ABSTRACT
The selection of Dominican pitcher Pedro Martínez to the 2015 class of the US National Baseball Hall of Fame signalled the effectiveness of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) player-development model centred in the Dominican Republic. Only the second Dominican to earn such an honour, Martínez was part of an early class of Dominican teenagers who initiated their careers in one of the baseball academies that all 30 MLB teams now operate in the Dominican Republic. The selection of Martínez also fixed his place as a hero for the Dominican players, mothers, scouts and coaches whose participation and innovations created the system and maintain it. Martinez’s rise to the echelons of the international baseball system affirmed Dominican ownership of baseball and their significance to the global baseball industry. Dominicans have always been more than just young players desperate for US contracts to buy their families a new house, the image often portrayed in the popular media. The baseball system through which Pedro Martínez transformed himself from Ramón’s scrawny little brother into an MLB Hall of Famer evolved through many tweaks, changes and innovations developed in dialogue among coaches, scouts, administrators and team officials from across the Americas. These innovations created a Dominican baseball industry that, though dependent on MLB’s demand for players, runs on Dominican ingenuity, talent and entrepreneurship. Without these innovations, Dominican stars like Pedro Martínez may never have made it to US baseball. The first part of this chapter will recount those developments to demonstrate how Dominicans have pushed and pulled Major League Baseball in the globalization of the baseball industry.
