The Dominican baseball machine signs children at 11 — and a fixer showed how the system protects valuable players
ProPublica’s investigation into Dominican baseball is excellent and unexpectedly revealing. Major League Baseball formally prohibits international signings before age 16, yet teams routinely make informal multimillion-dollar commitments to prospects as young as 11. Poor families then borrow against promised future signing bonuses, leaving them vulnerable to trainers, lenders and middlemen if the deal collapses. The Dominican Republic produces more MLB players than anywhere outside the US, but this pre-signing economy is largely unregulated.
