The MLB has been a funnel system from Latin America for a while now. Places like the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Venezuela have produced some of the leagues top stars from the last two decades. Unfortunately, dealing with these countries, especially Cuba until a few years ago, wasn’t exactly on the up and up.
Hopefully the MLB covered their tracks because the FBI and a Federal Grand Jury are poking around now.
Yahoo Sports sources: A federal grand jury is looking into illegal activity by baseball officials in Latin America. Subpoenas have been issued to potential witnesses, including an ex-Braves official, others involved in the signing of Hector Olivera. News: https://t.co/Eu44RQgx9y
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 28, 2018
Hector Olivera, who had a domestic abuse charge end his MLB career in 2016, is the current focus of the investigation, but we all know how this goes. I’ve seen enough FBI shows to know that they’ll keep digging. Rob Manfred must be extra sweaty today.
We don’t do politics here so I won’t get into how anyone feels about the restrictions of people in Latin America coming the states. The reality is, those restrictions exist, and as a major corporation in the United States, the MLB must abide by those laws.
The scary part as a baseball fan is we know damn well the MLB is covered in filth when it comes to international dealings. Every other year or so the MLB will punish a team for illegal dealings with international players to make it seem on the up and up. They’ve been playing in the mud since day one as a league. From the Black Sox all the way up to the steroid era to now dealing with international players. There hasn’t been a single second of MLB history that is truly pure and free of corruption.
MLB corruption has a longer history than the FBI for fucks sake. The best case scenario for the league at this point is whatever FBI agents that are running this investigation are baseball fans (No Mets fans though, they’ll take the whole thing down).
This could get real bad. Let’s pray the only casualty is Manfred’s head. We can all agree that’s fair.
Feature Image via Chicago Tribune
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