Dominican Republic’s ‘Desperate’ Baseball Culture Fuels Steroid Use, Experts SayBy Bryan LlenasPublished August 09, 2013Fox News Latino

For boys in the Dominican Republic, it’s about becoming a major league ballplayer – at all costs.In a country where 40 percent of the nation lives at or below the poverty rate, Dominicans who are 12 to 14 years old regularly quit school to begin baseball training in private academies in the hopes of saving their families from a lifetime of poverty. For these boys, it’s baseball or failure.For Major League Baseball, like in any business, it’s about the bottom line, mainly, how to find the next franchise player at the lowest cost possible.

But the combination of both priorities mix together like a toxic concoction, in the form of steroid-filled syringes, made easily available to thousands of teenage Dominicans dreaming of lifting their families out of poverty with a swing of the bat. 

The recent suspension of 13 players, 9 of whom are Dominican, by Major League Baseball in the Biogenesis scandal highlights how the growing problem in the country has affected the sport – and many are questioning whether baseball is doing enough to fight the steroid culture in the Dominican Republic, a country the majors has grown more and more reliant on for top talent."If they see that baseball is not the only way out - you’ll see a dramatic drop in use of steroids because the win at all cost mentality will disappear."

- Charles S. Farrell, Co-founder of the Dominican Republic Sports and Education AcademyAs it has each year since MLB began releasing data in 1995, the D.R. led all foreign countries with the most players in the majors in 2013 with 89 players on opening day rosters (out of 856) – the fourth most the nation has ever produced. But, at the same time, the country has a disproportionate number of players who have violated the leagues performance-enhancing drug policy. According to the MLB, thus far in 2013, 15 of the 44 players suspended for steroids in the minor leagues are Dominican and, in 2012, 31 minor league Dominicans were suspended out of 105 total suspensions.

The problem, say experts like David Fidler, co-author of “Stealing Lives: The Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz,” is Major League Baseball’s knack for being reactionary, suspending players, instead of proactive in choosing not to attack the root of the PED problem, like the drug dealers themselves.The players implicated in the Biogenesis scandal, including Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Jhonny Peralta, were only caught because MLB cut deals with the drug dealers themselves, who in this case, exchanged valuable information on their customers for immunity.

 In the Dominican Republic, many of these dealers, who Fidler calls part of the root of the problem, are referred to as buscones – individuals who train players and then get a cut of their signing bonus, reportedly 10 to 40 percent, when they sign on to an MLB team.

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