"Ojala El Otoño En Vez De Ojas Secas"

Last week, while surfing the 'net, I came across an article in Time Magazine about the baseball academies in the Dominican Republic, "Struck Out By Beisbol" that I just HAD TO get my hands on. I actually skipped lunch, went to the library and PAID to photocopy the article so that I could read it on the train later that day. That's how bad I wanted it. (You can click HERE for a sort-of follow up to that article posted on Digital Sports Daily)

It did not completely disappoint. Meaning, it didn't really tell me anything drastically new. A few months ago over on SistaSports I reviewed the movie Sugar, which I saw at the theaters on a whim. And just sat there, jaw on the ground, as the truth behind these academies was portrayed on the big screen for me. I never knew. I swear I never new.

I started to wonder if Manny Ramirez went through all that and maybe that's why he's such an asshole- those kinds of thoughts. So the deplorable conditions at these "schools" were not a shock to me.

What bothered me more was, yet again, being slapped in the face with the reality of the conditions in DR as a whole that makes it so easy for these academies to pluck young men out of school and dangle the hope and promise of a MLB contract in front of them and make them believe it. And it's not like I don't know the island is poor. I've SEEN it with my own eyes. Slept on a cot in a shack w/a tin roof in a shanty town, complete w/dirt floors and a latrine. We had to get water from a well up the road for chrissake! I KNOW they're poor.

What this article did was remind me that the game I love so much is so tainted. And the country I long to live in is so corrupt and desperately backwards. And the place I currently call home is such a USER.

And maybe I need to shut the fuck up the next time I can't afford to buy the moisturizer I want from Clinique, because in exchange I have food in my cupboards, a real roof over my head, electricity and modern plumbing. I don't have to pull K out of school and send her to live in a slummy apartment and made to work like a horse on the baseball diamond just to keep us fed. But more importantly, I won't have to see her return home, defeated, uneducated, unskilled and depressed, because the goddamn Yankees didn't sign her.



Perspective, man. It made me cry on the subway.

*smooches...starting out the week being thankful instead of bitter*
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besides, it's probably my perpetually stank attitude that has caused my foot to act up. At least that's what WebMD says...