Away Games: The Life and Times of a Latin Baseball Player
by Marcos Breton, Jose Luis Villegas

This is the story of Miguel Tejada's rise to the bigs from the streets of the Dominican Republic. I brought this book home from the store because I've actually seen the young man play baseball in his native land, although as a player in the Caribbean Series rather than an ex-shoeshine boy on the playground. This book is more that just a biography of Tejada, it also traces the Latin baseball experience in the United States. At times, mainly when dealing with the historical aspects of the game, the book seems watered down, but it gives viewpoints on the sport that aren't often taken, and should find its way onto the bookshelf of every well-read fan.

The first phase of the book deals with Tejada's youth, discovery and development in the Dominican Republic. Like far too many children in the Third World, Tejada grew up on the verge of starvation. The authors note that a big problem for scouts in the Dominican Republic is that they don't know how their prospects will "fill out" with the proper diet. In the Dominican Republic the lottery ticket to riches is baseball. An important part of the culture even before scouts from the United States started prospecting, the lure of a multi-million dollar contract is quite enticing. Even a modest $2000 signing bonus for a prospect is a year or two worth of salary for most Dominicans. The key is to get into somebody's system. For Tejada this meant hooking up with a birddog who was willing to train him and give him a start on the skills and discipline that the professional teams are looking for. This occupied a good chunk of Tejada's teen years. After that he went to the baseball academy run by the Oakland A's. Professional teams are allowed only a certain number of visas for their foreign players. On top of this it is expensive to bring a player over to the United States for evaluation. The solution to the problem is than teams have set up camps in places the Dominican Republic and Venezuela in order to judge many more prospects than they would otherwise. It is a mix between bootcamp and spring training. Players are being judged not only on their physical abilities and potentials, but also on how they socialize and respect authority. Troublemakers are quickly weeded out. Taking care of their investments, the teams also give the players a proper diet and try to teach them English.

While reading the Dominican section of the book I kept thinking of the film "Hoop Dreams." Hoop Dreams follows two Chicago-area basketball players through their high school careers. In both stories the subjects come from poverty, although the authors of Away Games insist that the Dominican brand of poverty is worse than the American brand. Arthur Agee, one of the players in Hoop Dreams, is brought into a powerful basketball program by an unofficial talent scout, not unlike the way that Tejada found his way to the A's. When Agee doesn't live up to expectations, he is cut loose, as are many Dominican prospects. Exploitation is a main theme in both works. Away Games claims that teams are willing to grab Dominicans by the boatload because they are cheap to sign and develop. Hoop Dreams show the seedy side of "amateur" basketball as the two players are recruited for college. I walked away from both understanding why player who gained fame under either system feels perfectly justified in walking away from his team and saying "Screw you, I'm doing what's best for me." Loyalty is for suckers. The system has all the power over the small fry and uses it only to worry about the bottom line. The other sense I got from the film and the book is the bitterness of those that made it partway through the food chain and were then rejected.

Tejada turned some heads and made the cut list for players sent to the United States to play in the American minors. Interestingly enough, I may have seen one of his first games. His South Oregon A's were in town when I went to see the Portland Beavers a few years back. I don't remember if he was in the lineup, but if he was then our paths crossed early. Here we go through the life of a foreign-born baseball player in the minors. Short on cash, swimming in a different culture, can't speak the language. More often than not, the minor leagues that these players are assigned to are either rookie-ball or low-A leagues. While these leagues are set in small towns, most often the teams are in the Pacific Northwest, New York/Pennsylvania or the Midwest. Not exactly hotbeds of Hispanic culture. With the outside community an enigma, all that is left is the team. But this isn't always a cure for the loneliness. After all, although your fellow players are your teammates, some of them are in competition for advancement up the system. The coaches may not be approachable either, as much as they are there to teach and develop you, they are also there to evaluate you. All in all it seems to be a very hard road for these young men.

Again, I think back to Hoop Dreams, or more exactly, a never-made sequel that would have covered the college careers of the players in question. They go to college, but like many ghetto athletes going to universities with fancy names, they don't fit in. When they eat lunch at the cafeteria, they don't integrate with the general population; they eat by themselves or with their follow basketball players. While some of their fellow students are well funded by rich parents, these players, unless they are good enough to be getting cash under the table, aren't spending a lot of money. The basketball players have some small advantages over the baseball players. They are a little bit older that their counterparts and that extra maturity goes a long way. Although they are far away from their home for the first time, at least they are still in the same country. And even though they might feel that they cannot really connect with their fellow students, they should have no problems finding a party, unlike the baseball players. Finally, they know how to order food in a restaurant, a trick than many baseball players take a while to master.

The focus of the book shifts away from Tejada and talks about the history of Hispanic players in the Major Leagues. I felt that this section was a net minus. While some sociological background is needed to understand Tejada's time in America, far too much history was thrown at the reader. The tangent into Jackie Robinson felt forced and unnecessary. This section felt very distant from the rest of the narrative and interrupted the flow of the book. Quite frankly, if I wanted a historical treatment, there are good books on the subject I would have taken off the shelf. They should have given this a light treatment and left the nooks and crannies of Caribbean baseball history to the Bjarkmans of the world.

On the other hand, the sidetrack to New York City was an eye-opener. Depending on who you talk to, between 5% and 10% of the population of the Dominican Republic lives in New York City. Many of the prospects that are weeded out of the minors quietly exchange their plane tickets to Santo Domingo for tickets to New York City. Here they live the life of an undocumented alien, doing the demeaning jobs that Americans won't stoop to. Like any immigrant group, some do quite well for themselves, and others stumble along the way. The accounts of games in the semi-professional leagues around New York City remind me of not of Hoop Dreams, but of another basketball classic, Rick Telander's Heaven is a Playground. Telander spent a summer in New York City in the 1970's playing and observing street basketball. For the most part these players weren't in the programs, they had been rejected either because of talent or discipline problems. I suspect that if this chapter were expanded to book length it would closely mirror Telander's work.

The book ends with Tejada's first dip in the major leagues. I guess this means that it has a happy ending. That's always nice to see in a book, but what makes me think I spent my money well was that the book left me asking a few questions. Some of them are simple ones regarding Latin player development. First of all, why doesn't every team in the minors have at least two Spanish-speaking staff members? And hopefully not just Americans who learned the language to help their baseball careers, but former players from Latin America who understand first-hand the difficulties their young charges face? Secondly, why are the different minor leagues still organized they way they are? Does it make sense to send Latin players to places like Idaho and Iowa their first time in the United States? The majors more or less hold the minors over a barrel. If they wanted to they could twist some arms and shuffle the rankings of the leagues. Bump up the Midwest League to AA so that by the time the Latin players had to spend a summer in Beloit Wisconsin they've made some adjustment to the American lifestyle. Kick the California League down to Rookie Ball so that these kids could find some people who speak Spanish. No, the Mexican/Californian culture is not Dominican or Venezuelan, but it is much closer than what you'll find in Boise. Why aren't these things done? Money of course. But is seems to me that teams are being pound-wise and penny-foolish. If they could salvage some of the souls they lose in the low minors I think they would get a handsome return on their investment.

The more interesting question that I pondered was "why do I keep thinking about basketball?" This is a book about baseball, but I kept going back to Hoop Dreams, or in the case of the New York City section, Heaven is a Playground. Surely part of it is the rise of the minority from poverty via sports, and in the United States the stereotype is the black youngster escaping from the ghetto with basketball. I won't dwell on the "has baseball lost the ghetto" can of worms because I think it is a red herring. The reason that I saw the parallel with basketball was the way the system exploits the livestock. Is a $2000 signing bonus for a Dominican or a free college education for an inner-city kid a good thing? Sure, but on the other hand the people who give out these gifts do so knowing that it's a steal even if only a few of the boatload pan out. The system gets rich off of the players with great talent who have been enticed at a bargain price, and throws away the rest. Sure, most minor leaguers never pan out, but at least the American ones were able to procure a hefty bonus when they put their name on the dotted line. In the book Alex Rodriguez reflects how much easier his life was as an American prospect, compared to what would have happened had his family not left the Dominican Republic. The road to the NBA and Major League Baseball is littered with many burned-out wreaks. Is there a more humane way to procure and develop talent? I certainly hope so.