Pay-for-play hits baseball’s recruiting leagues
posted at 3:50 pm on February 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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The steroid scandal has embarrassed Major League Baseball for years, tarnishing the reputations of its most popular players and exposing the ownership and labor management as hyppocrites. At least, though, MLB didn’t steal from the poor to buy the steroids. Baseball faces a much worse scandal in its international farm-league system, a pay-for-play scandal of its own that corrupts the game, too:
As Major League Baseball endures an embarrassing steroids scandal that has tarnished another big star, a separate, quieter drama is unfolding far from spring training sites: Allegations that team employees pocketed bonus money from Dominican prospects.
At least eight employees of MLB teams have been let go, including a high-ranking White Sox executive and three Sox scouts. The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox also fired scouts.
In the last four months, MLB’s Office of Investigations has set up shop in the Dominican Republic, hired five Spanish-speaking investigators and pledged cooperation with the Dominican Sports Ministry to improve oversight of how teenage Dominican prospects are scouted and signed. …
It’s all part of a crackdown on what investigators describe as a kickback scheme in which scouts and others take a cut of bonus money given to young Latin American prospects. The FBI launched its own investigation last year, but no one has been charged criminally.
Put simply, advancement in the farm system depended on cash bribes to scouts rather than talent and hard work. Bear in mind that most of the players in the Dominican Republic (and in Venezuela, where MLB has expanded the probe) live in poverty, with their bonus cash being the first substantial amount of money they receive. Instead of protecting them from the kind of predators that naturally follow windfalls like that, MLB employed them instead, and apparently not in just a couple of isolated incidents.
Occasionally, newspapers and sporting magazines will do in-depth reports on the challenges these recruits face when they receive so much attention and money. They usually include the difficulties and pressure of managing so much cash, and how the money disappears quickly. Now we know why.
In the US, the draft system removes the motivation for such corruption. Even if baseball went back to the old scout system here in the US, though, the prospects would have the background to see through extortion attempts and make them public. Maybe the league should apply the draft system where it can really work to prevent abuse.
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Symptomatic of a slow day?
Marine_Bio on February 23, 2009 at 3:57 PM
“Stock market loses 5%” posts are getting redundant.
lorien1973 on February 23, 2009 at 3:59 PM
Don’t incriminate my White Sox, Blago roots for the Cubs!!!
Please don’t bring up Obama rooting for the White Sox!
WashJeff on February 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM
I don’t know that it is worse – what is more damaging than having millions of kids see that cheating is the path to success? All sports leagues do a disservice by allowing players who used steroids to remain in the game and by not purging their record books to remove stats that were acheived via cheating.
It looks like they are making progress in firing scouts. All they have to do now is blackball them so they never work in the industry again.
Vashta.Nerada on February 23, 2009 at 4:01 PM
Sorry, but the last thing I care about is sports, where the athletes are over paid…there contribution to our economy is at best suspect.
Athletes are greedy, owners are greedy, the professional organizations that oversee them are greedy…and the public is foolish for throwing money at them.
We’ve had athletes raping women, destroying dogs, abusing drugs, taking enhancing drugs, beating women…Owners asking for the public to support their billion dollar habit, owners moving in the “mid of night” to make a better deal…management turning their back on steroid use and the indiscretions of their players…jacked up prices, jacked up food, refs and umps “fixing games”, athletes shaving points…professional sports are more worthless then ever.
right2bright on February 23, 2009 at 4:01 PM
The steroid problem is much worse for MLB’s bottom line. It prevents the league from marketing itself around many of the big stars of the past 20 years. The guys who would normally be Hall of Famers and living legends–except for the roids taint.
MLB has to get the league clean and hope that some of the younger talent can start putting up numbers that are historically significant, so that every achievement isn’t viewed with skepticism about juicing.
dedalus on February 23, 2009 at 4:02 PM
Apparently steroids and other illegal PEDs have been going on in baseball for over 40 years:
http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com/archives/2009/02/20/history-lesson-3/
A worldwide draft has been advocated by some.
rbj on February 23, 2009 at 4:07 PM
Enough already!
seriously, Rome is burning.
Oh, but did you see Kate Winslet’s dress last night?
I did not!
TheSitRep on February 23, 2009 at 4:08 PM
My favorite sport is going down the tubes. SOS!
jencab on February 23, 2009 at 4:08 PM
Right2bright, your comment suggests you care quite a bit and are, rather, frustrated with the lack of access to the average Joe.
Would you care to talk about it?
Ace ODale on February 23, 2009 at 4:11 PM
Abandon Pro-sports, who can afford to go anyways? The idiots play a GAME for tons of dough. Most of the IDIOTS can’t speak proper English or read it for that matter. ONLY IN AMERICA!!!
People are losing their homes and cars and jobs and those people make millions for what?????!!!!! Where is the Libtard outrage!
Mercy4Me on February 23, 2009 at 4:11 PM
I feel the same way jencab. I love baseball but the players are getting the idea that they matter more than the rest of the team.
txaggie on February 23, 2009 at 4:12 PM
No one cares about baseball, it’s not a real sport.
VolMagic on February 23, 2009 at 4:15 PM
Yes. Tickets + parking + concession stand = too much. Better to play sports than watch them.
dedalus on February 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM
The fact that baseball survives is a testament to the greatness of the sport. Major League Baseball and the Players’ Union has done all they can to destroy the game, but they can’t do it.
I keep wondering when the baseball community is going to wake up and realize that Bud Selig is bad for the sport. Look at all the trouble that has developed and come to light during his tenure as commissioner. It’s awful.
I love the sport but have retreated to watching the minor leagues and college baseball, even though NCAA uses aluminum bats. I haven’t been to a MLB game since 2002. I won’t go this year, either. The Majors are dead to me.
Ampleforth on February 23, 2009 at 4:33 PM
I haven’t watched a single MLB game since the strike of 1994. I don’t miss it.
robblefarian on February 23, 2009 at 4:34 PM
it’s freakin’ entertainment people! give it up with the steriods BS already. And the parade of congressional hearings on baseball!! Freakin’ basebal??!! The economy is falling apart and these idiots in DC find it necessary to drag in independent contractors and arbitrate the nuances of how the sport may or may not be tainted by ‘roids.
Count me out of those that lose sleep pondering how ‘pure’ baseball is. I go to a game – for me, steroids actually enhance the game since I’ll see more home runs, hits, better pitching, you name it.
When is the last time that CONGRESS dragged in a hamberger-flipper and grilled him on his use of steroids at the gym?
Government run afoul of the people.
it’s all entertainment now… just like ancient greece
gatorboy on February 23, 2009 at 4:34 PM
I’m shocked. People keep pouring money into tickets to see these hooped-up primadonnas that are too damned lazy to walk over and sign autographs for kids at the games. I say piss on ‘em. They don’t get my money…. ever.
mikepatr on February 23, 2009 at 4:37 PM
Ban Bud.
Ban any baseball player when my belt won’t fit around one of their thighs.
faraway on February 23, 2009 at 4:49 PM
Sure, buy me a couple of gin and tonics and I will tell you all about it…
Not access to the average Joe (I had Lakers season tickets for years), but the corruption does bother me, apparently it doesn’t bother you.
right2bright on February 23, 2009 at 5:14 PM
CONgressman: “Look, baseball is corrupt!!!!”
Press: “It’s an outrage!!! This requires in depth study.”
CONgressman: “Whew! Dodged a bullet there!”
ScottG on February 23, 2009 at 5:21 PM
Our new national pastime is scamming Caribbeans.
whitetop on February 23, 2009 at 5:25 PM
The best ball out there is played by kids in city leagues and they deserve our support. The rest of them, not so much.
mchristian on February 23, 2009 at 5:52 PM
The scouts are friends/ex-players/ex-coaches… It is doubtful that they would be blackballed. The DR players should be part of the draft but that too is unlikely to change. They should also be subject to the same PED testing as our high school and college players. You think the PED problem is bad here – it’s nothing compared to the DR. Of course scouting isn’t what it used to be either. Gone are the days of a scout hearing about a kid and going to his high school game. Nowadays the boys (and girls in softball) go to showcases, and MLB “camps”. These things are expensive, and makes it hard to nearly impossible for a poor kid (or a kid whose parents won’t schlep them all over) to get seen.
You have no heart ;) Baseball V. Football.
batterup on February 23, 2009 at 6:05 PM
BFD
Wade on February 23, 2009 at 11:44 PM
MLB is turning to south and central America for it’s players. Why? Because American youth baseball is a joke. There are almost no leagues that the average parent can afford. Too many of these teams are not teaching kids the fundamentals. Just ask the college coaches.
roux on February 24, 2009 at 9:29 AM
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