Dominican Baseball

Every major league baseball fan knows that a couple of their favorite players have come from, or have at least played winter-league ball, in the Dominican Republic. This little island country, with about 3% the population of the United States, produces an amazingly high number of top players. Upon arriving here, I expected to discover the secret. It has been harder than I expected.   

A team affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds plays in late Sept, 2011.



Infield practice. More exciting with rocks and divets in the way.

 So what is the secret of Domincan baseball? We have an "in" to discover it.

Malachi loves baseball. And football. One of his biggest disapointments in coming to the D.R. is not being able to play football this fall. He was finally old enough for tackle, and he was looking forward to plowing into other kids. But his solace was the legend of baseball in the D.R., so he could at least do that.

Strangely, at first we couldn't find anyone who actually played the game. We couldn't even find a baseball field. We're in this giant city, millions of people, and no baseball. The small parks that are around are filled with trees and shrubs, nice for shade, but leaving no room for throwing a ball or batting practice. It seemed weird.

Finally Abby met another women who had a son in baseball. We got the details, and she took us to the field to show us around. It was organized chaos, kinda like at home when you're dealing with a bunch of seven year olds. Only even stronger on the chaos and weaker on the organized.

We got lucky. Malachi's age group only practices once a week, and that was today. We were catching the tail end of it. The league president, Enrique Cruz, took him aside to test his skills. Mr. Cruz threw the ball gently to Malachi, his arm now visibly slowed by age. Perhaps arthritis or something else impedes him, but he went through the routine that his body memorized decades ago.

Malachi caught it easily. A few more. Then some slow grounders from 15 feet away. He could have scooped them with his bare hand, but used the glove, tossing them back.

"He catches well. He throws well," is the assessment. "Now let's see how he bats."

As we walk to the batting net, into which he easily hits some soft-toss balls, I think to myself.

"They certainly don't start out with higher expectations than we have in the States... unless they're going easy on the new American kid." I'll soon find out.

Dominican Baseball has an interesting slant in the local papers. They don't follow teams, but players. When Nelson Cruz hit the game winning HR off of Jose Valverde Oct 12, 2011, THAT was the headline. The fact that the playoff game came down to two Dominicans going mano-a-mano was almost bigger than who won.

They love their local boys down here. Albert Pujols, David Ortiz and many more are followed daily in the boxscores. After one game between Arizona and the Giants, the only note was "no jugaron dominicanos." "No Domincans played."