Dominican Scandal Update

[Gregory Pratt]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=3609833

 

Relevant to Sox portions here:

 

A three-month "Outside the Lines" investigation reveals that the scandal began to unfold in February as pitchers and catchers were starting a new season. A White Sox prospect in the Dominican informed the club that a team employee had asked for part of his signing bonus, and the complaint was passed up to MLB offices in New York.

 

Two weeks later, David Wilder, the senior director of player personnel for the White Sox, was making his way through customs at Miami International Airport when he was stopped. He was carrying about $40,000 in undeclared cash back from the Dominican. And a tale began to unravel that has shaken baseball from its Park Avenue offices in Manhattan to the muddy back roads of this small Caribbean nation.

 

MLB launched a probe, and so, too, did the Federal Bureau of Investigation. High-level scouts from the White Sox, Yankees and Red Sox have been fired; more teams are expected to be implicated, and more dismissals are anticipated. The FBI probe has stretched beyond the White Sox to include inquiries into the actions of Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden and special assistant Jose Rijo. Neither has been charged, and both have denied any wrongdoing.

 

The revelations underscore the Dominican baseball scene's reputation as a lawless Wild West landscape with little oversight. For years, hands have been reaching out in every direction for just a taste of wealth in a country mired in 15 percent unemployment and more than 40 percent poverty.

 

To help their children break free and chase the American baseball dream, some parents give their older sons the birth certificates of their younger sons. Or they turn their boys over to a buscon who might be able to provide a birth certificate that takes a few years off a prospect's life. After all, if two players have the same abilities but one is 18 years old and the other is 16, isn't a major league team more likely to sign the 16-year-old? And sometimes it works in reverse: There are the players who make themselves older so they can sign contracts before they reach the legal age of 16.

 

Some buscons try to make their players bigger and stronger by giving them steroids designed for cows and horses. Others tell prospects they can earn a quick $5,000 by marrying a young woman and helping her secure a visa to the United States. At least 15 Dominican players have been permanently banned from the United States because of their involvement in the marriage scheme.

 

"It's been going on forever," says Porfirio Vera, the national commissioner of baseball in the Dominican Republic, "because it's a business and the potential benefits are there. There's money to be made, and people always look for the easiest way to make it. As long as players are being signed, and there are kids who lack the right preparation or the right understanding … and besides, they need the money."

 

These recent scams vary in execution, but the basic plan is the same: A major league scout inflates the value of a player, a team signs him, and the scout then receives a little off the top of the bonus in cash from the player. Players, agents, scouts and coaches in the Dominican say they've known it's been happening for years, always suspecting that someone in the United States was getting the money. But until the system began to unravel in late February, nothing was done about it.

 

More at the link.