Schrag: Baseball and Immigration

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

There can't be many baseball fans who are still surprised by lineups of big leaguers whose names end in "guez" or "rez" or "ina." Count 'em: Rodriguezes, Ramirezes, Hernandezes, Gonzalezes, Perezes, Vazquezes, not to mention the Zambranos, Cabreras, Encarnacions, Suzukis, Matsuis, and Kims. Is there still a major league catcher not named Molina?

Of the 25 players on the astonishing Colorado Rockies – they won the National League pennant Monday night – eight are foreign born. The Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox, the teams still competing for the American League title, each have nine foreign-born players, meaning that 17 of the 50 players in the World Series will not be U.S. natives.

Of the 18 starters in last summer's All-Star game – presumably the best of the best – eleven (61 percent) were foreign-born. Of the top 10 hitters in the American League this year, seven were foreign born. In the National League, it was a mere four. Total: 11 of 20 (55 percent).

All told, according to Major League Baseball, 27 percent of the players on the 30 big-league teams this season were Dominicans (85), Venezuelans (43), Puerto Ricans (33), Mexicans (14), plus smaller numbers of Cubans, Arubans, Colombians, Panamanians, Japanese, Koreans, Canadians, Australians and Chinese. Count the Puerto Ricans as U.S. natives, and it's still 24 percent.

What's happened to the Great American Pastime? The answer, other than the ascendancy of football, basketball and other professional sports, is not very much that hasn't happened to other segments of the U.S. economy. The only difference is that the proportion of foreign born players in baseball is about twice that in the general population.

Of course these guys are taking good jobs from nice American boys who probably wouldn't spurn the multimillion-dollar salaries those foreigners are collecting. But who's complaining?

In fact, last December, in one of its very last acts, the lame duck Republican Congress, which had spent much of the year writing tough new ID requirements and other immigration restrictions into every bill that came its way, passed legislation – the "Compete Act" – vastly expanding visa eligibility for foreign minor league players. The visa, a P-1, is essentially a guest-worker program for professional athletes – mostly ball players and ice skaters.