The Major League Baseball drug suspension angle that few are talking about is that yesterday’s Group of 13 has one thing in common: they are all Latino.
Antonio Bastardo, Nelson Cruz, Fauntino de los Santos, Fernando Martínez, Jordan Norberto, Johnny Peralta, Jordan Norberto, Césat Puello, Jordany Valdespin: Dominican Republic
Francisco Cervelli, Sergio Escalona, Jesús Montero: Venezuela
Evereth Cabrera: Nicaragua
And yes, Alex Rodriguez, who was born in New York City, but is pleading that his fellow Dominicans give him another chance: ”My mom is spending a lot of time in Santo Domingo now and is always praying for me. I want to thank all my Dominican fans, this is a difficult time, I carry the flag on my shoulders and this protects me, also with God’s help. I am very Dominican. Very proud of being Dominican. Very proud that the Dominican team won the crown [at the World Baseball Classic]. I want to do a good job of being the face, not only of Dominicans, but also Latino baseball players and keep on going forward.”
Baseball would have never survived as a major sport in this country without the influx of Latino ballplayers. But MLB has also been failing us for years. I hope the league vigorously takes its anti-PED campaign to the countries from where it pillages players. I hope they go after the “wrong people” who leech onto to the dreams of some many young boys who dream of making it big.
Read the rest of this post on NBCLatino where it was first published.
Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77 ) founded LatinoRebels.com in May, 2011 and proceeded to open it up to about 20 like-minded Rebeldes. His personal blog, juliorvarela.com, has been active since 2008 and is widely read in Puerto Rico and beyond. In the past 12 months, Julito represented the Rebeldes on Face the Nation, NPR, Univision, Forbes, and The New York Times.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of "The Latino Newsletter" and co-editor of "Pressing Issues from Free Press."