Imagine a world in which Jamaicans make up 10 per cent of Premiership players and 40 per cent of squads in the rest of British professional football. Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur have just opened a £5m training academy on Montego Bay, leaving Wigan as the only top-flight side without a permanent presence on the island. Unbelievable? This is precisely analogous to the state of American baseball and its relationship to the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation of only 9m people.
Over the last 40 years, college athletes in the US have increasingly opted for basketball and American football over baseball, while at the same time the number of Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs has doubled. The signing price of domestic baseball talent has risen with its scarcity. Foreign players, who are signed for a fraction of the cost of US prospects, have stepped into the gap and now make up a quarter of MLB squads. There are Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans, Panamanians and Japanese, but above all there are Dominicans. And they are not just bit-part players or journeymen; Dominicans are also the stars—Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are the iconic batters of last year's World Series winners, the Boston Red Sox. With many Dominicans in the minor league system too, their presence in the majors is set to rise yet more.
Players' remittances and direct investments by MLB now make up 10 per cent of the Dominican Republic's incoming capital. In April this year, the San Diego Padres opened a $10m training academy in the province of San Cristóbal, making the Milwaukee Brewers the only MLB team without one in the country.
Baseball was introduced to the Dominican Republic by Cuban sugar mill owners over 100 years ago. It became the country's national game and its passion. Innumerable pick-up games are played by kids on every available scrap of land.
A once disorganised scouting system has turned into an organised industry. Individual entrepreneurs run their own teams and training programmes to prepare the best kids for a tryout at a MLB academy. If the kids make it, they receive two years of coaching and a signing-on fee, which is split with their coach. As annual per capita income in the Dominican Republic is around $9,000, the average signing fee of $60,000 is itself life-changing. When the two years are up, the vast majority of the kids are released. The best are sent to the purgatory of minor league baseball in West Virginia and Tennessee, from where, if they succeed, they can aim at the majors.
As with all such exchanges, there are winners and losers. The handful of stars are richly rewarded and, despite a penchant for expensive houses, there is a remarkable level of financial support going back home—the largesse of Dominican players has helped make gloves made out of milk cartons a rarity. Others have begun a minor Domicanisation of the industry, taking senior management positions in the academies and creating ready-built baseball facilities for lease or sale to the Americans.
The kids dropped from the academies have to cope with the emotional fallout, of course. But there is a financial cushion and they will have probably received the best medical care and nutrition of their lives. Despite the long odds of success, Dominican kids will continue to dream. They have few alternatives—the education system is threadbare, and the main employment options are the gruelling hours and conditions of the export processing zones or the low-paid subservience of the tourist industry. At least with baseball, the Dominicans' peculiar form of economic dependence is balanced by the increasing dependence of America's iconic national game upon them.
The Asian takeover of cricket
The Indian Premier League concluded its first season in May, after achieving large crowds and phenomenal Indian television ratings for its Twenty20 games. Purists may not like it, but this is the way cricket is heading. The centre of gravity has been heading east for some time. The International Cricket Council (ICC) decamped from Lord's to Dubai in 2005, while the IPL's profitability solidifies India's premier position in the global game.
The IPL's most immediate impact has been on players' wages. At the top level, these are now so huge that to prevent a exodus to India, the ICC will be forced to give the league its own slot in the international schedule. The IPL has also crystallised what we already knew: Twenty20 is the format of the future. The West Indies has American financial backing for a Twenty20 tournament, and a champions league among leading global clubs is planned. The fate of test cricket is uncertain, and the 50-over game is finished.
Finally, the IPL has given cricket a bigger profile than any World Cup so far. New cricketing nations are emerging: Afghanistan recently enjoyed success in the World Cup qualifiers, and China will field a team when cricket debuts as part of the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. The Chinese Cricket Association wants 60,000 players by 2012. Could it be China vs India in the final of the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Sports City, Dubai? Few things could better illustrate the tilting axes of our planet.
