Could Harper be derailed on fast track?
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So, will we now see scores of 16-year-old kids rushing to emulate Bryce Harper, the Nevada teenager and Sports Illustrated cover boy who plans to forgo his last two years of high school to become eligible for the baseball draft next June?
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Gary Hughes, who has scouted for decades and now is a special assistant to Cubs GM Jim Hendry, has stronger feelings on Harper fast-forwarding his career.
“Why?” he said. “Why not just be a kid? I think it’s sad what’s happening. Traveling squads for little kids, parents paying up to a thousand bucks for a weekend. I have a 10-year-old grandson who is a closer. A closer. I know one family where the parents are assessed 45 bucks per kid – they have two kids – for a session with a strength and conditioning coach. They’re 9 years old. I know it’s happening in all sports, but it’s pathetic.”
It appears unlikely baseball will challenge Harper’s right to come out early, not when the industry is signing 16 year-olds in foreign countries, especially from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Hughes argues that it’s not a fair comparison. In the Dominican Republic, the majority of players don’t have the educational opportunities or career options available in the U.S. And the Dominican players who sign at 16 spend years at baseball academies on the island until they are physically and mentally ready to start climbing through the farm systems in the U.S.
Gary Hughes is right, it’s not a fair comparison. DR players are cheaper and more exploitable; scouts and teams love them because, unlike Americans and those on American territories, non-Americans don’t have to be drafted, and therefore aren’t guaranteed any money. If they don’t put out, no harm no foul. White boy has the audacity to expect to be paid well and not be tossed in the trash can at somebody’s arbitrary desire, and even if he flops, he’s a millionaire. That’s why the scouts are so down on Harper, not because he won’t be any good, it’s that the scouts work for bosses that would rather not pay him.
The DR is probably the fake birth certificate capital of the world; all the time I’m hearing stories that a supposed 16-year old who just got signed with an MLB team isn’t that old yet. And it starts even younger than that — Remember Danny Almonte? What I never got from that whole scandal is this: I’m going to choose my words carefully, because this is something that demands circumspection. But believe me — when you’re dealing with a young man that is an amateur team athlete, there are numerous situations on a regular basis where certain people will be able to make the clear distinction between 14 years old and 12 years old, and which age he is and is not. Nobody is that precocious, and even if you bring race into it, the team’s manager was also Dominican, and I’m sure a Dominican man can tell this sort of difference among his own young men. Of course they all knew, which is why the team’s whole season was invalidated when the truth came out. It was all over the local news in St. Louis a few years back when the then 20-year old Almonte signed for the Frontier League team based down here in Marion. They never followed up, and Wikipedia tells me why: He was so bad that he was cut after only a month.
Fake DR birth certificates can also work in the other way. I’m also hearing rumors that a lot of Dominican MLB vets are older than they put on.
