New York Times - MLB Killers

Puerto Rico Traces Baseball’s Slide to the Draft

Dennis M. Rivera-Pichardo for The New York Times

Fans were scarce at a baseball game in Puerto Rico, where the storied winter league has shrunk to four teams. More Photos »

By JORGE CASTILLO

Published: January 16, 2012

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SAN JUAN, P.R. — This used to be the climax of baseball’s peak season in Puerto Rico. The storied winter league lured many of Major League Baseball’s biggest Puerto Rican stars back to the island — from Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda to Roberto Alomar and Bernie Williams — and they would regularly play before tens of thousands of fans during what was otherwise their off-season.

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Dennis Rivera for The New York Times

Baseball's stature has diminished in Puerto Rico and most agree on the culprit: the decision by Major League Baseball, in 1990, to include Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States, in its First-Year Player Draft.More Photos »

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Dennis M. Rivera-Pichardo for The New York Times

The Puerto Rican Baseball Academy and High School has 12 teachers and 16 baseball instructors. More Photos »

But that scene no longer exists. Four years after being forced to cancel an entire season, the league has only four teams. And for the first time in its history, which dates to 1938, thePuerto Rican Baseball League does not have a team based in San Juan, the capital.

The league’s struggles are merely the most vivid manifestation of a more profound, and surprising, phenomenon playing out here: the decline of baseball in a place where it was long considered the primary pastime, if not a religion. After decades of populating major league rosters with All-Stars at every position, Puerto Rico had only 20 players on Major League Baseball rosters on opening day last season. Only two made the All-Star team. (By contrast, the 1997 All-Star Game included eight Puerto Ricans.)

“We can’t even compete in the Pan American Gamesanymore,” said the major leaguer Alex Cora, referring to Puerto Rico’s seventh-place finish in the eight-team tournament in October.

No one here disputes the diminished stature of baseball in Puerto Rico, and most agree on the culprit: Major League Baseball’s decision, in 1990, to include Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States, in its first-year player draft. This means Puerto Rican players must wait until they have completed high school to sign a professional contract, and then they are going up against players from the United States and Canada in the draft.

Perhaps more important, major league teams have less incentive to cultivate talent in Puerto Rico because those players may end up with another team through the draft.

Catcher Ivan Rodriguez, 40, currently a free agent and playing for one of the Puerto Rican winter league’s four teams, is the last active Puerto Rican major leaguer to avoid the draft. Rodriguez, a likely Hall of Famer, signed with the Texas Rangers in 1988 at age 16.

“What is the difference between 1980 and 2011? The draft,” David Bernier, Puerto Rico’s former secretary of sport and recreation, said in an interview in his office here. “Nothing has changed but the draft. Everything else is the same.”

Caribbean nations like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic have not been forced to be part of the draft, and players from many other nations can sign with major league teams as free agents as young as 16. As a result, teams have abandoned Puerto Rico for Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, where they invest hundreds of millions of dollars in academies.

“The draft has had a large effect on the Puerto Rican baseball player,” said Alomar, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in July. “A lot of youngsters don’t have the economic resources to play and go to college. For me, it isn’t what is best for us.”

Alomar said he hoped that Major League Baseball “realizes what is happening with the talent here and they give us the opportunity to be like the Dominican Republic is and Venezuela is, so we can have more players signed.”

Only a handful of major league teams have full-time scouts on the island, and most clubs rely on a couple of tournaments a year to scout players. The limited exposure for Puerto Ricans means players outside the metropolitan area are more likely to be overlooked.

“They abandoned us a little, and we fell hard,” said Tony Rodriguez, a former major leaguer who is an instructor at Puerto Rico’s first baseball academy.

Baseball officials here note that Puerto Rico has a major disadvantage when competing against American talent because high school baseball is almost nonexistent on the island. Instead, players hone their craft on teams in American Legion ball and the Pony League. Many players in rural areas are forced to travel to cities where the better teams and leagues play.

Bernier said Puerto Rico was not prepared to be included in the draft, but even if it were given time, there was not much it could do to change its current model of development.

“We have had the same model here for 60 years,” said Bernier, now the president of the Puerto Rican Olympic Committee. “We can’t change our model to what they have in the United States. We don’t have enough space on the island for baseball fields for high schools. This island is full.”

In 2007, Bernier met with Major League Baseball officials about the topic and suggested a 10-year exclusion from the draft. He maintains his stance.

“That’s the only way we’ll know if the problem is the draft or not,” Bernier said. “And I guarantee you we would do a lot better. No one has been able to counter my argument about the draft, and that would prove the problem is the draft.”

But not everyone says the draft is the main issue. Some, like Sandy Alderson, the general manager of the Mets and a former consultant for Major League Baseball who handled issues in Latin America, said Puerto Rico’s socioeconomic status — somewhere between the United States and the Dominican Republic — left it in a peculiar position.

“From a socioeconomic standpoint, things have changed quite a bit in Puerto Rico,” he said. “There are lots of other ways to spend your time. In the Dominican Republic, on the other hand, unfortunately, poor kids who are playing ball and who are from the lowest economic strata in that country, baseball is a way to escape, so there’s a greater concentration of players and effort. I think they’re just very different dynamics than Puerto Rico.”

Like Alderson, Cora, a 13-year veteran of the major leagues who became a free agent in October, says the draft is only part of the problem. Cora said more needed to be done to develop Puerto Rican talent: better coaching, more structure in leagues across the island and more government aid, for example. He conceded that the system had hurt Puerto Ricans’ exposure to major league clubs.

“It’s an excuse,” Cora said of blaming the draft. “This is the situation we’re in, and we have to deal with it. We need to make adjustments and prepare our prospects.”

Adjusting to the situation has proved difficult for Puerto Rico. One attempt has been the creation of baseball academies.

Unlike those in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, the Puerto Rican Baseball Academy and High School, which began in August 2002, is financed by Major League Baseball as a whole, not by individual franchises.

Situated in Gurabo, a northeastern city, the academy has high schoolers from all over the island descend on its modest one-building campus.

The students go to class from 8 in the morning until noon, eat lunch, then board buses to baseball fields in the surrounding area — the academy does not have its own fields — to practice until 4 p.m.

The academy, which has 12 teachers and 16 baseball instructors, has had 70 players drafted upon graduation and more than 400 sent to colleges in the United States. But it has yet to produce a prospect who reached the major leagues.

This year the academy has two senior shortstops projected to go in the first round of the June draft: Jesmuel Valentín and Edwin Correa.

“We identified that Puerto Rico needed more structure for talent,” the headmaster Lucy Batista said. “Not everyone will play professionally, but almost all can play collegiately and study to become a professional in something else.”

The academy receives $400,000 annually from Major League Baseball.

“There’s no question the model works,” said Lou Melendez, the vice president for international baseball operations for Major League Baseball. “The problem is those models are very expensive, because when you start operating an academic school, it costs a lot of money.”

An academy may not be necessary if M.L.B. removes Puerto Rico’s apparent competitive disadvantage by going to a worldwide draft, which would include players from every country. The original intent behind including Puerto Rico in the draft was that it was the initial step toward such a draft. Because Puerto Rico is an American commonwealth, it was the obvious place to begin.

The expansion of the draft has not taken place, but the major leagues may be drifting in that direction. The new collective bargaining agreement, signed in November, establishes limits on the amount clubs can spend in a country. In addition, Melendez said, a committee has been created to explore putting an international draft in place.

“You may see one in a year or two — in 2013 or 2014,” he said.

Meanwhile, baseball officials in Puerto Rico are watching the sport deteriorate. Bernier, Puerto Rico’s former secretary of sport, said that the number of children who play baseball had not declined but that the diminished winter league and the relative dearth of Puerto Ricans in the major leagues were causes for concern.

“I think M.L.B. recognizes the problem, and they have every right to include us in the draft,” Bernier said. “It’s their decision, and we have to try to adjust accordingly. But with the way things are, Puerto Ricans are slowly becoming less enthusiastic about baseball, and that can become a vicious cycle.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2012, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Decline of an Island Pastime.