DOS_patos
Unverified Legion of Trill member
Last summer, scouts from half a dozen Major League Baseball organizations traveled to Bani, a city on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic, to see a group of teenage boys work out. This showcase looked the same as the thousands of others that feed baseball’s hundred-million-dollar international amateur machine. The only difference was that a convicted child molester had organized it.
When officials at MLB first heard that Enrique Soto was back to training kids, they were understandably alarmed. He was convicted in 2013 of raping two teenaged brothers at his baseball academy and sentenced to 10 years in prison. When the league investigated, it was told that as part of a work-release program, Soto had resumed the job that brought him riches and fame on the island of 10 million that produces a disproportionate amount of major league players.
Buscones – amalgamations of talent seekers, trainers, agents, power brokers and father figures who take often-usurious cuts of amateur players’ signing bonuses – play one of the most integral roles in Latin American baseball. About a quarter of the 1,186 major league players this season come from the system in which children as young as 10 or 11 drop out of school, join a buscon such as Soto and work toward signing a professional baseball contract at 16. MLB’s original sin of severe underpayment, treating the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other Latin American countries more like plantations than partners from the 1950s through the late 1990s, seeded a distrustful relationship between the parties that persists today in other, more complicated ways." data-reactid="33" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Buscones – amalgamations of talent seekers, trainers, agents, power brokers and father figures who take often-usurious cuts of amateur players’ signing bonuses – play one of the most integral roles in Latin American baseball. About a quarter of the 1,186 major league players this season come from the system in which children as young as 10 or 11 drop out of school, join a buscon such as Soto and work toward signing a professional baseball contract at 16. MLB’s original sin of severe underpayment, treating the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other Latin American countries more like plantations than partners from the 1950s through the late 1990s, seeded a distrustful relationship between the parties that persists today in other, more complicated ways.
The dysfunction runs deep enough that Soto could organize a showcase attended by scouts and the commissioner’s office would only find out about it weeks later. Even as the money grew over the last 20 years and signing bonuses came closer to representing the free-market value of elite amateur talent, the system fractured in other ways, leaving Latin America in its blighted, confused present state, nearly two dozen league officials, front-office executives, scouts, agents, trainers and players told Yahoo Sports.
buscones to dope children at younger and younger ages." data-reactid="35" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Most troubling is what multiple people familiar with the market called the “serial doping” of children. While performance-enhancing drug use has long been problematic among Latin American amateurs, the new collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association created a perverse incentive for buscones to dope children at younger and younger ages.
Rather than accede to an international draft, which the league was pushing, the union preferred a system in which teams are given a fixed dollar amount to spend on international players. While 16 is the youngest age at which a player can join a team, a majority of top prospects on this year’s July 2, the international amateur signing day, had agreed to a contract with a team when he was 14, according to five sources familiar with the market. Thus, with teams letting trainers know they were willing to lock in seven-figure signing bonuses at 14, it enticed them to present physically mature, imposing pre-teens – many of whom did not know what they were taking.
buscones no longer would want to work with him. “Trainers who can’t afford the good stuff giving horse steroids to kids. It’s a dirty business.”" data-reactid="37" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Kids from the age of 11, 12 are on steroids,” said one agent who represents Latin American teenagers and requested anonymity out of fear buscones no longer would want to work with him. “Trainers who can’t afford the good stuff giving horse steroids to kids. It’s a dirty business.”
buscones. Teams don’t exactly discourage the behavior. When one highly regarded 16-year-old tested positive for PEDs this year, two sources told Yahoo Sports, the team simply reduced his agreed-upon signing bonus – and still gave him well over $1 million. Multiple elite prospects from last week’s signing class tested positive, sources told Yahoo Sports, and at least a dozen players in all were caught having used PEDs. The full number is unknown as teams conducted PED tests themselves." data-reactid="38" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It’s not just the buscones. Teams don’t exactly discourage the behavior. When one highly regarded 16-year-old tested positive for PEDs this year, two sources told Yahoo Sports, the team simply reduced his agreed-upon signing bonus – and still gave him well over $1 million. Multiple elite prospects from last week’s signing class tested positive, sources told Yahoo Sports, and at least a dozen players in all were caught having used PEDs. The full number is unknown as teams conducted PED tests themselves.
buscon and in exchange must give him the same $300,000 for lesser players he trains. The Braves also had struck a deal with Robert Puason, a shortstop from the Dominican Republic. He was 13.
When officials at MLB first heard that Enrique Soto was back to training kids, they were understandably alarmed. He was convicted in 2013 of raping two teenaged brothers at his baseball academy and sentenced to 10 years in prison. When the league investigated, it was told that as part of a work-release program, Soto had resumed the job that brought him riches and fame on the island of 10 million that produces a disproportionate amount of major league players.
Buscones – amalgamations of talent seekers, trainers, agents, power brokers and father figures who take often-usurious cuts of amateur players’ signing bonuses – play one of the most integral roles in Latin American baseball. About a quarter of the 1,186 major league players this season come from the system in which children as young as 10 or 11 drop out of school, join a buscon such as Soto and work toward signing a professional baseball contract at 16. MLB’s original sin of severe underpayment, treating the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other Latin American countries more like plantations than partners from the 1950s through the late 1990s, seeded a distrustful relationship between the parties that persists today in other, more complicated ways." data-reactid="33" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Buscones – amalgamations of talent seekers, trainers, agents, power brokers and father figures who take often-usurious cuts of amateur players’ signing bonuses – play one of the most integral roles in Latin American baseball. About a quarter of the 1,186 major league players this season come from the system in which children as young as 10 or 11 drop out of school, join a buscon such as Soto and work toward signing a professional baseball contract at 16. MLB’s original sin of severe underpayment, treating the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other Latin American countries more like plantations than partners from the 1950s through the late 1990s, seeded a distrustful relationship between the parties that persists today in other, more complicated ways.
The dysfunction runs deep enough that Soto could organize a showcase attended by scouts and the commissioner’s office would only find out about it weeks later. Even as the money grew over the last 20 years and signing bonuses came closer to representing the free-market value of elite amateur talent, the system fractured in other ways, leaving Latin America in its blighted, confused present state, nearly two dozen league officials, front-office executives, scouts, agents, trainers and players told Yahoo Sports.
buscones to dope children at younger and younger ages." data-reactid="35" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Most troubling is what multiple people familiar with the market called the “serial doping” of children. While performance-enhancing drug use has long been problematic among Latin American amateurs, the new collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association created a perverse incentive for buscones to dope children at younger and younger ages.
Rather than accede to an international draft, which the league was pushing, the union preferred a system in which teams are given a fixed dollar amount to spend on international players. While 16 is the youngest age at which a player can join a team, a majority of top prospects on this year’s July 2, the international amateur signing day, had agreed to a contract with a team when he was 14, according to five sources familiar with the market. Thus, with teams letting trainers know they were willing to lock in seven-figure signing bonuses at 14, it enticed them to present physically mature, imposing pre-teens – many of whom did not know what they were taking.
buscones no longer would want to work with him. “Trainers who can’t afford the good stuff giving horse steroids to kids. It’s a dirty business.”" data-reactid="37" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Kids from the age of 11, 12 are on steroids,” said one agent who represents Latin American teenagers and requested anonymity out of fear buscones no longer would want to work with him. “Trainers who can’t afford the good stuff giving horse steroids to kids. It’s a dirty business.”
buscones. Teams don’t exactly discourage the behavior. When one highly regarded 16-year-old tested positive for PEDs this year, two sources told Yahoo Sports, the team simply reduced his agreed-upon signing bonus – and still gave him well over $1 million. Multiple elite prospects from last week’s signing class tested positive, sources told Yahoo Sports, and at least a dozen players in all were caught having used PEDs. The full number is unknown as teams conducted PED tests themselves." data-reactid="38" style="margin-bottom: 1em; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It’s not just the buscones. Teams don’t exactly discourage the behavior. When one highly regarded 16-year-old tested positive for PEDs this year, two sources told Yahoo Sports, the team simply reduced his agreed-upon signing bonus – and still gave him well over $1 million. Multiple elite prospects from last week’s signing class tested positive, sources told Yahoo Sports, and at least a dozen players in all were caught having used PEDs. The full number is unknown as teams conducted PED tests themselves.
buscon and in exchange must give him the same $300,000 for lesser players he trains. The Braves also had struck a deal with Robert Puason, a shortstop from the Dominican Republic. He was 13.
