USA TODAY International Edition
Mets lead charge to educate Latinos
Trend toward providing diplomas catches on, benefiting players, teams
Every November, there is a peculiar and celebratory sight at the New York Mets’ Dominican Republic academy in Boca Chica.
Groups of Mets teenage prospects pull graduation robes and sashes above their baseball uniforms and populate the facility. All of them have signed professional contracts with the club, and some might even matriculate into the majors in several years. But at this time, every year, they are something else: high school graduates.
In an industry that prioritizes and judges on performance above everything else, the Mets have invested in education. They run a continuing education program that helps newly signed Latino players earn their diplomas. Most are from the Dominican Republic, where schooling can become secondary to the chase for a career and players sign before completing school.
For players, the benefits of the program are obvious. Reaching the majors is a statistical unlikelihood, and gaining a measure of education can prove important. But what is the value of this program to the Mets? And why is baseball getting more involved in education altogether?
“We see the benefit of it,” says Juan Henderson, the head of the Mets’ Dominican academy. “I’ve got to tell you, we’re working with a new generation of baseball players. You see in the past that players just carry a bat and a glove and a helmet on the baseball field and in the academy.
“Those years, I think, are going to be pretty much over. Now they also do that, but they also carry books, they also carry an iPad, they also carry a laptop.”
The Mets are one of six major league teams to maintain such a program. ( The others are the Pitts- burgh Pirates, Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners.) Two or three more are planning to implement one in the coming years, says Rafael Perez, Major League Baseball’s director of Dominican operations. It is part of a growing trend by baseball to get involved in not only its players’ education but also to build up their life skills.
For the last three years, MLB also has been providing education counseling to released Latino players and financial assistance that pays for all or some vocational training, English classes and college, Perez says.
The Mets, in some ways, provide a model example of how such a program works. They began theirs in 2006 and carried it over when their current academy opened two years later. Perez, then the Mets’ director of international operations, saw a need and an opportunity. He noted that Latino players, especially Dominicans, suffered from an education deficiency, and he noticed that the Mets were insufficiently helping their players.
He saw a possible competitive advantage for the Mets. Perez thought players with higher levels of education were more likely and more able to understand their coaching and instruction and be adherent. By helping them get their high school degrees, the Mets could improve the quality of development for the organization’s prospects.
Like every other team at the time, they were teaching English to their Latino players but had three programs running in three minor league locations and with three methodologies. Perez wanted to unify their approach.
“We identified that if you cannot help with the foundation of the players, how can you learn a second language if you, first of all, don’t have a good foundation with your first language?” he says. “And second of all, how can you learn all of that? It goes hand in hand.”
DOMINICANS ARE FOCUS
Every year, the Mets sign 20 to 30 players from the Dominican Republic, according to Henderson’s estimate, and most are 16 or 17 years old. As in the USA, high school runs until Dominican teenagers are about 18, so when they’ve entered professional baseball they are high school sophomores or juniors. And Dominican players, more so than other Latinos, are in need of education, according to MLB studies.
Perez said one study found that the level of education for Dominican players from the ages of 16 through 21 was the same as for non- baseball- playing Dominicans. But the issues were those Dominicans in that age range had an education level of ninth grade or lower and only 18% of Dominicans finished high school. By comparison, 75% of Venezuelan players signed had finished high school, Perez said.
The man who commissioned that study? Sandy Alderson, now the Mets general manager but MLB’s designated reformer of Latin American operations for eight months in 2010.
Alderson pushed for increased education during his time at MLB, and the Mets have followed suit. The Mets partner with CENAPEC, a Dominican Republic institute, to provide educational instruction, and with the University of South Florida, which provides education students to teach English.
The classes begin in the late afternoon and at the end of an already- long day for players. The signees at the academy go through individual and fundamentals workouts in the morning, followed by games at 10: 30. Three hours worth of classes begin at 4 p. m. Two times a week, players also meet with a sports psychologist.
“Of course in that moment it’s completely annoying,” says Hansel Robles, a Mets reliever. “You’re done with practice. You’re tired.
“At around noon or 1, you go get lunch. And by 2 o’clock, instead of getting to go and rest, you’re having to go to class and study all night. But in time you just know that’s the important choice, that’s the best choice to get that education.”
Robles, 25, signed with the Mets in 2008 and graduated from the high school program in 2010. He can be considered the gold standard of how the Mets model is supposed to work. He not only earned his diploma but also reached the majors, making his debut last year in the team’s bullpen and owning a 1.37 ERA entering Monday.
But he also understands it does not always occur so smoothly.
According to Perez, about 450 players, on average, have been signed out of the Dominican Republic each year over the last five years — so about 2,250 total. Ninety- two Dominican players have played in the majors this season, so the odds of making it are long.
Robles knows many of the ones who haven’t made it; friends who signed with organizations, were eventually released and are back at home.
As does Jeurys Familia, the Mets closer.
“Some get hurt,” Familia says. “Some just don’t want to play anymore. It’s tough to come from a different country. But the percent of Dominicans, they say from a hundred guys, maybe two or three can make it.”
GOOD BUSINESS MODEL
So why aren’t programs such as these universal around the majors? They provide clear assistance for players. Henderson says he receives emails and messages from former players thanking him for the school’s eventual help. Perez and Henderson can attest the program also serves a purpose for teams.
“Baseball is not in the business of education,” Perez says. “However, having said that, we understood — and I think those clubs understand — that education is a good business in order to help the players develop to become big- leaguers. The ones that haven’t is because probably they don’t fully understand how this is an asset for them.”
Change is slowly coming, it seems. Perez estimates that teams are split into three groups: the third that does a great job in the education space, the third that does a good job and the third that needs more prodding. MLB hasn’t insisted on an official policy, he says, because each team must make the decision on how to develop players on its own.
Perhaps in time, every team will invest in these programs. Perez makes it clear he thinks there are decided advantages to all involved. The players association, through a spokesman, stressed the importance of them, too, and that every Dominican player who signs with a team be able to benefit from it.
If it were up to Robles, each team would have such a program.
“That should definitely be something that’s enforced across every team,” he says. “Just because we’re so focused on trying to get that contract sometimes that some people think they need to cut classes out in order to dedicate all their time to baseball. Having that there, those classes, it makes it just a little bit easier to stick with it.
“You can’t stress ... enough how if the baseball thing doesn’t work out, then you have nothing left to fall back on. Whereas if you do this, you can go to college and you can have a future.”