Bird Dogs - Preying on or Fueling Dreams in the DR?

December 20, 2006

On an island where bottle caps and pebbles serve happily as baseballs when not even a tattered one is available and broomsticks serve as bats, kids dream the ultimate dream - making it to the major leagues in the US. This dream becomes the driving force that shapes their lives, sometimes working out for the better and other times showing families who held hope the dark side of swindling. The lack of equipment is spun positively as improving hand-eye coordination, and that may very well be true given the growing pool of young talented baseball players raised in the Dominican Republic. Most dream not only for the love of the game, but also as a way to help their families out of poverty and ramshackle tin and concrete dwellings into new sturdy homes with ample bedrooms. After reading Todd Jacobson’s stories from his trip to the DR to cover Manny Acta’s homecoming last week and the Nationals’ tryouts and academy now that the Nats are making a strong scouting presence there, particularly after the signing of Smiley Gonzalez, I became most intrigued by the underlying story of the buscones, or bird dogs as they are sometimes known, that are an integral part of the culture of scouting and signing of players there. My first maternal reaction was to want to rush down there and make sure these kids are truly being well taken care of.

Photos cropped so as not to violate copyright, but originally taken by Peter Power/Toronto Star/ZUMA Press. [SEE SLIDESHOW]

Buscones, literally translated as “finders”, are often the first point of contact for young hopeful baseball players they seek and find as young as nine years old (Little Chatter’s age!). If a kid shows promise, a buscon will offer the promises of riches and delivery into the big leagues if the kid agrees to a commission (often 25% of signing bonus, but can be up to 50% plus a percentage of all future earnings) and to come under his wing. Many buscones are driven by money and not a love of kids or the sport, some not even knowing the names of the players under their tutelage and control. They lure them away from their impoverished families by dangling their dream and promise of riches and then feed them, train them, and show them off to big league scouts and academies. Parents willingly let their sons go, hoping the opportunity provides a better life and knowing (hoping) the child will get 3 full meals a day. I can’t even imagine such a heart-wrenching decision. In researching articles on the topic, the presiding theme that struck me was that it’s a lucrative business of human trafficking of baseball players. Find them, feed them, fatten them up like a Thanksgiving turkey, train them, display them, then auction them off to the highest bidding MLB team. No buyers? Send ‘em packing back whence they came, shattering that hope. A buscon can have as few as a handful of promising talented players that practice on patches of dirt or grass whenever they find it or up to five hundred in a complex complete with staff.

This process obviously reeks of corruption. For one, it is a highly competitive and lucrative field with the number of buscones growing over the years. One article from July 2004 quoted an expert as estimating there were between 500 and 800 buscones in the Dominican Republic while May 2005 article estimates 1300 less than a year later. The name that appears across all articles spanning the last five years on the subject is Enrique Soto, the King of Buscones and wealthiest of them all. However, with the pressure for more regulation over buscones and the newish coaching association that is hoping to bring buscones into the fold and allow for strong regulation, he may find himself out of business.

Imagine this - a skinny kid (worse, imagine it’s your kid) is brought on board by a buscon who itches for the big payout a signing bonus from an MLB team will give him. He’s in cutthroat competition with the 1299 other buscones out there doing the same with their kids. He feeds the kid, clothes him, practices baseball with him six hours a day. The buscon knows the body type the scouts look for, as well as what mechanics. He teaches the kid to do a 60 yard spring under 7 seconds and specific fielding skills to show off. But… if the kid’s body doesn’t fill out or his endurance is lacking, what then? Steroids and performance enhancers began infiltrating the system as they still pursue the grand prize. Plus, with the cut throat rate at which buscones offer signing deals to teams, scouts do not have enough to time to fully evaluate a player and pick based on tools seen at these tryouts and displays with no idea how the kid will mature or behave in a dugout. One problem with that was quoted on the Oakland Press:

“What they do is train them to look as impressive as possible during a tryout,” Avila said. “They teach the middle infielders the actions we are looking for and have them work on running (to be timed in the 60-yard dash). You have to be careful because many times a player who looks great in a tryout cannot translate those skills into an actual game.”

Everyone agrees something has to change, but the buscones culture is so ingrained in Dominican baseball, that there’s really no way to do business without them. On one hand, many give these boys opportunities they desperately want and need, and many do raise them as if they were their own. Yet, there is also a dark side and none of it is regulated. It appears steps have been taken over the last couple years to try to reign in some of the illegalities of the system such as drugs and doctored birth certificates. Scouts are also becoming savvy to the games buscones and players play and ask the right questions. If they are dissatisfied with the answers or evasiveness, they pass on the player. Jose Escarraman was a buscon who spent three years organizing a “coaches association” in order to regulate the buscones, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. He says, “When a buscone becomes a coach with us, you will know the names of players under his control, you will know what arrangement he has with a player and know where to find him at all times.” Sounds like a good plan, but I’m not so sure the King of Buscones, Sota, will like that arrangement much.

Sota produced Miguel Tejada and Willy Aybar, but just read this 2001 Washington Post article on the events surrounding Aybar’s signing bonus checks from the Dodgers. Heartbreaking. Also note that Sota does not even know the names of his “family” of players. Aybar’s parents (and Aybar himself) really knew nothing about banking or how much money $1.4 really represented. Aybar trusted his buscone, Soto, and had the check sent to him. He never saw much of it personally and his mother was given a fraction of the total. Partly to blame is the fact that Aybar had no inkling of what life would entail in the US. Hmm… wonder how Soto became the wealthiest buscone? Probably preying on young naive children. Even years later when Aybar realized what had happened, he did not pursue it as his younger brother Erick was under Soto’s control (he eventually signed with the Anaheim Angels minors).

With Jose Rijo and Manny Acta involved in the Nationals side of the Dominican operations, I have faith that everything will be done in an upstanding manner. I think a system should be put in place where MLB teams only deal with the coaches association - that would force the rest of the buscones to join or find another line of human trafficking business. Of course, if they find that next superstar talent, it’s hard to not deal with them, eh? The whole system is heartbreaking and a catch-22.

I would love to hear the stories of Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Alfonso Soriano, Albert Pujols, et al on their experiences. (Todd, I’m looking at you for getting that one!). Although, that may be a huge project to take on:

An official fact-finding mission of this kind would be extremely helpful for the Dominican Republic because it would help the nation begin to assert some control over what has been uncontrollable in the past. It would also help Major League Baseball by assuring their practices in the Dominican Republic are legal and ethical under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the American Covenant on Human Rights. Lastly, such a mission would lay to rest any false accusations being made against the Dominican Republic or Major League Baseball by scholars who have, in the absence of empirical research, seized upon scattered media coverage and personal anecdotes and declared that gross human rights violations are occurring.

Sources:

Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star: BUSCONES M.O.: FIND, TRAIN, REAP Dominican ‘agents’ develop talent, then take a cut

Washington Post: The Business of Building Ballplayers

Toronto Star: Dominican ‘Field of Dreams’

The Oakland Press: ‘Buscones’ Complicate Market

Mining For Dominican Diamonds; Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights: Dragging Their Devotion: The Role of International Law in Major League Baseball’s Dominican Affairs

There is far far more to this story and angles than I can do justice to in a blog post, but hopefully I’ve got some people thinking about it. This is a storyline that should be watched over the next few years to see what, if anything, the Dominican government and MLB do to assure human rights are protected when it comes to these kids and the buscones in a world where they are just par for the course and taken as normal.

Posted in Baseball - General, Washington Nationals