The Reality Blog: How One Country Cornered the MLB Market
by sdchriswooden
The L.A. Guns were highly touted.
Sunset Strip was hallowed ground in the 80’s. It was a cornucopia of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along with healthy doses of Aquanet, leopard print, and androgyny. Hair metal was everything. Motley Crue, Poison, L.A. Guns (who would later birth Guns N Roses), Great White, Warrant, and nearly any other assembly of dudes with long hair, trashy attire, and a half ounce of talent were snatched up and given massive amounts of money, cocaine, and women by every big record label in America.
It was the scene. You were not going to succeed as a record label in reaching the youth demographic in America if you didn’t have a successful stable of hair bands on your imprint, and Sunset Strip was the place to find them all. You needn’t look very hard either. They were pouring out of all the iconic venues: the Whiskey, Roxy, Troubadour, and Rainbow Room. It was a classic win-win for bands and labels alike; the right place and the right time applied equally to both sides. If you were the average, run-of-the-mill hair band, you wanted to be on Sunset to be “discovered.” Likewise, if you were the average label “suit” wanting to move up the proverbial ladder, you also wanted to be on Sunset, because that’s where the scene was.
The G-N-R cheese ballad ‘ParadiseCity’ summed the Sunset scene up perfectly. In baseball circles, the song title could also serve as an appropriate nickname for the Dominican Republic, Major League’s equivalent to the Sunset Strip of the 80’s.
It’s hard to find. Look closely.
The Dominican Republic championship at the recent World Baseball Classic was not the start of something new, rather it was the exclamation point on a phenomenon that has taken over the sport of baseball over the past decade. To borrow from another hair band classic: they rocked the world like a hurricane (a category five at that).
The D.R. has become the premier purveyor of Major League talent in the world. It’s surpassed all the traditional powerhouses [Japan, Cuba, and (yes) the U.S.], and it’s by no accident. This country literally creates ballplayers the way Mr. Miyagi creates karate masters; by raising and training young boys across the country as soon as they are able to throw and catch a ball.
