Latin American Baseball Players Too Intense?

Some worry the pressure is creating a new generation of steroid abusers.

By Joseph Contreras
May 30, 2006

May 27, 2006 - Throughout the first two months of the 2006 baseball season, the attention of most fans and sportswriters has been riveted on San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. The main subject of a recently published exposé about steroid use in the major leagues, Bonds made history May 20 when he tied Babe Ruth with his 714th career home run and took aim at Hank Aaron’s major-league record of 755 homers. But when the Giants hosted the St. Louis Cardinals in San Francisco three days later, it was the visiting team’s Dominican-born first baseman, Albert Pujols, who captured the headlines when he hit his 23rd home run of the season to lead the Cardinals to an 8-5 victory. The 26-year-old Pujols—who has never been linked to steroids—is leading the major leagues in four-baggers this year, and if he keeps up his torrid pace at the plate, he could break Bonds’s single-season record of 73 home runs. When Bonds reached first on a single against the Cardinals earlier this week, he had one piece of advice for Pujols as he took his lead from the base where the young Dominican was standing. “Shatter it,” advised the Giants outfielder, referring to his own historic achievement in 2001.

Latin American ballplayers have come a long way since the days when a manager could issue an edict, as the Giants’ Alvin Dark did in 1964, prohibiting players from speaking Spanish in the clubhouse. As the attitude toward Hispanic players has changed, the Latino invasion has also breathed new life into baseball in the United States. Latin players coming into the game bring competitiveness and a passion that have helped to rejuvenate a sport beset by labor strife and flagging TV ratings in the 1990s. At this year’s inaugural World Baseball Classic tournament, the national teams fielded by the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico were positively brimming with major-league-level talent and featured bona fide superstars like Pujols, Johan Santana and Carlos Beltrán. Yet it was Cuba’s squad of amateurs—whose best players do not earn in a career what New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez made in a single official at-bat last year ($42,488)—who outlasted their traditional Caribbean rivals to reach the final game against Japan. One of the sport’s top managers attributes much of the success of Latino ballplayers to their all-consuming focus on the game. “The Latin American player understands the game of baseball better than other players,” says St. Louis Cardinals skipper Tony La Russa. “They’ve been talking about it and playing it their whole lives, they’re not confused and distracted by other sports.”

There’s some evidence, however, that the intensity Latino players bring to the game also has a downside. Consider that eight of the 12 major- and minor-league ballplayers who have tested positive for steroids thus far this spring hail from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. That disturbing trend also surfaced last year when seven of the 12 American and National League players who were caught taking steroids during Major League Baseball’s first season of mandatory testing were from Latin America, even though they made up just 24.6 percent of the 829 players on active rosters and disabled lists on opening day of the 2005 season.

And in the minor leagues, just over half of the 79 players caught taking steroids in 2005 were from a dozen Latin American countries and Puerto Rico—proportionately more than the four in 10 players that hail from that region. Since organized baseball tested all players, nobody has made any accusations that the program was biased against Latino players, or that Latinos were unfairly singled out. The data raise a troubling possibility that few in baseball would like to address head-on: are players from Latin America simply too driven to succeed?

Nearly all the players and coaches interviewed for this story rejected out of hand any suggestion that players from Latin America are more prone to cheating than any other group. Most of them weren’t even aware of the high number of Latinos among major leaguers who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2005. Some are in a state of denial: “It means nothing,” says veteran pitching coach Lee Mazzone of the Baltimore Orioles. But the Cardinals' La Russa concedes that in their single-minded pursuit of athletic excellence on the field and financial security off it, some Latin American players who “seek every avenue of improvement” may “make mistakes.” Puerto Rican catcher Javy Lopez of the Orioles also did not shy away from the issue. “They come from much poorer countries, and part of it has to do with that sense of desperation to make it to the big leagues and become a superstar.”

The Dominican-born president of a Hispanic-rights advocacy group says that steroid use is deeply ingrained in several Latin American countries, and he is calling on organized baseball to test teenage prospects for performance-enhancing drugs before they can sign on with major-league clubs and collect their bonus checks. Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America, has met with senior baseball officials and delivered a coffin to the New York City headquarters of Major League Baseball last year to publicize the steroid-related deaths of two young Dominican ballplayers in 2001. “These kids see the examples of [retired superstars] Jose Canseco and Sammy Sosa and all these players who were linked to steroids and how they performed, and they say this is the way to go,” says Mateo. “They can get away with it in Latin American countries where [star athletes] are looked upon as gods and the attitude is ‘let them do whatever they want'.” MLB commissioner Bud Selig made headlines earlier this year when he appointed former U.S. senator George Mitchell to conduct a formal probe of the steroids issue. Bonds figures to be the main focal point of the investigation, but the dirty little secret about steroids use and Latin peloteros also warrants special scrutiny from Mitchell and his aides. Numbers don’t lie, and it would be a shame if a reckless minority within the ranks of the sport’s Latin American-born contingent ends up casting aspersions on the reputation of any player with a Spanish surname.

Source: Newsweek/MSNBC