The Game Has a Long History
Legend says
that baseball, or "beisbol," arrived in 1916 with the U.S. Marines
who occupied the country for eight years.
Not true.
Instead of introducing the game, the Marines were often challenged
by local teams who sometimes won.
Baseball had arrived decades
earlier through Cuba, where American sailors introduced
it in 1866. When increasing turmoil in Cuba caused many to flee to the
DR, they brought baseball with them. Dominicans took to the game just
as eagerly.
Baseball was ideally suited for the island's sugar
economy since cutting cane kept workers busy only six
months of the year. Sugar mill owners encouraged workers to form teams
and play baseball in the off season to keep them occupied.
Since sons would one day
join their father's mill team, baseball became an essential
part of almost every boy's upbringing.
The first professional baseball
team, the Tigers del Lacey, appeared in Santo Domingo in 1907.
Yet the greatest players have consistently come from one old mill town,
San Pedro de Macoris on the southwest coast, which
formed its own team, the Eastern Stars, in 1911.
Baseball became the quick ticket to fortune and fame
in the late 1970s when major league teams from the States turned the
DR into a major recruiting ground.
They established year-round
baseball camps, or academies, to train
the best players between the ages of 15 and 17.
Today, after island-wide tryouts select the most talented,
teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Phillies feed, house, and coach
the youngsters at their Dominican training camps.
They also pay them about $800
a month, or two-thirds of what the average Dominican
earns annually. It's an incredible amount of money
for a teenager, which is why boys are so hungry to play the sport.
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Beisbol, Dominican Style
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