Road To The Show
By: Alex Birge
Baseball is a sport that really starts to explode once you get to the collegiate level. Many schools across America are perceived as a predominantly a baseball school. The schools consistently excel at America’s pastime each year. Some of the schools that are classified in the category of a baseball school are Vanderbilt, Louisiana State University, Oregon State, Texas Christian University, Ole Miss, Arkansas, and many more schools that consistently participate in College World Series each year. Each year these schools are located within the top 25 of the College Baseball Rankings. The reason these schools continually contend for the title is because they recruit very aggressively and heavily. These schools have a reputation of being the best programs in the country due to their dominant coaches, phystlities, and gear. This reputation draws in the best high school and Juco baseball players each year. However, this may seem like an easy task, but in reality it is much more complicated.
Division 1 baseball programs get a maximum of 11.7 scholarships to distribute accordingly throughout 27 players. This is no a lot to spread, and potentially a Division 1 baseball player could only receive the minimum scholarship available for players who do not receive academic scholarships or financial aid either. This minimum scholarship would only account for 25% of their tuition. However, for extremely rare players, sometimes schools will offer them 40%, 60%, or 80% in extremely rare cases. For example, a few years ago a pitcher from St. Thomas Aquinas, Riley Pint was committed to Louisiana State University. Even for being one of the top rated high school pitchers and players in the nation he eventually turned down LSU’s 98% scholarship offer. He did this because he was selected with the 4th overall pick in the 2016 major league draft, with a 4.8 million dollar signing bonus. This topic is also another commonly argued issue in baseball.
There are many different routes to make it to the major leagues, and by no means is it easy or conventional. Like Pint and many other high school baseball players, if you are lucky enough to get drafted your senior season of high school you may sign to that given team. There are many advantages to this route, but there are also disadvantages. For example for Riley Pint who is a Kansas City native, he signed a 4.8 million dollar signing bonus to go play the game of baseball which he has always loved. The only possible downside to this is that he has yet to receive a college education. Another example of going straight to the minor leagues from high school is from someone I got to play against from Olathe West’s 2018 season. The kids name is Caleb Marquez, he plays catcher which was the same position as I play. Marquez was a very gifted athlete who is 6’3” 240. He was a good high school player who was very fortunate to get drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 39th round of the major league draft. Unlike Pint, players who get drafted in the later rounds of the draft do not sign for millions of dollars. With the same dream in mind, Marquez decided not to go to college and sign with the Brewers organization for $35,000. Again, the same downsides apply for Marquez as they do for Pint. The second way to get drafted and then pursue your dreams to play in the major leagues is to attend and sign with a collegiate level baseball team. Most players that are drafted are division 1 players. So at the Division 1 level players are able to get drafted a total of two times before they can officially sign with an organization. The first time you are able to get drafted out of college is after the athlete has completed their junior year of college. The next and last opportunity the athlete has to sign a professional contract is after they have completed their senior year. Many people may think that waiting until after your senior year of college is the route to go, but there could be some downsides to that. The first in being, you could have a worse senior season compared to your junior season, meaning that your draft stock could potentially get lowered. The second reason is often looked at from a financial standpoint from the players. If you were to do worse in your last season in college and not improve at all, you would be losing money. The reason you would be losing money is because now the professional organizations who are interested in you can lowball you a bit because you have no choice. You either sign with the organization and play baseball, or you decline it and pursue a job in the “real world”. At the end of the day it all comes down to the player and his preference on the situation.
The other collegiate route to the pro’s is often referred as the Juco route. In today’s society, the junior college route is popular and is increasing abundantly. Junior Colleges are only 2 year universities, whose athletics are very comparable to Division 1 baseball, to an extent. There are many Division 1 athletes in Juco programs, who just weren’t as fully developed right out of high school, or did not have the proper grades to get in to Division 1 schools. Juco baseball offerers a lot of advantages to athletes looking to progress to the next level. Since the colleges are only 2 year universities, they can do things that Division 1 programs cannot do. The first being, they have 24 scholarships available, with less players making school more affordable and full ride scholarships more plentiful. Secondly, since Junior colleges schools are only 2 year universities you can actually get drafted right after you finish your two years there. One of the most prime examples did this, in Bryce Harper. However, Harper may have graduated high school early, and wanted to get to the big leagues as quick as possible, he still took the Juco route. Bryce ended up being selected number 1 overall to the Washington Nationals. Next, there is always a possibility after you complete your two years at a junior college that you are awarded a scholarship at a Division 1 program. This choice is amongst one of the growing popular choices in collegiate baseball.
Finally, there is one other way to make it to the league, and this process only applies to a select few individuals. For the few kids that come from places like Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela their path to the MLB is much more challenging than kids from the United States. MLB teams do not have an organized international draft, but they do have international signing periods where the spending pool is large, but are restricted with hard caps. In the upcoming year, most teams will have a cap space of 4.75 million dollars, while others could range up to 5.75 million dollars. Rules and regulations have changed for the better, and according to Reds and former Dodgers star outfielder, he is glad it did. Yasiel Puig is from the county of Cuba. He and many others journey to the United States to play baseball was more challenging than you could even imagine. Many label Puig’s journey to America as an escape from Cuba. Daily Puig would be monitored, tracked down when he tried to escape, and when he was successful in his escape the people who helped him demanded money from him or he would face many harsh punishments. According to many players who took the same journey as Puig, like Alexander Guerrero of the Dodgers, “You’re afraid to leave your family, you’re afraid that maybe you won’t triumph, you’re afraid of…I don’t know, it’s just a very difficult step.” It took Guerrero years to build up the gumption to flee, then three attempts to succeed. “Once you board one of those boats,” he added, “you don’t know who is who and how those people are going to react, or what’s going to happen out in the sea.” Guerrero is currently in his first year of a 28 million dollar deal. However, like Puig and Guerrero many others have raised awareness to the National Baseball League about this situation, and they have responded to it by making all foreign players feel as safe as possible, and by negotiating deals and conditions to dangerous foreign countries about this situation.
To conclude, baseball has been a fascinating game for many centuries, and is often considered America’s pastime. The renowned game of baseball has spread worldwide, bringing the best players in the world to compete for a common goal, the World Series. The road to the MLB, commonly known as the road to the show is one of the hardest things to do in any sport, yet thousands of athletes try each year. The athletes that make it to the show each have a different story or route of how they got there and how the game shaped their life. Baseball is a game that humbles you both during the game and in life. The best of the best players know how to control, learn, and persevere through tough times successfully. The road to the show is not an easy task, and players are faced with years of ups and downs, but with great guidance and passion for the game, nothing is impossible.
