MLB’s Neocolonial Practices in the Dominican Republic Academy System

Abstract

This essay investigates the early stages of the Major League Baseball (MLB) pipeline by focusing on the Dominican academy system. Once an international player is signed to a professional contract, they report to the team’s academy in the Dominican Republic. All 30 teams have an academy located on the island, where they house, feed, train, and educate players on American culture. I argue that MLB maintains a neocolonial system by having a system of insufficient education, discrimination, and surveillance based on Haitian nationality, and by communicating the American dream to its prospects. MLB controls its prospects economically and culturally in these instances, which is strictly neocolonial. I analyze, with attention to internal discourse and reference to neocolonial literature, how MLB justifies and maintains this system, rhetorically.