The 2012 Major League Baseball Player Draft is upon us, and while it doesn't get the hype that the NLF draft does, it's still an exciting time for sports fans. This year's draft has been a particularly thrilling one for us Puerto Ricans, since seven Puerto Rican baseball players have been selected so far.
The first overall player to be drafted by anyone went to the Houston Astros (that's the perk you get for finishing dead last and having the worst record in baseball last season). They drafted seventeen-year-old Carlos Correa, a shortstop who just graduated from the island's Baseball Academy High School and is so young he still has traces of acne on his face. He hails from the small town of Santa Isabel, where they gave him a hero's welcome yesterday. He had already signed a commitment letter to play at the University of Miami, but I think the only trips he'll be making to Florida will be to play for the Gulf Coast League.
Other Puerto Ricans selected in the first round of the draft include the fourteenth player, Nick Travieso (he wasn't born on the island but his grandparents were, so we'll gladly claim him as a "native"), who was picked by the Cincinnati Reds and pitcher José Berríos who was thirty-second and picked by the Minnesota Twins.
In the second round, Jesmuel Valentín was picked 51st by the LA Dodgers (speaking of Dodgers, did you hear that Tommy LaSorda had a mild heart attack yesterday? He's 84 years old, though to me he's looked old ever since I was a kid); Edwin Díaz was picked 98th by the Seattle Mariners, Avery Romero was selected by the Miami Marlins as the 104th player, and Bryan De la Rosa was the Atlanta Braves' selection at 116th.
This is a very exciting time for us Puerto Ricans, because baseball talent on the island had been dwindling in the past few years. Major League teams have spent millions of dollars in training facilities in both the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, where labor laws are more lenient and "buscones," or scouts, can easily groom little boys to believe they can make it in the big leagues (though many of them don't). So while there had been a slight lull in the development of Puerto Rican baseball players in the Majors, hopefully in the next few years we will see a new batch of talent comparable to that of the Alomar and Molina brothers, Benito Santiago, José Oquendo, Iván Rodriguez (you knew I had to fit him in somewhere in this post!), Orlando Cepeda, and who knows - maybe a new Roberto Clemente-like Puerto Rican will emerge in the coming years. So "play ball, fanáticos" - it's going to be a fun and exciting time to follow Puerto Ricans in baseball!
(Also worth mentioning is the second-round draft pick for the Baltimore Orioles, right-handed pitcher Branden Kline out of the University of Virginia. Kline was a 2009 graduate of Governor Thomas Johnson High School, which happens to be the school where I work. Hopefully we will see Branden play for our local Orioles' minor-league affiliate, the Frederick Keys, in the next year or so).
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