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Behind the Scenes at a Shortstop Factory

By Eric Lipman

Via this post at the Immigration Prof Blog, I came across this interesting article on the website of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs about the alleged role of Major League Baseball in the exploitation of children in the Dominican Republic. The issue has been raised many times before -- what, if any, responsibility does MLB itself, or the individual teams who run the baseball academies, have for the well-being of the vast majority of the kids who don't make it to the majors? The ones who quit school at ages as young as 12 or 13 and put all their eggs in the baseball basket as the only likely path out of poverty for them and their families. One angle of which I hadn't been aware, though, was brought up in the comments by Eric Jackson, editor and publisher of The Panama News. Writes Jackson: I got one mid-level Major League Baseball official, neither for attribution nor very categorically, to admit that there is some sort of arrangement between the NCAA and MLB about US university baseball programs not recruiting Latin American players. Sherman Act problem? Well, there is, of course, baseball's antitrust exemption. And, if the activity that's being...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).