Law No. 2-25 that regulates the hiring of MLB baseball prospects.
Law No. 2-25 regulating the hiring of MLB baseball prospects.
On 10 January, the Law No. 2-25 entitled “Law regulating the hiring of baseball prospects who are assigned to the Dominican Summer League (DSL), within the system of major leagues of baseball of the United States (MLB)”.
It is clear that, as the legal aphorism lex non distinguit nec nos distinguir debemus goes, it would be a mistake to limit the application of this law exclusively to teams that, in the strict sense, make up the major leagues. In reality, we understand this to be an initiative applicable to industry as a whole, covering all the sub-enterprises and administrative dismemberments that are part of its operation.
The law in question is intended to be a binding reference which, ultimately, defines the contractual nature of relations between baseball prospects and Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs in order to settle, once and for all, the eternal and well-worn responsible conflict, to a large extent, the alarming congestion affecting the labor courts of the National District and the Province of Santo Domingo, with hundreds of annual lawsuits between teams and their former players.
In the Dominican Republic, the excessive and thoughtless use of legal channels has become the closest thing to a sport or a rigged lottery, where hardened litigants pool their energies in a monotonous and perfectly predictable exercise.
It is an open secret that the baseball industry is one of the most important sources of foreign investment and income for the country. So much so that in 2023, more than $80 million was distributed to 477 young local athletes hired by the various teams of this company just for the purpose of signing Dominican prospective firms. This is without considering the operational cost of operating the various academies and offices established by the commissioner, which is around $90 million per year.
The numbers above are not capricious or unfounded, our proximity to the United States, political stability, climatic conditions, our sporting talent and other factors have made us the country in Latin America with the highest number of prospects for the baseball industry. The MLB is one of the fundamental pillars of the Dominican economy and, in turn, represents the north in the lives of many young people who see this organization as a kind of anticipatory messianic intervention. An example of this was the recent and transcendent signing of the New York Mets’ baseball player Juan Soto, for a sum of up to 765 million dollars.