ABSTRACT
As with so much of ethnography, the path set out upon is rarely the path completed. My initial strategy was to observe the Dominican professional league and the amateur leagues that fed them, but somewhere during my first months there I was introduced to the baseball academies (los hogares de beisból). These are training camps for players who have been signed by a team. Having stumbled upon the academy, I still had to get access to it, which meant obtaining the go-ahead from a major league club. The first and foremost stumbling block for ethnographic research is gaining access. I approached half a dozen major league teams with my project, but only when I included a proposal that would allow the teams to help their players overcome some of the culture shock that accompanies their moves to the USA were my efforts met with success. The Los Angeles Dodgers gave me entry to their academy outside the capital city of Santo Domingo.
