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Baseball as an Intersection of Popular 
Culture and North American Exploitation in 

the Dominican Republic 
 

Tiffany Gurprasad 
 

*** 
 

Baseball in the Dominican Republic has come to signify not 
only an expressive form of Dominican patriotism, but an outlet for 
economic relief. Although the sport is intertwined with a history of 
American occupation and dominance, baseball in the Dominican 
Republic contrasts that of the American game. As with many other 
Caribbean countries such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, Dominican baseball 
was developed in the sugar refineries and sustained by Cuban, West 
Indian and Haitian labourers1. Dominican talent has and continues to be 
channeled out of the country and into North American teams through 
recruitment academies, providing young athletes the narrow possibility 
of an escape from poverty. “Outside of the United States, the 
Dominican Republic produces more professional and major league 
players than any other country.”2 It is this disproportion between all-star 
success and Dominican unemployment that creates an intensity which 
fosters young men to depend on baseball. The constant recruitment and 
extraction of Dominican players into North American leagues can be 
compared to the historical and contemporary consumption of the 
Caribbean as a whole, a site of temporality where goods and bodies 
exist only for consumption.3

                                                           
1 Alan Klein, Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream (New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p16. 
2 Alan Klein, 2. 
3 Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean (London: Routledge, 2003), p26. 

 American dominance not only penetrates 
and stifles baseball within the Dominican, but also exploits Dominican 
athletes that enter the MLB (Major League Baseball).  Baseball is a 



CARIBBEAN QUILT | 2011 
 

78 
 

vital expression of Dominican nationalism, inseparable from the 
country’s history and politics, but it is also inextricably intertwined with 
North American exploitation. This tension between culture and politics 
is a fundamental element of Dominican baseball.  

Baseball was introduced to Cuba in the late nineteenth century, 
after the country shifted its economic dependence from Spain to the 
United States.4 A combination of Cubans and Americans were 
responsible for the development and integration of baseball in the 
Dominican Republic. Cuban exiles from the Ten-Year War brought 
baseball to Hispaniola, and the sport was further popularized by 
Americans who invented the game and were increasingly present as 
symbols of power in the nation.5 The influence of US hegemony both 
politically and culturally is seen in the way soccer, a Spanish import to 
the Dominican Republic, was overshadowed by baseball.6 Although the 
first official teams and players were from wealthy families, “baseball 
culture” in the Dominican was fuelled by its presence in the sugar cane 
fields. “The Dominican was the preferred destination of men and 
women from the British West Indies and from Puerto Rico prior to the 
turn of the century, and after 1910, of Haitians and less so of residents 
of the former English colonies.”7 These immigrants replaced 
Dominican labourers on sugar refineries when Dominican peasants 
refused to work for the wages offered.8 The game of baseball was 
played in such refineries, diverting labourers during slow harvests and 
fostering a strong sense of community and identity; it also created its 
own cultural legacy. As the popularity of baseball increased, refinery 
managers offered cash payments to cane-cutters to field good teams, 
which began competing on a high level.9

                                                           
4 Rob, Ruck, The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic 
(London: Meckler, 1991), 2.  
5Klein, 16. 
6Ruck, 6. 
7Teresita Martinez-Vergne, Nation & Citizen in the Dominican Republic, 1880-
1916 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 86.   
8 Martinez-Vergne, 86. 
9Klein, 151. 

 Intense rivalry and 
competition also surged throughout the cities, with the two most 
popular professional teams, Leones del Escogido and Tigres del Licey. 



Tiffany Gurprasad – BASEBALL AS AN INTERSECTION OF POPULAR CULTURE AND NORTH 
AMERICAN EXPLOITATION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

79 
 

Licey blue and Escogido red acted as the two most authentic 
representations of baseball and rivalry in the sport, encompassing the 
essence of Dominican baseball. “More than twenty thousand paid to 
attend the championship games in 1921 at a time when Santo 
Domingo’s population was only a bit over thirty thousand.”10Licey and 
Escogido are so deeply rooted in Dominican nationality they have come 
to represent the two dominant cultures of masculinity in the nation. 
According to Antonio De Moya, there is a dominant “rebellious” street 
culture of “tigueres” that is contrasted to the dominant “courageous” 
household culture of the “leones.”11

While professional baseball in the Dominican experienced a 
rollercoaster of success and decline from 1921 through 1950, amateur 
baseball never ceased to fade, signifying that Dominican passion in 
baseball is not “mediated by money or international acclaim.”

 Baseball has historically brought 
together the population as a game that transgressed race and class, 
linking together athletes, families, fans and villages.  

12 Politics 
were firmly entrenched in Dominican baseball in 1936, with Trujillo 
“combining Licey and Escogido and sponsoring the best ballplayers of 
the North American black leagues to create an invincible machine of a 
team.”13

                                                           
10Ruck, 12. 
11 Antonio De Moya, “Power Games and Totalitarian Masculinity in the 
Dominican Republic,” in Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities ed. Rhoda 
Reddock (Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2004), p80. 
12Klein, 23. 
13Ruck, 37. 

 The merger of the two teams into the single Ciudad Trujillo, 
the costs of bringing top players from foreign countries, along with 
Trujillo’s underlying political stake in the game caused interest in 
professional baseball to wane. After baseball’s decline in 1950, the era 
of “beisbolromantico” made its mark on the Dominican Republic. The 
term “beisbolromantico” was established to describe the specific quality 
of Dominican baseball, from the immediacy of the game to the fervent, 
emotional connection of fans and players. The ‘romantico’ quality was 
able to develop because Dominican baseball was at first overlooked by 
Americans. Players and teams from the sugar refineries, specifically 
San Pedro de Macoris, largely fed the popular professional teams. 



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Amateur baseball plays a significant role in Dominican history; San 
Pedro de Macoris has gained local and international recognition for its 
teams and players. “Beisbolromantico” is genuinely expressed through 
amateur play in the sugar refineries where “life remained a struggle, and 
the harder it was the brighter looked the path lit by baseball.”14

From the mid-fifties onwards, Major League Baseball became a 
magnet for Dominican players, which not only affected the prosperity 
of Dominican athletes and their families, but Dominican baseball as a 
whole. The extraction of the top players from the amateur leagues to 
professional leagues, and then from professional leagues to the MLB, 
immensely affected the competitiveness of the Dominican game. “1947 
onwards marked racial integration in American baseball with players 
such as Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby opening up the field of 
organized baseball for Latin American players.”

  
However, after 1955, when North America began taking a special 
interest in Dominican players, Dominican baseball became increasingly 
dependent upon the MLB and therefore the (North) American game.  

15 The development of 
professional leagues in the Dominican Republic created an intense 
relationship between Dominican and American baseball. According to 
Alan Klein, “the number of Dominicans playing professional baseball 
in North America began as a trickle in the late 1950s, and then grew to 
49 between 1955 and 1980 and to hundreds in the 1980s.”16 With the 
Dominican winter league changing seasons to correlate perfectly with 
North America’s summer league, the MLB found opportunities to 
harness the raw talent they witnessed in the Dominican game. “Overall, 
a third of the two-hundred ball players in the Toronto organization 
come from the Dominican Republic or elsewhere in the Caribbean.”17

                                                           
14Klein, 32. 
15 Adrian Burgos Jr, Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color 
Line (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p180. 
16Klein, 35. 
17Ruck, 62. 

 
Latin America and the Caribbean’s contribution to North American 
baseball was seemingly inexhaustible, and “by the end of the 1960’s, no 
fan of the game could have doubted the impact that the Caribbean basin 



Tiffany Gurprasad – BASEBALL AS AN INTERSECTION OF POPULAR CULTURE AND NORTH 
AMERICAN EXPLOITATION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

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was making on major league ball.”18 In turn, Dominican athletes saw 
Major League Baseball as the “personification of the American dream 
of opportunity, upward social mobility, and success.”19

Unfortunately, the motivations behind scouting Latin American 
ball players were the cheap wages they would be paid in comparison to 
their American counterparts. “With increasing disparity, in 1975 Major-
league organizations gave US-born players selected in the amateur draft 
an average signing bonus of $65,000 while signing bonuses for foreign-
born Latin Americans averaged $5,000.”

 

20 Many Latin American ball 
players enter North American baseball in positions of vulnerability, and 
with few economic opportunities available back home, many have no 
option but to settle for low wages. Major-leagues in North America are 
more than willing to take advantage of this situation, offering foreign-
born players inferior wages in comparison to Americans. The 
Dominican-American baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez was selected 
from an amateur draft and signed with a bonus of $1.3 million US. He 
recognizes the benefits of US citizenship and the sharp financial 
disparity, quoted as saying “ I’m really grateful I was born and raised in 
the United States...I’m sure I would have been a top prospect in the 
Dominican, but maybe I would have gotten $5, 000, I would have been 
on a much tougher road.”21

Baseball academies were set up in the Dominican Republic as 
institutions that produce and maintain players for North American 
major leagues, “the first academy was built just north of Santo 
Domingo by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977.”

 

22

                                                           
18Ruck, 101. 
19 Samuel Regalado, Viva Baseball! Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special 
Hunger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p2. 
20Burgos Jr, 232. 
21Burgos Jr, 233. 
22Klein, 42. 

 The baseball academy 
acts to lure in boys and young men with the prospect of the “American 
Dream” and a chance at signing with an MLB team. Before the 
Dominican government intervened in the practices of these academies 
in 1984, boys as young as thirteen were being recruited, separated from 



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their families, underpaid, and denied education.23 The academies 
commoditize young athletes and take advantage of Dominican talent 
while undermining baseball in the nation they are based in. Mimi 
Sheller writes, “The Caribbean has been repeatedly imagined and 
narrated as a tropical paradise in which the land, plants, resources, 
bodies, and cultures of its inhabitants are open to be invaded, occupied, 
bought, moved, used, viewed, and consumed in various ways.”24 From 
this perspective, the MLB indulges in the Caribbean’s colonial past, 
extracting talent from the Dominican without regard for the country 
itself. For North American major leagues, the Dominican is a site 
imagined outside of their modernity where players can be funneled 
solely for the success of their various teams. Klein compares baseball 
academies in the Dominican to colonial outposts: “it finds the raw 
materials (talented athletes), refines them (trains the athletes), and ships 
abroad the finished product (baseball players).”25

Hence, perceptions of the American dream often came with 
harsh realities for the majority of players that migrated north to play 
baseball. The pressure from back home to succeed, the hardships of 
displacement and settlement along with sudden American acculturation 
were all consequences of baseball migration. Issues of orientation to a 
new culture and the perceived grandeur of American capitalism were 
often overwhelming for Latin American players.

 

26 The processes of 
migration for Dominican players to the MLB still to this day place them 
in vulnerable positions, where language barriers, racial discrimination, 
isolation from a traditional community-orientated space and pressure to 
perform all amalgamate to work against the athlete. “Latin players 
rarely landed in a town that held vestiges of Spanish-speaking culture, 
and this disadvantage set them apart from other new-comers to the 
United States.”27

                                                           
23 Klein 43. 
24Sheller, 13. 
25Klein, 42. 
26Relagado, 61. 
27Samuel Relagado, “Sammy Sosa Meets Horatio Alger: Latin Ballplayers and the 
American Success Myth,” in Baseball and the American Dream, ed Robert Elias 
(London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), p74. 

 This is summed up in the 2008 film, Sugar, where 



Tiffany Gurprasad – BASEBALL AS AN INTERSECTION OF POPULAR CULTURE AND NORTH 
AMERICAN EXPLOITATION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

83 
 

Miguel Santos is recruited after his second year of high-school to the 
minor leagues in America. Sugar intensely captures the narrow, 
burdensome path baseball creates into the Western world for Dominican 
players, the struggle of adjusting to American culture and the ever-
looming machine of the MLB that commodifies Latin American and 
Caribbean players.28

Accustomed to racially inclusive leagues in the Caribbean and 
Latin America, players who migrated to American baseball were largely 
unprepared for the level of discrimination and racism entrenched in 
American society. Latin American players of Roberto Clemente’s era 
(mid 1950’s) “often perceived American racism as a minor 
inconvenience in their quest for glory, and were constantly warned by 
older, experienced players of the pitfalls ahead.”

 Since leagues in the Dominican and other Latin 
American countries were racially inclusive, entering a culture where 
‘integration’ was a new idea would also firmly shape the experience of 
Latin American players. 

29 Players were racially 
contrasted to their American counterparts, having any mistake or 
shortcoming blamed on ethnicity. Latin American ball players, whether 
Afro-Caribbean or Hispanic-Caribbean, were stereotyped as being hot-
tempered and lacking mental alertness.30 The polarization between 
Americans and Latin Americans still exists and constantly reminds 
Latin American players of their presence in “America’s game.” 
Clemente was quoted as saying, “there’s a collective mentality in the 
United States that Hispanics aren’t worth much;”31 this is taken up 
further in the film Sugar, where fans angrily call Dominican-born 
Miguel “Sugar” Santos a “fucking Puerto-Rican.”32

                                                           
28Sugar. DVD. Directed by Anna Boden. 2008; USA.Journeyman Pictures, 2008. 
29Relagado, 70. 
30Ruck, 83. 
31Relagado, 204. 
32Sugar, 2008. 

 The racism born 
out of refusing to recognize cultural difference further isolates players 
who enter the MLB, alienating them from a sense of belonging in the 
society. “The racial components compounded Latin American 
ballplayer’s struggle to adapt to other facets of American culture and 
the inability to communicate in English magnified their already isolated 



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circumstances.”33 This alienation is also laced within the constant 
pressure of being replaced by other desperate, foreign-born players or 
falling short of American expectations34

The association between baseball and the American dream 
needs to be re-thought when considering the role of Dominican (or any 
Caribbean/Latin American) players. While the notion of the American 
dream sets up America as “the land of opportunity where sufficient 
dedication and hard work guarantees individual mobility and 
success”

. Migration through baseball for 
Dominican and Latin American born players is loaded with social 
inequalities that actively position ball players to be exploited by the 
MLB.  

35, the dream needs to be seen in light of the persisting 
entanglement of racial, social and economic inequalities. Young men in 
the Dominican Republic are heavily influenced by the appeal of 
massive financial gain that American baseball offers, which is starkly 
contrasted to the reality of impoverishment and unemployment in the 
nation. “Many Dominican boys see baseball as their only escape, and 
the inordinate pull of the sport over them is strengthened by the 
astounding success that the best Dominican players have achieved in 
North American professional baseball.”36

                                                           
33Relagado, 75. 
34Sugar, 2008. 
35 Robert Elias, “A Fit for a Fractured Society,” in Baseball and the American 
Dream, ed. Robert Elias(London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), p6. 
36Klein, 58. 

 The systematic dependence 
on American baseball for autonomy fosters the importance of baseball 
in the Dominican Republic, not only as a marker of national pride, but 
as an economic outlet for young men and their families. Once athletes 
migrate, the immense pressure of baseball as an alley out of poverty 
along with cultural alienation often leads to young Dominican athletes 
abandoning their “American dream” of baseball stardom. The lack of 
education that is systematically perpetuated through early recruitment in 
baseball academies gives ballplayers little economic opportunity if they 
wish to pursue a different path. For the baseball organizations, “signing 
players at an early age is cost-efficient since players are more expensive 



Tiffany Gurprasad – BASEBALL AS AN INTERSECTION OF POPULAR CULTURE AND NORTH 
AMERICAN EXPLOITATION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

85 
 

when they are more seasoned.”37 “Most of the baseball players from the 
United States graduate high-school, whereas in the Dominican Republic 
they rarely get through the sixth grade.”38

Baseball is an integral part of the Dominican Republic’s culture, 
used both as a national pastime and as a tool of resistance against 
American hegemony. For many Dominicans, the game is seen as an 
expression of their superior athletic capacities in the sport.

 This contrast of Dominican 
and American players shows the severe vulnerability Dominicans are 
subjected to within the major-leagues. Unlike the majority of their 
American counterparts, baseball is often the only option for Dominican 
players.  

39 During the 
American occupation, Dominicans fraternized and resisted through 
representing the Dominican flag in baseball games. Baseball is not 
viewed as a facet of American imperialism in the Dominican Republic; 
it is instead valued for its Dominican diversity and quality. The history 
of baseball tied with sugar refineries and the West-Indian “Cocolo’s’” 
contributions to the sport are all nostalgic elements that serve as the 
foundation of the Dominican game. However, Dominican baseball 
challenging American dominance is complicated by the nation’s 
dependence on North American major leagues. Institutions like the 
MLB and their associated baseball academies take advantage of the lure 
of the American dream and exploit hopeful boys and young men. 
Migration to North America to play in the MLB is riddled with 
instability for Dominican players, negatively shaping their lived 
experience and settlement as members of the diaspora. The role of the 
Dominican Republic in American baseball cannot be denied, whether 
through the large amount of players who contribute to the major league 
teams or the help that Dominican’s winter league provides to its minor 
league players.40

                                                           
37Klein, 93. 
38Klein, 80. 
39Ruck, 26. 
40Ruck, 111. 

 Although both countries hold onto baseball as a 
defining quality of nationality, fans in the United States divide their 
loyalty between baseball, football and variety of other games while in 



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D.R, baseball is a year round sport.41 Baseball exceeds the title of 
national pastime because it signifies much more, such as the success of 
young prospective athletes, families dependent on their son’s baseball 
careers, memories of intense political turmoil with Licey and Escogido, 
beisbolromantico, and the American dream. The saturation of politics 
into baseball during the Trujillo reign and American occupation 
allowed the sport to take on a specifically Dominican reality and retain 
meaning, surpassing sheer recreation and leisure. A complex web of 
transnational relationships is formed between Caribbean players and 
North American leagues. To what extent do Dominican players 
represent Dominican baseball and how do these representations fit into 
the American game? North America and the Dominican Republic share 
an intrinsic relationship through baseball that maintains a constant, yet 
unequal, exchange of memory, culture and people. 

 
 

 
 

                                                           
41Gare Joyce, The Only Ticket Off The Island (Toronto: Lester &Orphen Dennys, 
1990)p,2. 

Bibliography 

Burgos Jr., Adrian. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and 
the Color Line. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. 
 
De Moya, Antonio. “Power Games and Totalitarian Masculinity in the 
Dominican Republic.”In Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities, edited 
by Rhoda Reddock, Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2004. 
 
Elias, Robert. “A Fit for a Fractured Society.”In Baseball and the 
American Dream, edited by  Robert Elias, London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001. 

Joyce, Gare. The Only Ticket Off The Island. Toronto: Lester 
&OrphenDennys, 2002.  



Tiffany Gurprasad – BASEBALL AS AN INTERSECTION OF POPULAR CULTURE AND NORTH 
AMERICAN EXPLOITATION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

87 
 

Klein, Alan. Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream. 
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. 
 
Martinez-Vergne, Teresita.Nation & Citizen in the Dominican Republic, 
1880-1916. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.   
 
Relagado, Samuel. “Sammy Sosa Meets Horatio Alger: Latin 
Ballplayers and the American Success Myth.” In Baseball and the 
American Dream, edited by Robert Elias, London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001. 
 
Regalado, Samuel. Viva Baseball! Latin Major Leaguers and Their 
Special Hunger. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. 
 
Ruck, Rob. The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican 
Republic. London: Meckler, 1991. 

Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean. London: Routledge, 2003. 
 
Sugar. DVD. Directed by Anna Boden. 2008; USA.Journeyman 
Pictures, 2008. 


