Stealing Lives: The Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz

PREFACE

The analysis in this book of the globalization of baseball and especially the tragic baseball story of Alexis Quiroz directly implicate many individuals who work for the Chicago Cubs and the Major League Baseball Commissioner’s Office. Despite repeated invitations and requests from us for interviews, not a single person at either the Chicago Cubs or the MLB Commissioner’s Office would grant us an interview. No one from the Chicago Cubs who is involved in Alexis Quiroz’s story ever returned any of the multiple telephone calls we made or letters we sent to them. The only formal response we received from the people involved at the Commissioner’s Office was a letter refusing to grant us interviews but claiming how proud the Commissioner’s Office is of the way major league teams recruit baseball players in Latin America. We also spoke or had contact with a number of Latin major league players who agreed that serious problems exist in the way major league teams recruit children and young men in Latin America, but who were unwilling to go on the record with their stories and concerns. We hope this book provides the foundation on which these and other Latin major league players can build an effort to convince major league teams to change the exploitative and abusive system they operate against children and young men in Latin America. This book attempts to take account of events up to March 8, 2002. P R E F A C E ...