As a foreign correspondent, I covered the Holy Land for many years. But then I came back to Boston to the true Promised Land: Fenway Park.
And yesterday, opening day for the Red Sox, represents a kind of religious holiday in this baseball-obsessed town. One of the high priests of the temple is David Ortiz, “Big Papi.” He is one of the greatest home-run hitters in the game and like approximately 10 percent of the players in Major League Baseball he hails from the Dominican Republic. The tiny Caribbean nation has developed a booming export market for baseball talent.
And so in celebration of opening day, GlobalPost began a continuing series titled “Dominican Dreams: El Barrio to the Big Leagues.” It is GroundTruth on the desperate race by teenage talent to make it out of the poverty of the Dominican Republican to win a coveted spot in the baseball academies where the lucky and the talented will be groomed for a lucrative contract in Major League Baseball. Follow the characters in the series — the talented recruit, the hard-ball agent, the corporate brokers for MLB — all through the summer on the chase for the Dominican Dream. The series is written and produced by the very talented documentary team of Casey Beck and Trevor Martin.

GroundTruth is written by Charles Sennott, the Executive Editor and co-founder of GlobalPost. The blog is a way for GlobalPost to let you know what our correspondents all over the world are covering every day. It is a place where Sennott highlights the best work in the field by a stellar team of correspondents . 
One Comment
1 Dominican Baseball wrote:
Yes, Ortiz is a tremendous story. Hopefully, there will be many more like him … and many more who ultimately use their skill to gain scholarships and other career skills from college educations.