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| Yankees Academy |
Once in a lifetime opportunity. That is what I will say
about this study abroad trip to Tampa and the Dominican Republic to study
baseball player development. If I had to
describe this trip in one word….awesome (Dr. Giddings favorite word. No one
could even count the number of times she said “that’s awesome”). I just wanted
to reflect on our trip with this post as this class was my last class as an undergrad. Our first stop was in Tampa where we
visited the Yankees and Phillies Spring Training facilities, George
Steinbrenner Field and Bright House Field. We had tours of the facilities and
although they were interesting, they were not as interesting as what we learned
in the Dominican Republic in my honest opinion.
When we got to the Dominican Republic, we were put into a
pretty sweet hotel. It was a great place to stay and they made you feel like
you were at home. The first day in the Dominican Republic, we went on a walking
tour. It was a good tour to see what the Dominican Republic is like. One thing
that is very different from the United States are all the people trying to sell
you stuff. They will follow you and try to sell you things even if you say no.
Like many other countries you can negotiate prices especially on souvenirs. I
decided on the final day, I felt like experiencing this so the person who was
trying to sell me turtle sculptures said they are 400 pesos each. I thought
that was way too much so I said if you give me three I’ll give you 650 pesos. I
was kind of surprised it was that easy, but he said deal after thinking about
it for a minute or two.
I don’t even know where to start when talking about what
baseball development is like in the Dominican Republic. Jose Gomez who lectured
us on so many different things basically said that the system in place right
now isn’t right. That is because kids are being taken out of school in order to
solely focus on baseball with buscóns. It can be as young as the age of 13.
Buscóns are basically player developers who will help provide money, food and
other necessities for these young baseball players. You may think that is good,
but if the young athletes eventually sign with a Major League Baseball team,
they take 30% of the signing bonus! That is ridiculous if you ask me. I wonder
how many of these buscóns actually care about the kids and how many are just
there for the money. 30% of a signing bonus is a ton. You can compare it to the
cut Scott Boras takes which is around 5%. The biggest difference is Scott Boras
has nothing to do with the player development but the buscóns have everything
to do with it.
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| Baseball Youth League in the DR |
Being able to visit two of the baseball academies (Mets and
Yankees) was really a cool experience. These facilities have been renovated
over the years and they are in pretty good condition now. I personally really
like how the baseball fields are set up as there is a scouting tower with three
or four fields around it. You can see every field from the towers so it makes
things easy on the coaches. Many of these baseball players at the academies
have bad baseball IQ’s and the only reason why some of them are there because
of how athletic they are. The academies are used to teach the game of baseball.
The buscóns were the ones who were able to get these young baseball players in
the academies in the first place.
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| White water rafting |
I could go on and on talking about what I learned in the
Dominican Republic, but I will be surprised if you even made it this far. It
was a blast, the best week of my life. Not only did we learn about baseball but
we went white water rafting as well as just hanging out at the beach. Everyone
on this trip got to learn a little more about the life of Alan but I just want
to thank Sarah and Nick who were the first ones to get me out of my shell a
little on the first few days. I think everyone on this trip now realizes how
riled up I get when people talk about the Sixers now. There were a few bets
that went down on this trip about them. Oh and I forgot to mention how we even
got to stay an extra day in the Dominican Republic because US Airways/American
Airlines are horrible! I also want to thank
Jose Gomez and all of the people we got to learn from on this trip. This trip
is a memory that will never be forgotten. Everyone involved on this trip was
awesome so thank youuuuu! Now it’s back to reality.
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Alan Liang is a senior Drexel Sport Management major with minors in Marketing, Business Administration, and Communication from West Windsor, NJ. Alan scores baseball games for Baseball Info Solutions and was on co-op with the Philadelphia 76ers in the camps department. Follow Alan on Twitter @AlanLiang29.
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