Sportsfrog.com

Just a little off the top is a phrase commonly heard at barbershops, hair salons, and mafia business negotiations. We can now add that phrase to signing bonuses of Dominican baseball players.

As of 1998, almost a tenth of all Major League players heralded from the Dominican Republic and there were more Latinos than African-Americans in the League. Only California, with four times the population of the Caribbean Island saw more of its residents enter the Majors.

Those figures are ten years old and I imagine the are even more Dominican players currently.

For example, there is uncontested evidence that the Dodgers, in 1996 and 1997 under the actions of their head Dominican Scout, Pablo Peguero, violated the U.S. Embargo against Cuba by holding secret try-outs for two Cuban players and arranging for their defection. Despite these facts, the United States Government has taken no remedial action, leaving punishment in the hands of the Baseball Commissioner.
(Scott Cwiertny, The Need for a Worldwide Draft: Major League Baseball and its Relationship with the Cuban Embargo and the United States Foreign Policy)

So just like the mob, baseball can do what it wants, because of its anti-trust exemption, and we are just supposed to go along with it, buy our tickets and our official MLB Chinese made apparel.

Major League Baseball’s ongoing investigation into the skimming of signing bonuses from Dominican players reached the Red Sox last month.

Pablo Lantigua, the club’s Dominican scouting supervisor, was fired last month for receiving a kickback of an unspecified amount on a player he recommended, a baseball source said yesterday.

Pablo was probably shocked by his firing as what he did has been common practice for years. Sure it’s illegal, but it’s never enforced. Imagine his surprise, like a young Henry Hill in Goodfellas getting pinched for selling stolen smokes.

Here is a great example of what goes on in the Dominican Republic:

The story of Enrique Soto and Willy Aybar exemplifies the problems of informal representation. Soto, the most famous Dominican buscon, discovered Aybar at age thirteen and molded his development as a player. Upon signing with the Dodgers, the team released the first half of Aybar’s bonus, $490,000, to Soto, who deposited the check in his personal bank account. Soto then paid the American agent, Rob Plummer, who negotiated the contract, $35,000, and finally awarded Aybar’s family a lump sum of $6,250 and a stipend of roughly two thousand dollars a month. Although Soto returned roughly $185,000 to the Aybars it is believed he is still in possession of over $200,000 of Aybar’s signing bonus.

It only leaves me wondering that if at the age of 16 or 17, when it is evident that a player won’t be signed by a major league team, do they just shoot them like we do with horses?