This Friday will mark the beginning of Major League Baseball’s annual period for signing amateur talent. It is open season for teams to sign players from Latin America, Asia and Europe who are over the age of 16.
Some will become diamonds in the rough, signed to what amounts to petty cash lining the pockets of big league clubs who go on to become standout big-leaguers. Others will become colossal busts, signed for six- and even seven-figure deals that yield almost no return.
The process remains an incredibly challenging one on any number of levels. Teams must project how 16-year-olds – players who would be sophomores in high school if they resided in the U.S., in many instances – will mature, and what their incredibly raw skill sets will evolve into over the next seven to 10 years.
That task is complicated significantly by the tremendous amounts of misinformation, especially as it relates to age. There is a long and infamous history of players falsifying their ages to convince teams that they are younger than their actual date of birth in order to make themselves more attractive talents.
But until about a decade ago, there were also many cases of teams doctoring the birth dates of players who had not yet turned 16 so that they could sign them before they became hot commodities. That practice thrived until the 1990s, when current Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre helped to transform how teams dealt with young Latin American players.
It all started in spring training in 1999. Beltre had spent the last half of 1998 in the big leagues with the Dodgers. Though he had hit just .215 with a .648 OPS and seven homers in 77 games in '98, it was an extraordinary performance considering the player's youth. But the baseball world was about to find out just how young Beltre was as a result of a lunch conversation between the third baseman and his agent, Scott Boras.
“He was saying how lucky I was to be playing in the big leagues at the age of 20. I said, ‘No, 19,’ and my English wasn’t that good back then,” Beltre recalled. “He looked at me like I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he went back and said, ‘There’s not many third basemen at the age of 20 in the big leagues.” And I go, ‘No, 19.’ He goes, ‘What’re you talking about?’”
The Dodgers had listed Beltre’s date of birth at the time that he signed in the summer of 1994 (for a bonus of approximately $23,000) as April 7, 1978, a date that would have made him 16 and eligible to sign during that July 2 period. But Beltre told his agent that he was actually one year younger than that, having been born on April 7, 1979, something that he demonstrated by showing Boras his passport.
Beltre says that he was unaware of the act of chicanery, or its prospective significance, at the time that he signed. He was a teenager who wanted to play professional baseball. The idea that he was not yet eligible to sign with the Dodgers was one that was unfamiliar to him.
“I didn’t know the rules back then,” said Beltre. “I was ignorant back then. I didn’t know you couldn’t sign at 15.”
He thought nothing of the date of birth issue while racing through the Dodgers farm system and arriving in the big leagues less than four years after signing with the club. Even after the spring training conversation with Boras, Beltre remained relatively unconcerned about the age issue. Boras, however, glimpsed a world of possibility for his client.
“I didn’t really care,” said Beltre. “[Boras] goes, ‘Do you want to get your age correct?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ but I told him I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because my dream is to play in the big leagues, and I don’t want to do anything to mess that up. So don’t do anything crazy.
“He goes, ‘No. We’re just going to go to the team and say, ‘You guys did this. He’s actually this age,’ because it might help you. You might get rewarded what you should be getting if you were a free agent back then and a free agent now.’”
Boras brought the matter to the attention of the Dodgers front office, which, Beltre recalled, bristled at the revelation. The team suggested that Beltre had been the one who altered his date of birth in order to sign when he was too young, and that the organization – much like Captain Renault of "Casablanca" – was “shocked, shocked!” by the revelation.
That led to Beltre and Boras submitting a claim to Major League Baseball that the player’s age had been falsified so that the Dodgers could sign him early. Following the year, MLB investigated a matter that was all the more sensitive because the Dodgers had already been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
In mid-1999, the Dodgers were penalized for illegally scouting a pair of underage players in Cuba, helping them relocate to the Dominican Republic and then falsifying their birth dates to sign them. So, the Beltre investigation – which took place after the 1999 season – was a significant one.
That winter, MLB officials went to the Dominican to talk to Beltre’s parents and to investigate documents to determine the player’s actual date of birth when he signed, and to figure out whether the Dodgers were involved – either solely, or with the player’s involvement – in age falsification.
“They found out that everything I said was true. When they found out that I was really 19 -- 15 when I signed, claiming that I was 16 -- everything went from that,” said Beltre. “So this guy in the [Dodgers Dominican academy] said ‘OK, I did it.’ They found out everything. They saw the whiteout, where they put the different date of birth.”
A few strokes of whiteout, overlaid with the birth date of April 7, 1978, served as a smoking gun. The Dodgers had knowingly signed a player who was not yet 16. Even though MLB said that the player was complicit in the falsified information (pointing to such documents as a U.S. driver’s license in which Beltre had used the 1978 birth date), the Commissioner’s Office dropped the hammer on Los Angeles.
The Dodgers were fined $50,000 and ordered to pay Beltre $48,500 ($33,000 of additional bonus money, plus interest). More severely, the Dodgers were prohibited from scouting or signing amateurs in the Dominican for a year, and they were forced to close their Dominican baseball academy for a year, forcing them to place their players temporarily with other clubs. A pair of key Dodgers officials in the Dominican – Ralph Avila and Pablo Peguero – were suspended for a year.
MLB did not declare Beltre a free agent because of its claim that he was involved in the decision to alter his date of birth. The MLB Players’ Association, however, filed a grievance on behalf of Beltre seeking a remedy that other players had been rewarded after it was revealed that clubs had signed them when they were underage.
Before the grievance hearing occurred, the Dodgers -- fretful of losing a potential superstar to free agency, following a year when, as a 20-year-old, he had hit .275 with a .352 OBP, .428 slugging mark, .780 OPS and 15 homers -- signed Beltre to a three-year, $5.05 million deal in March 2000.
“I had the right to be a free agent if I wanted to, but I chose not to,” said Beltre. “I was happy in L.A.”
Beltre remained with the Dodgers, but his case contributed to the intensification of Major League Baseball’s efforts to combat age and identity fraud in its Dominican office.
Even as MLB continues to augment its efforts to crack down on those activities, that ambition remains a work in progress. Many talent evaluators still characterize Latin America, particularly the Dominican, as the “Wild West” of scouting, a place that is nearly impossible to police.
Yet since Beltre, age forging has been mostly an act committed by players and the buscones who guide them to clubs. Clubs, on the other hand, no longer feature whiteout as one of the staples of their international baseball operations.