. We're talking about reality here, not what it could have been.
3-03-2009 @ 1:26AM
Brad said...
Bob,
Kevin Blackistone may be black but most of what comes out of his mouth and computer is some of the least racial sports news I see.
This article was written about the Dominican but could have been written about any of the countries of the Carribian most are in the same shape and try to send their boys to the US to play baseball, football, basketball, etc. And yes the recruiters do exploit them. They exploit the boys for what they can and they exploit the teams for what they can.
3-02-2009 @ 8:30PM
captnwmkidd said...
I think Kevin wrote an articulate, well thought out article concerning the subject matter at hand.
If I could add anything, it would be that the legal and moral issues, not only concerns the issues spoke of, but also fraud and conspiracy with regards to the young prospect just signed by the Nationals.
They knowingly lied about his age and
name to hype his value. They gave him a signing bonus that was twice what any other team had offered. You have to have a larger sum of money when you're splitting the payoff with so many people.
Bowden just resigned, Rijo fled back home to the DR. With the scout in the DR and the player himself, thats a four way split. Everyone needs paid.
Greed is at the heart of most things. It can be said that greed fuels racism because "we" don't want any of "them" getting a piece of "our" pie.
Greed is also usually the reason most unscrupulous people who lack character get caught. They don't know when to quit.
I hope that if Bowden and Rijo are proven to have masterminded this to line their pockets, that they are placed in a fitting home alongside everyone else that has been imprisoned for felonies against the state. They deserve nothing less.
As a side note, I am from Cincy and I was there when Bowden was GM and Rijo won the World Series for the Reds. I was proud of them then and am ashamed of them now.
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3-02-2009 @ 9:32PM
Bob said...
To pghcream, I fully respect your right to your opinion and different point of view. I reserve the right to hold to mine as well, and I do not see my perspective as a "if pigs had wings, they could fly" hypothetical--this is a classic case of the rich abusing the poor, which is very much a reality in this world. I applaud Mr. Blackistone on shining more light on this story, as those behind it need to be exposed, but I do not agree that this is racism (and yes, I do understand the meaning very well)--if the DR was a powerful country with a solid economy, this wouldn't be an issue. Those with money and power wield it against those without, until someone makes them stop--regardless of race.
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3-02-2009 @ 10:38PM
kevin said...
It's about time the fan of American baseball stand up to the inequity that has been allowed to go on now for several years. The signing of Dominican kids at 16 years old has been a great disadvantage to 16 year old white, black, and hispanic American kids that can't be signed until they are 18 years old. That is why over 35 or 40 % of professional baseball players are Dominican. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our (american) 16 year old kids could be signed and trained professionally? Do we really want Major League baseball to be dominated by foreign ball players who were giving an unfair advantage? I hope not.
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3-03-2009 @ 8:44AM
Randy said...
I don't watch baseball anymore because of what a mess it has become. If you want to show these people how you feel, quit going to the games. Have you noticed how none of the players are disciplined for anything? They get exposed for cheating and lying, and then go about their way. Baseball has become a game of losers including Bud Selig, who is the facilitator of all these situations! Truly pathetic!
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3-03-2009 @ 4:09PM
jzz3skys said...
Oh, no, it's another installment of KEVIN BLACKISTONE'S APPEAL, IN FOUR ARTICLES, TO THE VELOURED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD.
Kevin, what's next? "Arise, O, ye Kenyans and Brazillians and cast off The White Man's game -- SOCCER -- introduced by the colonizer to quell rebellion in the Empire?" Good luck with that one, Kevin.
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3-04-2009 @ 2:11PM
dinohealth said...
Possible MLB Plantations in the Caribbean! Wow! I guess the Emancipation Proclamation does not apply there! Great story, Mr. Blackstone! However, I would not be too quick to heap praises on Bud Selig's handling of this. Just like steroids, he must have known, long ago, that this was going on! He only acted when the lid was blown off the situation...just like steroids! Has anyone heard of any acceptance of responsibilities and apologies from MLB and the Comish....All we got is the launching of full-fledged, deflective, witch hunts!!!! I mean, even the last Pope accepted responsibility and apologized for errors of the past! I guess Bud Selig is not Catholic!
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