Melissa's Proposal

I plan to address the issue of immigration in baseball. I am not sure how I will present this as a relevant issue to fellow undergraduates because it is not a pressing issue for students at this school. However, since UW is a sports-crazy campus, I think that it will be an issue that is at least interesting to other students. With popular athlete’s indiscretions often dominating the headlines, think: Kobe, A-Rod, Tiger, Michael Vick (for a nice, wide range), it is good for people to see what athletes are like before they have the opportunity to end up on either ESPN or Star Magazine.

In exploring immigration in baseball, I want to focus specifically on people. There are two sides to baseball, not offense and defense, but the numbers and the people who put them up. When scandals arise, the articles and sports news shows don’t just focus on how great of a player that athlete is, but they talk about what they know of their character. When Tiger Woods’ scandal arose, we talked about how he’s the greatest golfer on the planet, but also how surprising the incident was based on who we thought he was as a person. In this project, I want to show what the argument over immigration in baseball is through the eyes of the players who have to do it. What drives these players to work so hard to play baseball in the USA? What do they have to go through before they are throwing changeups at US Cellular Field (or Fenway, or Yankee Stadium, or [fill in the blank with your favorite team’s stadium])? What happens to the players who never get that far?

The main source that I plan on using is a documentary called “Road to the Big Leagues”. This film takes a deeper look into a country that loves baseball as much as Americans do, but does not have the resources to make their players into the superstars they can become in the MLB—The Dominican Republic. In the description of the film, baseball is described as “the pipe dream of many boys and an escape from brutal poverty”. Immigrating to the US to play baseball clearly is about more than just being able to play the game. There are social and political factors that drive these players, and this film will give me a better idea of what exactly they are. As for other sources, I have a few articles already that would be helpful in this argument. One is from “The Sports Journal” and it outlines all of the potential issues and influences on immigration and labor concerns for players coming to the United States. The other articles that I have found, so far, are more focused on Cuban immigration. I don’t know if I will do this for sure, but it could be interesting to compare and contrast the struggles of ballplayers immigrating from both of these countries

I’m honestly not positive how my argument might be a useful resource to other undergraduates here. I haven’t figured everything out yet, but I do know about a lot of the sources out there on this topic. They usually focus on the numbers and technical aspects of immigration—how many visas were given out to players, how many people came here, etc, but I want to bring these numbers to life and explain what this really means for baseball. The research could be surprising for readers because most people don’t know a lot about the issue. It’s not a huge controversial issue that’s debated all of the time, like normal immigration is, so people could be surprised at how the process is handled differently for athletes, but it also is not as easy as we think. From my early findings, I know that there are multiple categorizations of visas now, and there are quotas for how many are given out. Some players can get “exceptional athlete” visas, but that is obviously not an option for young players in the Dominican Republic who are trying to get any sort of chance. We forget about these types of athletes when overgeneralizing about how athletes are overpaid and privileged.