SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic.─ Six years after then-president Danilo Medina made the “groundbreaking” and with a budget that almost doubled, the Arizona Diamondbacks opened their new facilities on Monday, in the same place where they began their journey in the country in 1996. a journey that led them to be leased between 2003 and 2024 at Baseball City.
Derrick Hall, president of the team where he arrived in 2005 after six years with the Dodgers, revealed to Diario Libre that the team spent US$18 million to build the complex on 157,000 square meters, one that has three stadiums and a medium one for the development of skills.
A center where most of the players that the team recruits in Latin America will pass through, the first sieve on the long road to the Big Show.
One of the stadiums, named Junior Noboa Field, is the first to have lights among the academies of the 30 MLB organizations that operate in the country. A logo unveiled on the scoreboard at the inauguration, which so surprised the veteran scout and vice president of the team, who was the first employee outside the United States of the club born in 1995 as part of the expansion with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
More than a complex, it is a development center, with great focus on the education of young people and technology to polish their skills with the latest technology tools. The main stadium has more than twenty cameras, including each of the eight towers with lighting that will allow playing at night.
«We want all the players who come to this academy to reach the Major Leagues, but we know that not all will achieve it, we do want each player who passes through here when they leave this academy, we want them to have an education that allows them to have a great career. outside of baseball, too,” Hall said.
The academy built in El Paredón, Boca Chica, will have three rooms where prospects will receive teaching.
“We wanted to build world-class facilities and now we have the best academy in the Dominican Republic,” Hall said. «It is a great laboratory. “What we have done here is like a laboratory, but it is a community, we made the comfortable spaces thinking about the players.”
An assignment made by the owner Jeff Jacobs, absent at the last minute from the event due to a health problem with a family member.
Hall aroused the applause that President Luis Abinader began and was joined by the main table and the entire tent set up for the occasion when he said: “The most important thing was what we wanted to develop off the field. We care a lot about Dominicans, we take care of the players and you take care of us. President, we want to be the team of the Dominican Republic.
The academy is located next to the San Francisco Giants and very close to the Seattle Mariners. Just two kilometers away, the Texas Rangers team operates in a corridor that connects with the Mets, Yankees, Marlins, Angels, Nationals, Rockies, Phillies, Twins and Cardinals.
The players
The activity was attended by active and retired players who have passed through the organization such as Emilio Bonifacio, José Valverde, Sócrates Brito, Miguel Batista and Geraldo Perdomo.
Valverde, who arrived at the complex in 1997 when he was signed at almost 19 years old, was surprised by the conditions at that time with around a hundred players on the team.
Perdomo is the most recent reference. He was signed in 2016 by the club and spent one year while playing in the Summer League (2017).
«The conditions were terrible, unfortunately it must be said, I came here in 2016, before all this was ruined. Then when I signed that I was in Baseball City I slept with 8 or 10 boys, not now, they will be comfortable, four per room, this is something incredible, thanks to the owner of the team,” said Perdomo, shortstop for the Dbacks’ big team. .
“It makes me happy, there are many things for this youth, a lot of technology, they should take advantage of it, it should be funny that a Major League team takes their money out of their pocket to give them a platform as big as this so that they can get ahead in life” said Valverde.
«It reminds me of my beginnings, I thank the organization for inviting me, happy to see that the boys who today have better comfort, have better rest. In my time I didn’t have air conditioning or anything like that, but I’m glad that today they have better comfort,” said Brito, who was in the organization between his signing in 2010 and 2019.
With information from Nathanael Pérez Neró / Diariolibre.com
