Take me out to the bone scan

GlobalPost
Updated on
The World

BOSTON — There is gold in young arms: arms that can fire a baseball to the plate at 95 mph; arms that, with a flick of the wrists, can propel a baseball 400 feet, arms that can deliver the ball from deepest shortstop ahead of a speeding runner.

And nowhere has that gold been mined more relentlessly and with more success than in the Dominican Republic. The “Dominican Dream," to make it off the island and to the “Bigs” in America, has produced plenty of shining heroes to keep it alive — from Pedro Martinez to Albert Pujols to Sammy Sosa to David “Big Papi” Ortiz. But for every glowing success story, there are legions of youngsters who invested their youth in the game of baseball and never made it off the island or came close to the major leagues.

It is a golden dream that has taken on plenty of tarnish, as the recent movie, “Sugar” and GlobalPost’s own series of documentary reports, “Dominican Dreams,” has revealed. You don’t have to be old enough to remember the movie “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” to understand that the overly zealous pursuit of gold can lead to desperate and unscrupulous measures.

And in the Dominican Republic, that has meant wholesale availability of performance-enhancing drugs — New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez revealed that he had obtained his illegal PEDs from the island — and a lively market in fraudulent birth certificates and other documents that will make a prospect appear younger than he actually is. This is not a new practice on the island. Just last year Houston Astros star shortstop Miguel Tejada, a Dominican, was revealed to be two years older — he’s now 35 years old — than he had always claimed.

Baseball has, of course, moved at a glacial pace to address steroids and other drug issues and, thus, is still rooted in a problem that is almost two decades old. Why worry when fans so readily embraced the records that were the inevitable byproduct of new and illegal drug regimens? The 1998 home run record chase between Mark McGwire and Sosa, though subsequently diminished by drug revelations, was credited at the time with reviving interest in baseball and, indeed, saving the game in the wake of the dispiriting 1994 players’ strike.

By contrast, baseball is now moving swiftly to defend itself against age machinations, since those frauds can cost baseball money by leading teams to invest imprudently — millions of dollars already have been wasted — in players that are not who they claim to be. In recent years, baseball science has made sweeping advances, creating scientific models for career trajectories. A 16-year-old with a certain set of skills may look like as a future superstar while a 19-year-old with identical skills may be, at best, a marginal prospect. (Baseball fans remember Danny Almonte, a Dominican kid who had pro scouts drooling when he was a star Little League pitcher; when he turned out to be a 14-year-old passing for 12, scouts lost all interest.)

Thus the same league that fought the science of drug testing because it intruded on players’ privacy has embraced far more intrusive scientific tests to determine prospects’ correct age and family heritage. As revealed by the New York Times, Major League Baseball as well as individual teams are now using bone scans and DNA testing to confirm players’ identities and ages.

While Major League Baseball insisted, in a statement, that such tests are “rare” and always “consensual," a Dominican teenager with big-league ambitions and the prospect of huge dollars ahead is hardly in a position to decline. The Times reported that Miguel Sano, a 16-year-old shortstop regarded as the best young and unsigned prospect has already undergone two bone scans and has provided blood, urine and fecal samples to Major League investigators. In addition, his sister has undergone a bone scan to demonstrate that she is the older sibling, not a younger one whose birth certificate may have been altered on behalf of her brother. And his parents have provided DNA samples to prove he is in fact their son.

MLB countenances this approach despite new federal legislation that takes effect this fall banning U.S.-based companies from asking an employee, a future employee or any of their relatives for DNA tests. That law was designed to protect employees against discriminatory practices relating primarily to health issues. It is not clear how it would apply outside the country when it is aimed at detecting fraud among Dominican prospects.

For now MLB clearly sees it as an invaluable tool to protect their burgeoning investments in baseball futures. “Players are being forced to do the DNA testing — what choice do they have?” Sano’s agent, Bob Plummer, told the Times’ Alan Schwarz. “If they don’t do it, they’re guilty.”

If Sano’s tests reveal him to be just 16 years old, the shortstop will soon be besieged with multi-million dollar offers. If, however, the tests suggest that he is already 18 or 19, his price tag could plummet. And he may not prove to be the next great baseball import from the island, but rather just another unrealized Dominican dream.

Read more on Dominican baseball:

The Dominican Republic's baseball magic

Part 2: "The next sure thing"

Part 3: Training program

The "Big Show" on the big screen

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