Baseball’s needless tensions over Latin American recruitment

Another baseball season brings a new, misguided attack on Latin American ballplayers.

Jackie Robinson Day, a celebration of major league baseball’s first black player, is coming on April 15. Yet the percentage of black players today is languishing at less than 10 percent, down more than half from a decade ago.

This unfortunate fact has prompted stars like C.C. Sabathia, Gary Sheffield and, most recently, Torii Hunter to complain that Latinos, many of whom are black, are taking away major league jobs from black athletes.

“It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper,” Hunter told USA Today in March. “It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’”

Over the last several years, the number of foreign-born players in the major leagues has soared to approximately 28 percent. A large proportion of those players come from the Dominican Republic, where several teams have set up full-time training facilities to develop young players. Since Dominicans and other Latin American players are not subject to the rules of the major league draft, they are often cheaper to sign to a contract than their U.S. counterparts.

Although three years ago Sabathia lamented that U.S. fans “see players like Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado and assume they’re black,” Latin American players spend considerably less time in the limelight than their peers, and are offered far fewer product endorsement opportunities. Like other Latin American immigrants, they are treated as transnational scabs, when actually they are merely pawns in a globalization game.

With many teams battling the recession and decreased revenues, baseball’s division of labor may elicit more hard feelings as clubs increasingly look toward the bottom line when making personnel decisions. While there are currently a few programs around the country designed to attract more urban ballplayers, there should be reform in the amateur draft to allow international players a level playing field.

Latin American players should also give some thought to designating a few ambassadors to the sports media. These ambassadors could help bridge the language gap, and they could ensure that Roberto Clemente, Fernando Valenzuela and Albert Pujols retain their prominent place in America’s baseball lore. The ambassadors should also play a crucial role in facilitating a dialogue with black players that would prevent a recurrence of unfortunate comments like Hunter’s.

We don’t need another needless quarrel between blacks and Latinos.

Ed Morales is a contributor to the New York Times and Newsday and is the author of “Living in Spanglish.” He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.