Bad News Baseball: Yuma Scorpions’ American-Born Players Displaced By Imported Colombians
With the major league baseball season a little more than one-third completed and with the All-Star Game voting underway, the biggest stories so far have taken place off the field.
Specifically:
- Before the first Opening Day pitch was thrown, the Yankees wondered how they were going to fill those $2,500 boxes in its new stadium now that the Wall Street economy has melted down to bleachers-only level of affordability.
- One of baseball’s highest visibility players, Yankee Alex Rodriguez, exposed during spring training as having used banned substances, e.g., steroids, missed several weeks from a hip injury. But when Rodriguez returned to the Yankee line-up, teammates and fans alike welcomed him as if he were a conquering hero.
- And in what could be the most absurd incident in baseball’s long history of less-than-brilliant moves, another steroid abuser, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Manny Ramirez, is on the verge of being elected to the starting National League All-Star team. What’s remarkable is not only that the fans who vote for the All-Star players apparently don’t care if they are dopers—even more amazing is that Ramirez could be an All-Star starter even though he will have missed more games (50) because of his drug violation suspension than he will have played.
Meanwhile in Yuma, Arizona— literally 2,500 miles from the Bronx but figuratively ten million miles away baseball-wise—an astonishing development occurred two weeks ago that has negative implications for young, aspiring American baseball players for decades to come.
The Yuma Scorpions, a team in the Golden Baseball League, signed an affiliation agreement with the Colombian Professional Baseball League that resulted in the abrupt termination of the careers of many American hopefuls.
Golden Baseball League Chief Executive Officer Dave Kaval, [email him] a Stanford MBA, said the league still owns the Scorpions. Kaval described the Colombian league transaction as a standard affiliation agreement, on par with the ones major league teams have with their minor league affiliates.
According to Kaval, it’s the first affiliation contract with a foreign league for any American baseball team at any level.
Source:
Bad News Baseball: Yuma Scorpions’ American-Born Players Displaced By Imported Colombians
vdare.com
After reading some blog enteries on this website I realize that factual information may not be what you are looking for, but this article is filled with half-truths and out right lies and misinterpretations.
First of all, I don’t dispute the fact the GBL made a deal with the Colombian Pro Baseball League. The team is in place in the GBL and playing at this time. However, the Colombians did not fire the field manager, Mike Marshall of Dodger fame. Mike was moved to be the club president. Probably due to the fact that not all of the Colombian players speak English. So they brought their own manager. The coaches were moved to other GBL teams. There were no club house attendants and I’m not sure if there was even a trainer. The grounds keepers work for the City of Yuma who owns the stadium the Scorpions play in.
As for displacing all of the American players I assume you mean “white” players but the vast majority of the roster was comprised of Hispanic players with some actually from Mexico. Almost half of the players from the Yuma team were placed with other GBL teams thanks to the hard work of Mike Marshall.
As far as destroying the aspirations of many American hopefuls I think you must understand that the GBL is sub-minor league D baseball. There are a few who get placed within big league organizations, but I would be shocked if any of them make it to the bigs.
The most puzzling thing of all is why you wrap this story around three bullet points concerning the Yakees and Dodgers. I realize that this is only a blog and not journalism, but it really would make more sense to do just a bit of research before you publish information, no matter what the source, that is open for public consumption.