The Dominican Republic: a land famous for raising sugar cane and some of the game's greatest players

Monday, March 6th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Located in the thicket of a bustling neighborhood, Estadio Quisqueya is bursting with energy on this early February night, the final night of the Caribbean World Series.

Santurce, a team from Puerto Rico, is attempting to finish off a team from the Dominican Republic for the championship. But even with impending defeat lurking and national bragging rights threatened, a party atmosphere exists here in the Dominican's capital city.

Outside, vendors hawk fresh mango, corn on the cob and fried plantains. All available tickets were snatched up long ago, but some locals have come to simply soak up the festive vibe.

Inside, the main grandstand is full of Puerto Ricans who have ventured over to their neighboring island nation for the dramatic conclusion of the winter baseball season. The cheaper seats, down the left-field and right-field lines, are occupied by Dominicans.

As one would see at a World Cup match, supporters wave their respective flags in support. In between innings, cheerleaders prance atop the home dugout.

A constant din fills the stadium. Unlike in America, where an expectant murmur can he heard between pitches, the fans provide a constant, high-energy soundtrack as a backdrop to the action on the field.

Alcohol is consumed freely, and high in the grandstand seating area, fans routinely and openly gamble. You can get action on anything, including whether the next pitch will be a ball or strike.

Saturce whips the Dominican entry to secure the title. On the field, a parade of recognizable Latino stars are serenaded and cheered -- Neifi Perez of Colorado, Tony Batista of Toronto, Miguel Tejada of Oakland and Adrian Beltre of Los Angeles.

Watching over this, figuratively, is Pedro Martinez. A mammoth banner of the Red Sox star, measuring some 10 feet wide and 25 feet high, is affixed to one of the light poles in left-center field.

Lighting in the stadium is poor by American standards, but the banner of Martinez, featuring his trademark incandescent smile, could virtually brighten the ballpark by itself.

It's an almost eerie visage of Martinez, as though he had passed on, or held some magical power like a mythical creature from lore.

Of course, to his countrymen, he does. Martinez is a God in this place where baseball is a religion, where the sport quite literally represents life, and where the American pastime has acquired a Spanish accent.

Game is all they've got
In the congested Caribbean metropolis of Santo Domingo, it's possible to navigate from one end of the city to the other by traveling streets named for American presidents.

Many of the island's upscale hotels and casinos can be found on George Washington Avenue. Keep traveling down Washington and it isn't long before one crosses a busy intersection in which one of the streets is named for John F. Kennedy.

But while Dominicans may honor some of our leaders, it's our national pastime they truly revere. Baseball is king in the Dominican Republic. Its homegrown stars are idolized, its playing field always occupied, its history cherished.

In much the same way England borrowed rock and roll from America in the early 1960s, then exported it back to America in a new, vibrant form, the Dominican Republic has done the same with baseball

On a short list of the game's best players, more than a handful of slots would be occupied by Dominicans, led by Martinez and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs. Major-league organizations ignore the rich talent pool here at their peril, not unlike the way some clubs stubbornly refused to integrate in the 1940s and '50s and cost themselves a chance at the game's next generation of superstars.

It's a reciprocal arrangement -- teams mine the island for great players and Dominicans leap at the chance to be airlifted out of what are more often than not miserable economic circumstances.

Poverty is rampant, the public education system is nearly non-existent, and jobs are scarce. But baseball offers a way out, however long the odds. For the very best players, a spot in the major leagues holds the promise of a lifestyle beyond their imagination. Martinez signed what was then the sport's largest contract in December of 1998, and Sosa, eligible for free agency after the 2001 season, has said he expects his next contract to exceed $140 million.

Many Dominicans, however, are attracted by their love of the game, not their dreams of unimagineable riches.

``Go past any field,'' advises Martinez, ``and you'll see two teams playing and two teams waiting.''

From early morning to late at night, fields are crowded with amateur teams, pickup games, and youth leagues. The winter-league season, which stretches from November through late January, features established major-leaguers and aspiring stars, and draws healthy crowds nightly.

Baseball is an indelible part of the culture. Like soccer in some European and South American counties, the fan following is fierce and rooted in nationalism, and games are a unifying social event.

To see the way baseball is treasured here is to recall the game's place in the U.S. fifty or so years ago, when basketball and football were occasional pursuits but barely noteworthy; when the World Series represented the apex of the sports calendar; when the game's brightest stars were the equivalent of royalty.

While baseball in America fights to overcome an ugly labor history, longer game times and endless player movement, it has almost been discarded by the younger generation of fans -- treated like a relic and tossed to the side in favor of basketball, football and pro wrestling.

Not here. Imported lovingly from America's past, baseball's future may well lie in the Dominican Republic.

The last frontier
The game has deep roots here, though its exact development is unclear. Martinez knows that his father and uncles played baseball as youths, drawn to the sport at an early age.

``It's been a family tradition,'' said Martinez.

When his father, Paolino Jaime Abreu, played, there was no career planning involved. Like most young boys, they played because they enjoyed themselves.

``His mother told him his future was in farming,'' recalled Martinez. ``They understood baseball was just for fun.''

But in the 1950s and '60s, the first wave of Dominicans began to make inroads in the majors leagues.

There was Juan Marichal, who would go on to record five 20-win seasons to establsh himself as the best Dominican pitcher B.P (before Pedro).

There were the Alou brothers -- Matty, Felipe, and Jesus -- a trio of .300-hitting outfielders.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s, the trickle of players emigrating to the U.S. began to intensify. Then, in the 1980s, came the talent boom. George Bell, Tony Fernandez, Mario Soto, Jose Rijo and Pedro Martinez's brother, Ramon -- among others -- reached the big leagues and became stars.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and Pittsburgh Pirates established footholds in the country and often grabbed the best players . . . the Pirates through the work of legendary scout Howie Haak.

The Red Sox, as they were when the color barrier was torn down, were caught flat-footed and unprepared for the shift. Though the team struck occasional paydirt in the Caribbean and Latin America, the Sox retained their image as baseball's lily-white enclave, intent on landing plodding sluggers from the high school and college ranks while other organizations combed the Caribbean for athletes.

That philosophy underwent a radical reversal when Dan Duquette was hired as general manager in January, 1994.

Duquette understood that a sea of change was taking place in baseball and that much of the best talent was being mined in places other than the United States.

``By the early 1990s,'' said Duquette, ``it was pretty apparent that there were a lot of talented, hungry players coming out of the (Dominican).''

Much of the talent flow could be attributed to the climate, which enabled year-long play. But the reasons for the implosion go far beyond good weather and available playing fields.

``The culture supports baseball,'' Duquette said. ``The national heroes are people like Sammy Sosa and Pedro. When a culture worships its players, it makes the young people want to be like their country's heroes.''

Availability of talent is just part of the attraction for major-league teams. There's also the matter of economics.

While players from the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico are subject to the amateur draft, Dominicans are not. In that sense, the Dominican Republic is the last frontier, with players waiting to be discovered on every sandlot.

That puts a greater emphasis on scouting and contacts. Those teams best connected on the island are likely to reap the strongest harvest when it comes to uncovering players.

Typically, those players -- though raw in skills and often underdeveloped because of poor nutrition -- can be signed at a relative fraction of what U.S.-born players command at the negotiating table.

Wilton Veras, one of the Red Sox' best prospects and the first to graduate from the team's academy in the Dominican, was signed for the paltry sum of $7,000. Had he been an American high schooler with the same abilities, he might have commanded one hundred times that amount.

While signing bonuses have skyrocketed for drafted players -- the Red Sox paid last year's No. 1 pick, Rick Asadoorian, $1.725 million, about twice the amount they paid 1993's No. 1 pick, Trot Nixon -- players in the Dominican remain bargains by comparison . . . even though the average bonus has risen in recent years to about $12,000 (compared to $4,000 only a few years ago) and a small handful of elite players, like the Yankees' Alfonoso Soriano, have managed to procure as much as $3 million.

But they're the exception and not the rule, which is the why the Dominican Republic is such an important pipeline to many organizations.

``It's a cost-effective way to develop talent for the major league team,'' confirmed Duquette.

The amount the Red Sox spend on staffing, signing new players and maintaining their academy in San Pedro de Macoris is approximately $500,000 annually -- about the price of a major-league utility infielder. .

``The idea,'' Duquette said, ``is to sign a number of young talented players, let them play, and then invite the best players over to the States. The ones who aren't good enough to come -- you let them go, and sign another batch.''

If there's a cold mercenary ring to that statement, it's no different from the philosophy undertaken in the draft. Each June, teams select as many as 50 players. Maybe half sign, and of those, only a percentage make it out of the lowest level of the minor leagues. From that group, a handful might make it to the major leagues.

The hard realities are no different in the Dominican. But the stakes can be far higher.

``In the States,'' said Nelson Norman, a former major-leaguer and a Dominican native who oversees the team's operations there, ``if a kid doesn't make it to the big leagues, he can do something else. He's got a high school degree. Some have a college education. But here, a kid doesn't have much to go back to.''

Take a bat away from a Dominican teenager, and he may replace it with a machete and use it to cut down sugar cane on the roadside. In addition to being a national obsession and a fierce source of pride, baseball can be an economic lifeline.

It pays to discover
In the Dominican, there are players seemingly everywhere, filling municipal ballparks and rural diamonds, using whatever is available for bats, gloves and balls.

It falls to people like Levy Ochoa and Julian Camilo, the two primary Red Sox scouts in the Dominican Republic, to separate the merely eager from those with distinct major league potential.

Since most Dominican children are not required to attend school after the sixth grade, there are no high school tournaments or conference All-Star contests in which the best players congregate and can be assessed and compared.

Instead, Ochoa and Camilo must rely on a network of contacts, casual acquaintances and friends to steer them in the right direction. Often, they are alerted to the existence of a quality prospect by a bird dog who scours the country for talent.

The most successful bird dogs have their own stable of players and conduct their own academies. Others, like Juan Reynoso, a one-time infield instructor for the Yankees and a former clubhouse attendant for the Pirates, must scramble to find fields and practice times.

Reynoso is credited with discovering major-league outfielder Jose Guillen, now with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. When Reynoso was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates, Reynoso was given ``a few hundred dollars'' as a sort of finder's fee.

These days, reflective of the escalation of salaries, Reynoso soon stands to realize a far bigger payday. A raw 17-year-old with little baseball backround but the ability to throw 87 mph already has drawn the interest of the Devil Rays and a few other teams. The player is expected to sign for $200,000, which would mean Reynoso's percentage of the action could be as much as $10,000. The prospect has him beaming in anticipation.

Increasingly, scouts like Ochoa and Camilo find themselves in competition with not only other pro scouts, but agents, too, who have come to recognize the untapped potential in the island nation.

The agents, acting as their own middle men without the interference of bird dogs, then take a far harder negotiating stance with major-league organization.

Their presence has resulted in the rise in signing bonuses and the ability of players like Soriano to earn sums akin to those given mid-level major league free agents.

``Oh, yeah,'' chuckles a philosophic Camilo. ``It's changed. It's changed a lot.''

That'll learn you
San Pedro de Macoris is some 45 miles west of Santo Domingo, the capital city.

In a quirk of geography, it is also the birthplace of a stream of major-league shortstops, from Tony Fernandez to Manny Lee to Rafael Ramirez. It's here that the Red Sox have estabilshed their beachhead in the Dominican, sharing their baseball academy with a Japanese pro team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Actually, ``academy'' constitutes something of a stretch. It's a small athletic complex, with a quartet of baseball diamonds. Beyond the fields sits farmland, and stray animals can be seen grazing beyond the outfield fences.

Almost year-round, the Sox field a pair of teams in both the summer and winter leagues, totaling nearly 70 players. The summer league runs from April to mid-September, at which point some players are sent to the Sox' Instructional League team in Florida. The winter league picks up in late October and continues through mid-February, just before the start of spring training. The teams play academy teams run by other organizations; the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays are the most frequent opponents.

In the morning, players are taught fundamentals through a series of drills orchestrated by eight instructors. In the late morning, the games are held. By mid-afternoon, the players, lacking a clubhouse facility, are bused back to their dorms, several miles away.

The summer-league players are paid the equivalent of $300 U.S. dollars every two weeks. The winter-league players receive $30 U.S. every Friday. They do, however, receive free room and board.

For now, the Red Sox are housing their players in a downtown boarding house, situated in a neighborhood that features several buildings topped by tin roofs. The accomodations are far from first-class. Indeed, the dorm resembles a fraternity house which lost most of its furnishings in a drunken all-night poker game.

The second-floor space is open-air in spots and nearly barren save for military-style bunk beds and a common room filled with second-hand patio furniture. It's here that the players gather to eat and watch a TV that's bolted to the wall and encased in a protective cage.

Next year, the players will be housed in a nearby Howard Johnson that is luxurious by local standards, featuring a marble lobby and a large pool, ringed with cushioned lounge chairs.

In the afternoon, a tutor arrives at the dorm to conduct English classes. The Red Sox also have a social worker on hand to prepare the players for the cultural adjustments that lie ahead for those good enough to be assigned to one of the team's minor-league affiliates in the U.S.

Other less subtle stimuli are available for motivation. On occasion and always unannounced, Pedro Martinez arrives at the academy behind the wheel of his late-model Mercedes.

``He tells them, `You can get that, too,' '' said Norman. ``He reminds them that they have to work hard.''

It's a message that doesn't have to be repeated twice, according to Martinez.

``They have three times the drive that American kids have,'' said the two-time Cy Young Award-winner. ``They want to become somebody. We've got to be twice as good and have more drive. There are so many obstacles -- the language, the culture, getting a visa. The kid from the Dominican has to push, because (baseball) is the one chance he may get.''

Asked what he thinks when he watches his young countrymen at the Red Sox' academy, trying to graduate from this humble field of dreams, Martinez turns proud and wistful at once.

``I see myself in every one of them,'' he said.