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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That time when I learned about Dominican baseball with a Japanese guy

That time when I learned about Dominican baseball with a Japanese guy

I arrived in Tokyo on March 18th of this current year. It was a long and tiresome flight, add to that the fact people will look at you as some sort of alien and the awkwardness of one's day could only intensify.

A few days prior to our trip our country won the Serie del Caribe championship and we became, at least for a few days, worldwide famous, still I didn't assume our popularity could reach the farthest corners of the earth.

Currently mistaken by an African woman (which was pretty cool by the way, specially when you're as proud of your African roots as I am), people kept staring at me and my family everywhere we went; in a few cases when people felt like asking about our country instead of assuming where we were from, the word 'Dominican' caused a mayor and positive reaction among people.

They kept saying with a surprise look on their faces: 'Dominican?!' 'world-champion!' and kept going, on something similar to English, about how great Alex and Manny are and gave me a very graphic description of their greatest games while I kept nodding and smiling because the truth is they knew more about Dominican baseball that what I've learned in 26 years.

To conclude, baseball -sports in general- are as popular as music, no matter where you go it is a very well known topic, it's part of the world culture, so please save yourself the embarrassment of not knowing your own national sport or you might end up learning about it by a Japanese guy in a random subway line somewhere in Tokyo.




Written by: Ruth Indhira López Capellán
ID: CG-2624

Baseball as a hobby in D.R.

In our country baseball is the national sport. People, specially men like to watch it on t.v. but it's more exciting to see it in the field. It is practice by a lot of people: children, young people and adults. Some companies organize teams for their employees. It doesn't matter if they are not professional players, they enjoy to playing a friendly sport that helps them to feel out of routine. Those people play on holidays and weekends, and after games they're used to have a metting to celebrate and  to talk about games, jokes, experiences, cars, etc. while they are drinking some beers or rhum. Sometimes this game is not the best for some wives that usually don't go to  the game, but I consider that it's a good hobby for people that couldn´t be a professional player.

Carmen Delgado
CB-0657

According to MLB. some player will go to spring training in order to prove they are worthy for big league  deals.The following  list give us  information about on player from japan who are going to play an important roles with Major League of Baseball in 2013.

• Hiroyuki Nakajima: from Oakland.
• Kyuji Fujikawa: from Chicago cubs.
• Hisashi Iwakama: from Seattle Mariners.
• Tsuyoshi Wada: form Orioles of Baltimore.
• Junis Tazawa: from the Red Sox.
• Yu Darvish: from Texas Rangers.
• Norichika Aoki: from Milwaukee.
• Ichiro Suzuki: From New York  Yankees.

As a result of baseball, Japan and the United State have kept a good relation between them.
This sport has stopped conflict between those big and powerful countries. Nowaday there are a lot of japan's players in the United State and there are as many North americans' players as in Japan trained and recruiting new talent from Japan.



Hector D. Feliz Montero.
DC2869.

Hello everybody, teacher Atilano, this is my first time in this blog. I haven't ever been in any blog. Well, about the baseball game, I like it but I'm not a crazy fanatic. My favorite team is Los Tigres del Licey. I always enjoy the final serie when Licey is playing.

The first day of class IDI-324

IDI-324
Last monday the proffesor did the presentation of the subject, IDI-324.
He talked about the evaluation of this important subject, as you already know the evaluation means the way of how the theachers measure students's knowledge, but last monday the proffesor Atilano said something that I think is true, no one is able to determine how much you know just for getting a good or bad score in an exam, so I believe that the knowledge of students must be measures in their daily activity.

CULTS

The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a new religious movement or other group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The word was first used in the early 17th century denoting homage paid to a divinity and borrowed via the French culte from Latin cultus"worship", from the adjective cultus "inhabited, cultivated, worshipped", derived from the verb colere "care, cultivate".
In the 1930s cults became the object of sociological study in the context of the study of religious behavior. They have been criticized by mainstream Christians for their unorthodox beliefs. In the 1970s the anticult movement arose, partly motivated by acts of violence and other crimes committed by members of some cults (notably the Manson Family and People's Temrple.


Nowadays are diferents kind of cults and sect:

 Cults are absent of the betterment of the individual person but rather than leader only. Cults try to subvert the human will with total and complete obedience to the leader of a group or sect .
Some may say that Christianity is a Jewish sect, or that the Shi'ite and Sunni confessions within Islam are sects. The problem in attempting to define a 'sect' by asking whether the institution as such is recognised by the state or receive benefits also leads one into subjectivity, in that a mainstream institution in one country may not be across the world. The Baptists, for example, are mainstream in the US, but are considered to be a sect in Russia as they have not been registered there for fifteen years. One man's religion is another man's sect.

Some may say that Christianity is a Jewish sect, or that the Shi'ite and Sunni confessions within Islam are sects. The problem in attempting to define a 'sect' by asking whether the institution as such is recognised by the state or receive benefits also leads one into subjectivity, in that a mainstream institution in one country may not be across the world. The Baptists, for example, are mainstream in the US, but are considered to be a sect in Russia as they have not been registered there for fifteen years. One man's religion is another man's sect.