MLB's Problems In Arizona
Posted on Sat May 01, 2010 at 09:08:40 AM EST
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Hundreds of teenage ballplayers arrive every year in the United States trying to make a better life. They come from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela and Mexico and elsewhere, all to play the most American of games. Most grew up in poverty. Few know English. The game welcomes them anyway.
In less than two months, the Arizona Rookie League begins its season. Nearly 140 young players born and raised in Spanish-speaking countries will congregate in Phoenix and its suburbs for their first taste of professional baseball. They may do so as the nation’s most controversial law – the one that says some people who look like them are most certainly not welcome – goes into effect in late July.
[. . .] More than 1,000 players, and hundreds more executives, coaches, trainers and business staff, spend about eight weeks of spring training in the Phoenix area. Latin Americans represent 25-plus percent of major league players, and the percentage in the minor leagues is even higher. The sweeping reform, which critics say invites racial profiling, is almost certain to hit baseball if the federal government doesn’t intervene.
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