The Dominican Dream: Baseball

Robinson Cano, Jose Bautista, David Ortiz, Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes are only a handful of the players that make up 10% of players currently playing on MLB rosters. That does not even include the 25% of minor league players that also hail from the small island of the Dominican Republic with about 10 million people. As fellow 'The Sports Complex' contributor and study abroad classmate Alan Liang discussed his amazing and once in a lifetime experience in the Dominican Republic in yesterday's post, he touched on some prominent topics often overlooked by baseball fans. In this article, I plan to delve further into the topic of the baseball culture and how the Dominican Republic has turned into an "incubator" for MLB talent, as NYY Assistant GM Jean Afterman stated in our brief discussion during a visit to Yankees Spring Training.

My Study Abroad Reflection: Dominican Republic

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.