baseball in the DR

for those people who follow baseball, you know that the dominican republic supplies the largest number of players to major league baseball after the US. as of july 2005, there were 101 dominican players in the major leagues - that's 1 out of every nine 9 major leaguer is from the DR. 10 out of 67 of the 2005 All Stars were from the DR - that's even more impressive and shows that the DR talent is quite high. this data comes from this site: http://www.dlc.org/ppi/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecID=900003&contentID=253421

many teams have training facilities here in the south of the country where they take on teenage boys and train, feed, and school these kids. only a tiny percentage of these players ever make it into the major leagues, though that number will likely increase as the training facilities get more and more established. at some point, i'd love to go and check out the red sox training facility.

the dominican players have mostly been big hitters like vlad guerrero, david ortiz, and sammy sosa, as well as star pitchers like pedro martinez and bartolo colon. well, apparently, shortstop appears to be a hot position now for dominican players. according to DR1, 10 of the 30 shortstops currently playing in the big leagues are from the DR. here are just a few of those names:

• Miguel Tejada - Baltimore Orioles
• Rafael Furcal - LA Dodgers
• Jose Reyes - NY Mets
• Juan Uribe - Chicago White Sox
• Johnny Peralta - Cleveland Indians
• Julio Lugo - Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• Angel Berroa - Kansas City Royals
• Cristian Guzman - Washington Nationals
• Hanley Ramirez - Florida Marlins

hanley ramirez came out of the red sox minor league system and was traded to the marlins for stud pitcher, josh beckett. hopefully we don't regret that decision. beckett won his first game for the sox yesterday, so we're off to a good start there.

baseball is a huge sport here. the dominican republic has a winter ball league from october to january where many of the dominican players come back home and play in during their MLB offseason. there are 6 teams in that league, with the licey tigers and cibao eagles (aguilas) being i believe the 2 best. here's a link to the aguilas home page (which is in spanish of course) http://www.lasaguilas.com/2005/index.php

surprisingly, the area of the country that produces the most major leaguers (san pedro de marcoris) does not have a very good team. even stars like david ortiz play in this league - albeit for a few games only towards the end of that season as a primer to get in shape for MLB.

when the major leagues are in season, the games are televised on multiple channels - on any given night, there are up to 3 games on TV here. often the red sox are one of the games, which is a good thing! the fact that i can live in another country and actually see a good number of the sox games on regular cable TV is just remarkable to me. score another point for the DR as a place to live as an ex-pat (and sox fan).

dominicans do not really pledge allegiance to MLB teams. instead, they pledge allegiance to dominican players. so if a player they like is playing for the red sox, they follow the red sox. but if that player is traded to a different team, they then start following that team. you see lots of dominicans wearing baseball hats of various MLB teams. i think they switch hats once their favorite player moves to a different team. certainly a different way to follow baseball.