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TeenageshortstopYewri Guillendied the day theNationals were supposed toship him to America. Yet little haschanged in wh at critics callMajor League Baseball'sDominican sweatshopsystem.By Ian Gordon

he baseball men started com ing aroun d wh en Yewri Guillen was 15.Like thousands of other boys in the Dominican Republic, he had

I bee n waiting for them for years, training on the sparse patch of grassand dirt across the road from the small concrete-and-wood house he sharedwith his mother, father, and two sisters in La Canela, a hamlet 45 minutessouthwest of Santo D om ingo . By the time the Am erican scouts took notice,he had grown into a 5-foot-lO, 165-pound, switch-hitting sh ortstop with quickhands and a laser arm. In 2009, at the age of 16, he signed for $30,000 withthe Wash ington Nation als. The first thing he'd do with his bon us, he told hisparents, was buy them a car and build the m a new ho use.

But soon after Guillen's signing. Major League Baseball put his plans onhold . The league, having grown more vigilant about identity fraud, suspend-ed him for a year, alleging that he'd lied abo ut his date of birth on paperworkto boost his potential value to scouts. Guillen's family got a lawyer to fightthe suspen sion, and in the m eantime he lived and trained without pay at theNatio nals' academy in Boca Chica, the epicenter ofMLB'S training facilities in


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P L A Y E D

the country. There, he was notoriously hardon himself.Johnny DiPuglia, the Nationals'international scouting director, said Guil-len would even take himself ou t of gamesafter making small mistakes like missing asign from the third-base coach. "He had n oeducation, none at all," DiPuglia told me."I didn't think he had any teeth becausehe never sm iled. And he always had w ateryeyes-there was always sadness in his eyes."DiPuglia made it his mission to cheer upthe teenager, "to open up his heart." Hewouldn't let Guillen pass without givinghim a hug and a smile, and little by little,DiPuglia said, Guillen started to loosen up ,becoming a better teammate and a happierkid. Later, when other talent brokers ap-proached Guillen claiming that they couldget him a better deal with a different team,Guillen turned them away because he feltthat he owed it to the Natio nals for stickingwith h im. After MLBfinallyauthorized hiscontract at the beginning of 2011, the Na-tionals told him they'd be sending him toplay for their rookie league team in F lorida.He was to leave in mid-April.Wh en the headachesfirstcame on, theywere barely bad enough to mention. OnApril 1, Guillen headed home to La Gane-la to get his travel docum ents in order. Hisfamily brought him to a clinic in nearbySan Gristbal. When he returned to theacademy and missed a couple of games,DiPuglia called him outin the Domini-can Repubhc, nobody rides the benchbecause of a headache. When the paingot worse, DiPuglia sent Guillen to thetrainer's room, where he was given sometea and an aspirin.The next day, on April 6, the Nationalssent Guillen back to La Canela. He had aslight fever when he left the academy. O nApril 7, Michael Morla, a longtime localtrainer who also acted as Guillen's agent,was at the field in La Gnela w hen he sawGuillen, a damp towel wrapped around hishead, lurching toward the community'shealth post, adjacent to the field. Morlaapproached Guillen's family, urging themto take him to Santo Domingo for care:"The boy is bad!"Guillen's aunt and uncle rushed him tothe Glinica Abreu, the capital's best privatehospital. But because his contract hadn'tbeen finalized he didn't have health insur-ance, and he was refused treatment whenhis family couldn't come up with the

$1,300 admission fee. His aunt and unclemoved him to a more affordable Guban-Dom inican clinic nearby, where he was ad-mitted on April 8. The doctors diagnosedbacterial meningitis. Guillen later had sur-gery to drain brain fluid, but the diseasehad progressed too far. On April 15, theday he was to leave for the United States,Yewri Guln died.

he tragedy was a blip on the sportsworld's radar, a blurb on ESPN'S' ' Spanish-language crawl. The hand-jl of news reports hit all the same notes:MLB said that the team followed appropriateprotocols and did all that it could; the N a-

Yewri Guillen, inan undated family phototionals vowed to promptly vaccinate all theplayers at their academy; everyone fromthe team's medical director to the generalmanager expressed sorrow about the death.Here's what those stories left out: T herewasn't a certified athletic trainer, let alonea doctor, to evaluate Guillen at the N ation-als' academy, a spartan training camp withcinder-block dorms. N o one ftom the teamaccompanied him to Santo Domingo orintervened when he couldn't get into theGlinica Abreu. (The club didn't cover thecosts of his treatment until after he was ad-

mitted to the Guban-Dominican clinAnd following Guillen's death, the crequired his parents to sign a release behanding over his signing bonus and insurance money-a document also stathat they would never sue the team oremployees.GuHln's death is the worst-case scenin a recruiting system that treats young minicans as second-class prospects, paythem far less than young Americans sometimes denying them benefits thatstandard in the US minor leagues, suchealth insurance and professionally traimedical staff, MLB regulations allow teamtroll for te nt on the cheap in the Domcan Republic: Unlike AmerI kids, who must have complI high school to sign, Dominican be signed as young aswhen their bodies and their sare far less developed."A 16-year-old doesn't k/ how to play baseball," the Bton Red Sox's David Ortiz* eight-time All-Star who grewin Santo Domingo, told mdon 't care what they say. WI signed at 16, I didn't k' what thefiickI was doing.Teams are not eager to about the disparity betw

MLB'S domestic and forrookie leagues, as I would lfirsthand when looking Guillen's death in his nacountry. Nor is it much concern to locals: The spoubiquitous and beloved, given the Dominican Relic's 40 percent poverty the allure of the big leagupowerfiil. Ortiz said Ameridon't understand the psure on Dominican teenagers, incluin some cases to lie about their age. "thing that made me mad about the wsituation is that people want to look like we are criminals," he said. "I wouldto get in their face and ask them, if thatheir only way out, what would they doThe legions of teens swinging batsdiving for ground balls each year onminicanfieldsmust negotiate a systemlittle in the way of support or a safetyWhereas Major League Baseball reqall 189 minor league teams in the Un


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tates to have certified athletic trainersnd "all reasonable medical suppHes," nouch requirement exists at the Dominicancademies. Nearly two years aft:er Guillen'seath. MotherJones found that 21 of MLB'Sepublic, including the N ationals.

Rafael Prez, head of Dominican opera-no t wag a regulatoryfingerat them:

even though one of their players

a harder time than others.all have great intentio ns."The reality is that a stark double stan-

MLB'S Domini-flawedand that it should

Since then, Latin American players havean ever more impo rtant part of thestart of the 2012 season, play-s born in Latin Am erican countries made

MLB'S 25 highest earners, and like

more than half of the Latin Ameri-yers came from the Do minican Re-any country outsideStates.And yet, if 2006 is any indication, of the

r Latin Americans also trainingless than halfwill ever leave the islancibig show, where u nder 3 percent will

the rookie leagues

100% ^

MINOR MIRACLECe tting to Fenway or Wrigley isno small fea tfo rth e hundreds of Dominican players at MLB academies each year. Here's the road from 200 6 for these big league hopefuls, a majority o f w homdidn 't even make it to the rookie leagues where their Am erican counterparts began. i.C.

Of t he 8 3 2 Dominican players at academies in 2006:

2 0 % -

100%-,

24.8%made i t toClass A

8 0 % -

45.8%mad e it toth e US rookieleagues

2 0 % -

Of the 9 0 6Americanplayers inrooWe leag uesin 2006:

68.4%made i t toClass A

also face long odds, of course, but nearly70 percent of them will advance at leastone minor league level, and they are morethan four times as likely to crack a majorleague roster. They are also far better paidat the outset: The average signing bonusfor American players drafi:ed in 2011 was$232,000; for international players, it wasapproximately half that.Everyone participating in the system-from the CEOs of major league franchisesall the way down to the often sketchy localtalent brokers in the Dominican Republicknown as buscones\i3.s a say. Except forthe kids. "The objective in Latin Americais to sign talent, but do so in an afford-able way," Marcano said. "But there isn'tanyone who speaks for the players, whoare giving up their childhood in search ofa dream that few realize."

aseball first came to the Domini-can Republic in the late 1800s,most likely brought to the islandby Cuban immigrants. Although severalteams formed and began playing tourna-ments by the early 1900s, it wasn't until

Source: Baseball-Reference.com

Ozzie Virgil debuted for the New YorkGiants in 1956 that a Dominican madeIt to the American major leagues. Severalaccomplished players followed, includ-ing Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal,but the first real wave came aft:er TorontoBlue Jays scout Epy Guerrero started thefirst academy in 1973, turning a houseand a cheap plot of land into a rudimen-tary training camp. A decade later, the LosAngeles Dodgers, recognizing a potentiallyrich vein of talent, created a template forthe contemporary baseball academy calledCampo Las Palmas. But most teams werecontent to play the odds, parachuting into look for big-time talent at bargain base-ment prices. As former Colorad o Rockiesexecutive Dick Balderson once explained,"Instead of signing four American guys at$25,000 each, you sign 20 Dominican guysfor $5,000 each."

Conditions at some academies weresubstandard and even dangerous. Whenthe Nationals' DiPuglia was starting outwith the St. Louis Cardinals in the mid-1990s, his players slept eight to a roomand navigated a field full of rocks and


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A TALE OF TWO T ALENT MA RKE TSThese star Ame rican and Dom inican players have a iot in commo nexceptthe age they signedand the bonuses they g ot. I.C.

B O N U S :YEAR S I G N E D : A C E :

McGw ire's and Sosa's pursuit of the singleseason home run record in 1998 brou ghtbaseball a whole new generation of fans.

B O N UY E A R S I G N E D :

^ ' Two dominating pitchers, Mussina and Martinezwer e selected for a combined 13 All-Star Games

and faced off in the playoffs in 2003 and '04.

B O N U S :YEA R S I G N ED ;

Powerful first basemen Berkman an d Ortizhave made a combined 14 All-Star Games an d

whacked 761 home runs between th em .

B O N U S :YEA R S I G N ED :

B O N UYEA R S I G N E

Tulowitzki and Ramirez were to pshortstop prospects and so fa r have

made a combined six All-Star Games

BOYEA R S I G N ED :

B O N U S :YEA R S I G N E

Buxton, a teen outfielder from Georgia, was thehighest-paid 2012 draft pick; Rosario, a shortstop,got the largest bonus of any Dominican last year.

the occasional goat. In his book. Sting Lives, Marcano told the story oplayer named Alexi Quiroz and his pthrough the Chicago Cubs' Dominiacademy, a place the ballplayers refeto as "Vietnam." Th ere, 19 teenage bshared one bathroom without runnwater, a drunk coach allegedly threatethem with a gun, and, after Quiroz srated his shoulder playing shortstop day, he was treated by a street doctor stomped on the joint to pop it back place, ending his career.

As American teams began paying mattention to Dominican prospects inearly aughts, more and more ex-plaand w annabes started w orking as buscoscouting and training teens even bethey had turned 16. They had flashy nnames like Cachaza or Aroboy, and ttraining methods and negotiating tacled to rising bonuses for their playtypically along with a hefiy 30 percenfor their efforts. Some buscones gainreputation as ruthless operators willindo a nything-forge player birth certificbribe investigatorsto boost their take

By 2009, following several high-pridentity fraud cases and bonus-skimmscandals, MLB dispatched executive SaAlderson (now the general managethe New York Mets) to take stock oferations in the country. His report cafor restructuring the league's Dominoffice, improving identity investigatregulating the buscones, and genercurtailing corruption.But his recommendations were advisory, and critics maintain that has changed since. One big shift didinto effect in 2012: Major League Bball restricted teams to a $2.9 millionternational free-agent budget, in pablunt the power of buscones by dridown signing bonuses. The bonuseshit a high point the prior year, whenTexas Rangers signed 16-year-old Domcan outfielder Nomar Mazara to a re$4.95 million deal, but since have beto drop and will remain suppressed uthe cap. A few teams, such as the PittsbPirates and San Diego Padres, have chto invest in better facilities and traininggrams, but they remain in the m inorityThe Nationals, meanwhile, have tight-hpped about their operation sYewri Guillen died, (MLB later said Gu


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taken advantage of for the last 50 years,"he said, smiling. "The kind of players tha twe signed, for the kind of money that wesold those players, I mean, it's amazing."Jacobo, who grew up in the Bronx,knows the history of the business. Longbefore emigrating to the United States,his father, Astin Jacobo Sr., was one ofthe first successful proto-buscones in theDominican Republic, operating as a defacto broker for players who lived in thesugarcane mill towns around San Pedro deMacoris in the 1960s and '70s. Many ofthem, like Astin Sr. himself, were cocolos,or dark-skinned imm igrants from the Eng-lish-speaking West Indies. If an MLB scoutback then suggested to Astin Sr. or hiscontemporaries that a 19-year-old wasn'tworth signing, more often than not thekid would have a birth certificate in han dthe next day showing he was 16. Even thetiny-sounding sums paid to prospects thenexceeded the wildest dreams of most Do-minicans. And like his son years later, As-tin Sr. would get his slice.

As the table filled u p with em ptied Presi-

dente Lights, Jacobo stepped up his criti-cism of Major League Baseball, which hesaid is only interested in reform insofar as itreduces team s'financialrisk. He ticked offa list of wealthy Dominican stars who'vemade untold sums for their clubs and theleague-and who were signed for next tonothing back in the day: "Sammy Sosa:$3,500. Miguel Tejada: $2,000. VladimirGuerrero: $1,800. Trust me, if it was stilllike tha t, MLB would never talk about it."Jacobo claimed that he and others ush-ered in higher signing bonuses by develop-ing private academies for Dominicans asyoung as 13 years old. The idea was to betterprepare players for showcases, which thenhelped buscones push for more money fi-ommajor league teams come negotiation time.To those who charge that buscones take toobig of a cut, Jacobo said that on average hespends $10,000 on each player he trains,housing, feeding, and even clothing themuntil they sign. "And if he's a very specialplayer? You might end up spending $30,000on a guy who is not your son."

After putting in all that work, he added.

he'd be damned if anyone, MLB or erwise, was going to limit how mucearns. "I have to tell you this," Jacobo the sun dipping behind the seaside sh"We don't care what price they want ton our players. They're our players. It'ing to come down to how m uch I wasell them for."i^-v' a Canela isn't so much a town smattering of houses off a win" ^ ^ two-lane coastal road, a waytion between the Gatorade bottling pin Haina and the Padres' $8 million aemy in Najayo. The day I visited, the where Yewri Guillen once played waswith romping preteens shagging fiy and taking turns swinging a cracked anum bat. Guillen's former mentor MicMorla surveyed the scene from behindfirst-ba se dugout, reflecting on the 5players he'd signed to pro contracts sstarting his own training program heryears ago. Scouts had been showinfrequently to watch Morla's latest Fernery Ozuna, another strong-ar

A Nationals scout, center, runs drills with local players during a tryout at the Complex de las Americas in February 2011 in Boca Chica.


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"The only player I've had who could throwkid was Yewri," he said.

en was tremendou s. Treme ndous."Morla still wasn't sure how to reconcile

If M L B hadn 't dal l ied soits ident i ty invest igat ion, he

in thea year earlier. If the Nation-to a physician instead of

to impover i shed La Canela ,the infection would've been treat-

He po in ted me across the road, whereinplastic chairs in

a bright white house with curvingand the letters "Y" and "G " on

I in t roduced myself to Car-a chocolate-

nd a raspy voice. His initial answers toin

Hestarted playing when hes a kid. He played here. Yeah, I played, I

T h e scouts cdkdhim aprospect.h e would go far.

I asked him about his son's illness. "Hein the academy," he said.

As he recounted the nightmare, his broth-Bienvenido Ortiz, interjected, saying he

s the one who'd introduced his nephewe. "The o nly way for a boy to get

in this country, withou tan engineer, isbaseball," Ortiz said.

he said, he was theto get his nephew

him to be ad mit-hen Guillen died, he said, he was

ho wanted to sue the Nationals."I to ld him," Ort iz cont inued, mot ion-

to show upOrt iz showed me the agreement Gui l -

a month a f t e r thea notarized document that I p h o -

it back. Exactlyto this day. But in 2011 , in return

histo the following terms:

(1) that Guillen died of bacterial meningi-but that he'd contracted it outside of the

and therefore it had nothing to do(2) that the team gave Guillen the appro-

H O ME A N D A W A YThe top six producers of major league talent as of Opening Day 2012

United States613

Source: MLB

priate treatment when he got sick;(3) that they would never sue the team

or its employees for the death of their son."They cam e here to screw us over," Ortiz

said, his voice rising. "We did n't wa nt prob -lem s-w e just wanted things to be resolved."

Carlos G uillen looked off at the ball fieldacross the street. It was em pty; the kids hadall gone ho me for lunch . Guillen's moth er,Sandra Perd omo , later told m e that despitethe settlement she felt that the Nationalshad forgot ten about her son. Team offi-cials always used to talk about how theywere one big family, she said, "but thenwhat happens? A m o n t h and a half afterhe died, I never heard from th em again."

MLB'S Rafael Prez maintains that theleague and the Nationals did everythingthey could. Prez worked for the Mets atthe time, andupon hearing the news, hesaid, he reviewed his own team's emer-gency plan. The Guillen tragedy, he said,raised teams' awareness: "I t h ink we allunderstand that it could've happened anyother place." But when pressed about histeam's plan for dealing with medical emer-gencies at the t ime, or changes to thoseprocedures since, he said, "I cannot go intothe details of that. Just put it this way: Ithink great things came out."

After leaving the Guillen home, it was ashort cab ride from La Canela to the tinyIglesia San Anton io , perched on a smallhill just off the road in Nigua. I scannedthe church's graveyard, anovergrown, un-even plot fi l led with aboveground vaults.It took 20 minutes and a phone call backto La Canela to locate Yewri Guillen's finalresting place, but eventually I found it, offto the far right.

The Nationals ' DiPuglia, shaken by thetragedy, told me that shortly afi:er Guillen'sdeath he'd felt like he needed to come hereto the grave, to ask for forgiveness. Heh a d n ' t me a n t to be so hard on the kid,coming down on him for missing a fewgames because of a stupid headache. "Hewas like a son," DiPuglia said, pain in hisvoice. "A second son."

The lower half of the vault was painted abright sky blue, but the top half w a s plainconcrete, rebar poking out at the comers .A dirty candleholder sat in fi-ont of a white-washed cross, where the teen's first namewas misspelled: YEWRY N . GUTLLEN P. It was ahushed place in midaftemoon, far removedfi om the busy ball field just min utes away.T h i s s t o r y w a s s u p p o r t e d b y a g r a n t f i o m t h e I n v e s ti -

g a t i v e F u n d a t T h e N a t i o n I n s t it u t e .


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