Quote at Mets Academy (Phto LSV)

Bronx, NY: The attached article, "One Island Two Worlds" features an interesting interview on baseball in the Dominican Republic as compared to its neighbor, Haiti with our good friend Charles Farrell. I decided to share this because Charles was a founding member of Latino Sports Initiatives (LSI), a sports advocacy coalition that was formed in New York and that accomplished much on the issue of Latino's in sports, particularly in baseball. As such, Charles has taken his advocacy to the Dominican Republic to pursue his dream of creating a different type of baseball academy there.

We all know that the Dominican Republic has become the "baseball factory" for Major League Baseball with a total of 27 teams operating a baseball academy on the island. We know that this has created the conditions where the game has changed in both, the Dominican Republic and in the USA where baseball has transformed from being as American as "apple pie" to perhaps now as Latin American as a "Big Mango."

We congratulate Charles for his efforts to provide a baseball/educational alternative the Dominican Republic. We at Latino Sports have also asked the question: "What happens to the 95% of the young Dominican boys that do not make it in these academies and have to abandon their dreams of making it to the major leagues?" 

We have gone as far as to offer a training where we can help these young players prepare for the statistical inevitability that they might get cut from a team. To our surprise only one team, the NY Mets has taken the interest to conduct our training. While we try to continue to convince the remaining 29 teams to do the right thing, we continue to support efforts like those of Charles Farrell and his dream of a different baseball academy that prepares young Dominican boys for academics and baseball with dreams of making it to a college in the USA as much as the pipe dream of a major league team in the USA.

The article is about two nations sharing one island loving two different sports. I might add, both exploited.

 What are your comments?

Read on: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2010/03/14/one_island_two_worlds/?page=1 

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