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The pressure to produce big league prospects takes its toll on the Dominican Republic.
The game of baseball has helped hundreds of players from the Dominican Republic lift their families out of poverty. And it’s a boon to the economy. Each year Major League Baseball pours about $100 million into the country.
But the year-round race to churn out the strongest, fastest, and youngest baseball players in the world is taking a toll on this small Caribbean country.
Fake birth certificates. Kickbacks. The pressure to cheat is strong. There’s even a phrase for it. La Buena Mentira. The Good Lie.
The Try-Out
Boys start playing baseball young. If they’re lucky, when they turn 16, they get five minutes to show off to a Major League scout.
Patrick Madden reports.
This series was produced on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship, directed by the International Center for Journalists and funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Three-Minute Fiction Readings: 'Geometry' And 'Snowflake'
NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Snowflake by Winona Wendth of Lancaster, Mass., and Geometry by Eugenie Montague of Los Angeles.Gals Who Grill: What Will It Take For Women To Man The Q?
The grill "is the one and only male-dominated appliance in America," says a researcher who recently crunched the numbers. He found that men are more than twice as likely as women to be the primary grillers at home. One reason? Grilling can feel like a form of recreation.IRS Hearings Highlight Ambiguity Of Nonprofits In Politics
The congressional hearings about the IRS's handling of Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status raise the question of why and how tax-exempt groups engage in politics in the first place.Google Reportedly Faces FTC Antitrust Probe Over Display Ads
The Federal Trade Commission is in the early stages of opening an antitrust probe into how Google runs its online display advertising business, according to a report by Bloomberg News, citing sources who want to remain anonymous because the FTC has not announced the probe.Leave a Comment
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