The great thing about Pelotero is the immediacy. The camera seems to be there for many of the most important scenes and gives the film a sense of presence, as if the viewer were there to witness these tangled and frustrating negotiations. MLB was reportedly not happy with the film. Then commissioner Bud Selig is said to have called the producers, which included then Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, to complain about unfair treatment. Valentine is reported as replying to the effect that the camera simply documented what transpired and if as a result the MLB looks bad, that’s MLB’s fault.
The object of the camera’s focus is a pair of 16-year old Dominican baseball players, pelotero in Spanish, as they perform in tryouts for MLB scouts and prepare to negotiate contracts they hope will launch their families out of poverty. Dominica has been an attractive source of labor for MLB for the past two decades because, as more than one person remarks in the documentary, it can take advantage of the country’s political and economic weakness to recruit cheap labor. The fly in the MLB’s ointment is the buscone, Dominican coaches who groom talent and act as player agents in contract negotiations, resulting often in million-dollar signing bonuses.
Given the enticement, it’s not unusual to find Dominicans willing to lie about their ages to secure contracts. Under MLB rules, teams may not sign recruits until they are 16-years of age, which effectively means that a player’s greatest leverage is the first available signing date after reaching the age of sixteen. Players may be recruited at any age thereafter, but their value steadily decreases as they age. Unfortunately, the film makers do not explain why this is so, though one might assume that teams feel they get more years of labor from a younger recruit. As we see in the film, one player is discovered to have falsified his age and his value drops by half on the next available signing date.
What made this film contentious for MLB management is the appearance that the system may have been manipulated by an MLB scout. Nothing is proven, but it is suggested the scout, to scare away the competition, may have poisoned the well by instigating rumors that a player in which he was interested misrepresented his age. It is also suggested the agent may have been in collusion with the MLB investigation office (which refused to be interviewed). The scout promises (in film secretly recorded by the pelotero’s family) to make the investigation go away as soon the contract is signed.
As a result of this film, MLB instigated tweaks to the system, but now nearly a decade since the events in the film, the fundamental relationship remains the same. The MLB is a monopoly power, the Dominicans are desperately poor. In a 2014 profile, Dominican major leaguer Robinson Cano claims somewhat proudly that 99% of Dominican boys aspire to be peloteros. Where are the boys who dream of exploring space, building cars and ships, or curing disease?
Most Dominican boys recruited by MLB never make it out of the minor leagues. For an idea of what they encounter on their arrival in the USA, you might find of interest Sugar, a suitable companion film to Pelotero, a drama about one young man’s struggle to adapt to life in America. For those interested in a fuller picture and more complex analyses of the issues, American anthropologist Alan Klein has been researching and writing on Dominican baseball for three decades.
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