Controversial group has changed the way Major League Baseball teams do business on the island--and sometimes not for the better.

Date published: 12/19/2006

By TODD JACOBSON

PHOTO GALLERY: Click here to view images from the series.

SAN CRISTOBAL--As outfielder Marco Caminaro sprints the 60 yards from home plate toward right field, pumping his arms and doing his best to make a good impression during a tryout camp at the Nationals' Dominican Republic academy Sunday, Juan Cano rests his arms on a railing overlooking the complex and scans the field.

It is with particular interest that Cano trains his eye on Caminaro.

Cano discovered Caminaro in a little league program in San Pedro de Macoris, took him into his home and fed him three meals a day. He watched after him and helped him with his schooling and trained him at his own academy, honing his baseball skills: hitting, fielding and throwing.

And if Caminaro is signed, by the Nationals or any other team, Cano will get 25 percent of his signing bonus.

"We don't work free. Nobody works free," said Cano, one of nearly thousands of talent scouts, or buscones , who scour the Dominican Republic for players. "We work out with them and try to get them into professional baseball. It's what we do. We train the kids and he probably would never play in baseball if we weren't there."

The search for players in the Dominican Republic has become a lucrative business. With more than 100 Dominican players in the big leagues, this tiny island has long been a haven for prospect-hungry major league teams, who occupy the island with nearly as many academies as their big-league stadiums in the United States.

But the pool of players is controlled by a controversial group of amateur coaches/scouts/surrogate fathers known as buscones , or "finders."

They help develop talent on the island, nurturing players toward professional baseball in their own private academies, but they also act as agents and negotiate signing bonuses, pocketing their own significant pieces of the pie in the process.

And in many ways, they have changed the way Major League Baseball teams do business on the island--and sometimes not for the better.

"The problem is like in any other group of persons; you are going to find hard-working guys with integrity and others that have no ethics, and that is the problem," said Ronaldo Peralta, the manager of Major League Baseball's office in the Dominican Republic. "The problem is those few with no ethics have created such a scandal that in general they have a bad reputation."

More than 5,000 buscones search the island for talent, Peralta said, skirting Major League Baseball's rules that prohibit teams from negotiating with players under the age of 16.

Buscones scout players as young as 9 years old, following their progress through scattered little leagues until they are old enough to sign, and Major League Baseball has no ability to regulate the system, leaving plenty of opportunity for abuse.

Date published: 12/19/2006