Can't Knock the Hassle: Chavez Challenges Baseball
“Marines shouldered bats next to their rifles when they imposed imperial order in a region by blood and fire. Baseball then became for the people of the Caribbean what baseball is to us.”—Eduardo Galeano
When Hugo Chávez struck out in his December referendum aimed at overhauling the Venezuelan political system, a small group of overfed men raised their glasses in triumph: the assorted owners of Major League Baseball.
Edward Bennett Williams once called them a “Den of Idiots,” and for the last decade, the idiots have descended in vulpine fashion on both the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, marauding like free marketers on steroids in their quest for baseball talent on the cheap. Currently, 30 percent of all minor league players are from the DR alone.
Owners love Latin America for the same reason Disney can’t get enough of Haiti: they, can sign children for pennies, treat them like trash when they’re finished, and face contact lens-thin regulations for their troubles.
The impact on the athletes can be devastating. “Super Mario” Encarnación, once the most prized prospect of the Oakland As, was found dead in a Taipei motel room in October 2006, after an apparent drug overdose. He had been playing at the margins of the semi-pro baseball circuit desperate to not return home a failure to the DR. He returned, only when his friend former AL MVP Miguel Tejada, paid to have his body shipped back to their village from Japan.
Encarnación did do better than Lino Ortiz. The nineteen-year-old pitcher was about to be called up to the Majors when he died from taking an animal steroid in the DR looking for an edge. Steroids are actually legal and available over the counter, but their cost makes them prohibitive. Lino bought his from the pet store and met an all-too-early-death.
After the DR, the country that supplies the most talent in Latin America is Venezuela. There are now more than fifty players from Venezuela in Major League Baseball, including superstars like Johan Santana, Magglio Ordoñez and Miguel Cabrera. In the last twenty years, 200 Venezuelans have played in the Major Leagues with more than 1,000 in the minors. And yet despite this bounty of talent, the idiots are starting to scamper from Venezuela because Hugo Chávez is demanding that owners pay for the privilege of their pillage.
Lou Meléndez, MLB’s vice president for international operations, was more than miffed to receive documents that called for instituting employee and player protections and requiring teams to pay out 10 percent of players’ signing bonuses to the government. Chávez wants to tax MLB for what they take from the country.
“We don’t pay federations money for signing players anywhere in the world, and we don’t expect to do so. It’s certainly not a way to conduct business,” huffed Meléndez. “When you see certain industries that are being nationalized, you begin to wonder if they are going to nationalize the baseball industry in Venezuela.”
As ESPN wrote, “There has been speculation, more internal than public so far, that Chávez, a socialist and self-proclaimed revolutionary who took office in 1999, will turn Venezuela into the next Cuba. In other words, some worry that baseball in Venezuela will serve to illustrate (once again) how politics spills over into sport.”
The hypocrisy is stunning. Heaven forfend, there is nothing “political” about a multibillion-dollar business running roughshod over an entire nation with no accountability for the dashed dreams of the 99 percent who don’t make it stateside. And there is surely nothing political about shutting down your baseball academy for fear that the natives might demand business practices that might approximate the humane.
Already, the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres have cut and run. “We just figured we might as well do it [then] to avoid some of the hassle of having to deal with some of the legislation that Chávez passes down there in hiring coaches, worrying about severance pay, and just getting in and out of the country,” Juan Lara of the Padres told the media.
This tension exposes the rot at the heart of this relationship. Chávez dares demand regulation and the first instinct of the owners is to flee toward more exploitable ground. Not only is Chávez right to pressure baseball to actually give something back, other countries—the Dominican Republic, in particular—should follow his lead.
Every year, millions of Latin American children are shredded as they reach to escape poverty with a bat and a ball. It’s long past time MLB gave something back to the nations they so blithely upend.
Even an idiot can see that.
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If one wishes to see the worldwide version of the sorry trade Dave Z. wrote about, you need only change the locales to Europe and Africa, and the sport to soccer. There, the African youngsters who don't make the cut are often left to fend for themselves on the streets.
Here's my question: why should MLB have to stay somewhere when they can do it more cheaply somewhere else?
Its ridiculous that they can say politics are spilling into sports, when the US Congress is more than doing its fair share of that, with hardly a question. At least it seems that Chavez is doing this to HELP his citizens that are affected by this. The US Congress is investigating baseball and the Patriots in spite of all the other problems that they should be looking at, like say the war, or healthcare, or a real economic stimulus plan...
Thanks for reminding us of the meat-market mentality of the club owners. It comes with territory of making a fortune off the talent of others.
If Congress weren't completely corrupt, what a worthy object for scrutiny this could be -- the way lives are churned up and often destroyed by the carefully calculated frenzy to make it big, in the Majors, or in soccer, or in any other business.
Les.
Okay, I'll call Rob Vicious an idiot. Major league baseball is, in capitalist terms, a huge scam. Which two enterprises are exempt from anti-trust laws? Insurance companies and baseball. They don't have to report their profits, so they can claim to lose money the same year they sign A-Rod to a quarter-billion dollar contract. If you're stupid enough to believe that, I've got a team in NYC you might wanna buy.
As a non-Bonds worshipper I normally disagree with Dave Zirin's take on sports. In fact, amazingly enough, I also think Clemens is a scumbag; I'd pay good money to see him hit in the head with a baseball until he died
But Zirin is totally dead right on this issue. Read the NY TImes and be propagandized! Or realize that the reason they diss Chavez is that he helps the poor, not the rich. Way to go, Dave! You hit the proverbial nail on the head.
How much are MLB teams paying to draft Latin players?
Nothing. Because there is no draft for Latin players.
The Latin Baseball Federation (if there is such an organization), should indeed work with the national governments to regulate the exploitation of the atheletes.
And if MLB teams choose to discontinue their relationship with these talent sources, they can start paying $M to Japanese players.
We have a lot to learn about democracy, justice, and basic human decency from Venezuelans. I went to Venezuela last year and discovered a country where people where proud of building a new and better society.
Another interesting note is - do you see how Americans are so physically, intellectually, and morally decrepit we can't even fill our engineering, medical schools... not enough programmers, doctors... or even baseball players. I can't help but notice this. And now, the capitalist-fascist scum want to let other countries' SUPERIOR educational/social systems produce SUPERIOR people who then get snapped up by US elites and turned into commodities. Quite interesting. Of course, Venezuela should get payment for its investment in these people...
Repeat after me. "People are not the property of their governments" Chavez just wants to rip-off his players like the Chi-coms do with Yao Ming. If he tries to hold his nation's baseball players hostage it will lead to defections just as in the case of Cuba and the USSR. Of course those are the ultra successful models that Chavez is trying to force on Venezuela.
From what I've read Chavez is not interested in holding players hostage, he wants to protect them from American teams that are exploiting poverty stricken countries in order to obtain cheap talent in large numbers.
If baseballs owners were walking around American cities signing kids as young as 13 or 14 to contracts, taking them out of school and putting them into baseball factories it would be front page news for months. As it is they have carte blanche to walk into Latin American countries and fill their minor league rosters without anyone batting an eyelash, and it needs to be stopped.
When you look at the issues, it seems that what the mlb is trying to scamper from, and what Chavez is asking for, is not that big a deal.
Actual contracts for players, not millions but something they can bank on for when they don't make it to the bigs...not a biggie
How about schools for the kids to get an education while they are in the organization...not a big deal
Limited hours of work for minors in the camps and a standard for living conditions...not a big deal
A small tax to do business in the country, like you would pay in all other industries...not a big deal.
All of this together is a minor expense, and given the money mlb makes from even the few that make it to the majors its not a big investment they're being asked to make. In the end it costs less than single A affiliates in florida.
Really its education, living standards, wages at a very low cost. It shouldn't be a big deal for the mlb, it should be common sense. But why isn't it?
First let me say that I totally agree that the MLB needs to do more. It's pathetic that they can't be bothered to treat all players fairly, regardless of where they come from. As a previous poster said, it shouldn't be that big a deal.
I do, however, which to voice my strong disagreement with those who think Chavez is worthy of much praise. I am married to a Venezuelan (and no, not a rich one) and have visited the country a number of times and spoken to many people there. The only people Chavez wants to help are his buddies. Anyone who thinks that whatever money he gets out of the MLB is going to go to the players is delusional.
Chavez has done some good things, there's no doubt about it. But a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. My sister-in-law went through dentistry school as part of the program to educate the poor, but when she got out she was put in a goverment-sponsored clinic that had no equipment. They see patients and tell them "you need to get xx done, but I can't do it for you. Good luck". What's the use in that?
He changed the crest on the nation's flag because his 6-year-old daughter asked why the horse's head was facing in the direction it was.
How great is he when a company as rich in oil as Venezuela has a population in which as many as 90% (according to some reports) are below the poverty line. Something is not computing.
He's a powerful man because many of the poor believe he will help them. Sometimes because he pulls up a tanker full of soda to the slums gives it out for free. Sometimes because he builds free housing. It's not all bad, but it's sure as hell not all good.
Beware of idealizing such a person before digging deeper. Don't believe the hype.
Wikipedia says Mario Encarnacion died of a "congenital medical condition", just to clarify. He was suspended for steroid use, which led to some rumors of drug abuse, but the autopsy apparently didn't support death by drugs.
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Dave Zirin is the author of the book: "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by
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