I think its probably unwise to assume that Dominicans are replacing American blacks, but now that you mention it I think that this was implied during the movie I mentioned in my post, and was certainly implied by Torii Hunter in his comments. The fact that there are so few american blacks in baseball is due to lack of interest in the black community, not outsourcing to dominicans. Its absurd on its face when you think about it, but I guess its natural for people to jump to that conclusion, because its just the way our brains work. Dominicans are a cheap source of labor that compete with ALL domestic baseball players, regardless of skin color. I bet that they have two effects: 1) its harder for domestic players to get into the majors and 2) those that do make it have higher salaries than they would if second-tier players were all American. An alternative possibility is that the Dominican (and other imports) players suppress wages. It would be interesting to hear from an economist about this. Ironically, if my theory is correct, Torii Hunter ought to shut his trap and hope for more Dominicans.

by hazmat on 03/16/2010 12:06:51 PM EST

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