La Brega – Season 3

7. The Stuff of Champions: The Future of Puerto Rican Baseball

Puerto Rico has been a baseball powerhouse. For decades, we operated as our own country, under the same rules as nations like the Dominican Republic. Players could be signed to professional teams as young as 16. Then in 1990, Major League Baseball changed the rules to include Puerto Rico in its first-year player draft. Initially, it was seen as protecting young players. But today, there’s a sense that Puerto Rican baseball has lost its shine, and fewer players make it to the major leagues. In this episode, we examine how baseball reflects inequality and the lack of political sovereignty.

Read the episode transcript here.

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Original art by Elizabeth Barreto. You can find their Instagram here.

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For more information:

• Read “Negro Leaguers in the Puerto Rico Winter League”, a bilingual book by Adolfo R. López y Ángel Colón, to learn more about the history of Puerto Rican professional baseball, and to bask in the beauty of its many historical photos.

Additional material by:

• CBS
• Major League Baseball
• National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
• Notiséis WIPR
• WOLE 12

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