Education Still on Deck at Dominican Academies

When sports diversity advocate Charles Farrell first traveled to the Dominican Republic in 2000 as part of a blue-ribbon commission examining how to improve Major League Baseball's academies there, he was appalled at what he saw: straw mats for beds, bars on the doors, and nothing but cheese sandwiches for dinner. When he asked his host about the team's education program, he was shown a room with a card table, four plastic chairs, and a blackboard, all next to a bathroom with a chronically clogged toilet. "So part of our report was: You need to fix this," he says.

Four years later, Farrell returned to the island for a conference and led a workshop with prospects on financial planning. The first thing he was asked was how to open a bank account. "These are 16-year-olds who potentially are going to receive millions of dollars, and the kid doesn't even know how to open a bank account," he says.

These days, as head of the nonprofit Dominican Republic Sports Education Academy, Farrell hopes to provide Dominican ballplayers with an alternative to the current system. While American prospects must complete high school to sign with a major league team, Dominican teens can sign as young as 16; often, that means hooking up with a buscón, or a local trainer-agent, to prepare for months or even years before becoming contract-eligible. Farrell's DRSEA proposes a different route, one that would allow Dominican teens to be part of a training and college prep program focused on getting them scholarships to American universities. The DRSEA opened its doors this past January; while Farrell had to scale down initial plans for 100 players down to just 15 due to budget constraints, he's optimistic that the idea will catch on. If grads end up with jobs in baseball, great; if not, they'll have an education and can serve as role models for future young Dominicans — whether or not they're baseball players. "We joke sometimes that we'll be proud to have the next Sammy Sosa come out of the academy," Farrell says, "but we'll be equally proud to have the next Dr. Sammy Sosa."

But Farrell's project, while well intentioned, would affect a minuscule percentage of the thousands of baseball-playing teens in the Dominican Republic — let alone the 1,200 or so at major league academies there every year. Every MLB team currently has some sort of education program; at the Pittsburgh Pirates' academy, for instance, players take mandatory classes every afternoon, while the San Diego Padres provide mandatory on-site English and computer classes. The problem is that most teams provide their players little more than baseball-centric survival English — and see no reason to act as a backstop for a struggling Dominican public education system. "You're gonna have some great ones, you're gonna have some middle of the road,Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and chipcard at wholesale prices. and you've got some other ones that could be better," says Rafael Pérez, head of MLB's Dominican operations, of teams' education programs. "And our job right now is to raise that level but still give enough room to each club to have their own individuality."

Pérez is uniquely situated to make that change happen. A Dominican who played college ball at the University of South Alabama, he opened MLB's Dominican office in 2000, and before taking his current job he worked for the New York Mets under ex-general manager Omar Minaya. Education reform has long been one of Pérez's points of emphasis, and in September he helped introduce a new program that will provide job training and schooling for Dominican players released by major league teams.

As for the players still at the academies? Given MLB's reluctance to regulate the buscónes, or even make sure that teams have certified athletic trainers at the academies, getting the teams on board for a uniform educational program for Latin American prospects seems unlikely. But the benefits, says Minaya, now with the San Diego Padres, far outweigh the costs.

"If we educate them and we do the right thing by them, they're going to be good representatives — even if they don't make it," he says. "And the majority of them don't make it. Let's not forget that."

As riders, our war with Boston-area cab drivers is fraught with grievances. For years, we have bolted on fares, acted boorishly,High quality chinamosaic tiles. and vomited in the back seat. (Oh, we have definitely vomited in the back seat.) For their part, cabbies have stretched fares, not known how to get places, and chafed at having to accept credit cards. This last offense has been the biggest flash point lately. Because the credit card readers in taxis charge drivers a 5 or 6 percent processing fee—much higher than the rate paid by retail stores—cabbies feel like they’re getting robbed when we use plastic.Stock up now and start saving on smartcard at Dollar Days. Tales of drivers with “broken” readers—broken until riders profess they have no cash, that is—are common.We offer the largest range of bobblehead online.

So I reacted with great trepidation one recent night when, at the end of a ride from Cambridge to Brookline, a friend pulled out her Visa. To my surprise, the driver took it and, lo, didn’t utter a complaint. He swiped the card through a square white attachment on his smartphone and handed the thing back without so much as a frown. “Do you get a better rate with that?” I asked. Provided by a company called Square, the device, along with its corresponding app, allows smartphones to run credit cards. “Yeah,” the driver said, “3 percent.”

Actually, Square charges just a 2.75 percent processing fee. It also guarantees deposits by the next day—a big deal for drivers who are used to getting cash immediately. The device has become increasingly popular among local cabbies, who typically pay all their fees up front and then keep every dollar in fares they make. In other words, the processing fees directly reduce what goes into their pockets. “We are seeing it pop up in more and more vehicles,” says Corey Pilz, of the Cambridge License Commission, which regulates taxis for the city. Square and other mobile-payment apps, such as Uber and Hailo—both of which let riders hail and pay for cabs with smartphone apps—may not solve every conflict between riders and drivers, but “it’s definitely a bridge,” Pilz says.

Of course, there’s a catch. And it’s a big one. It is illegal for cab drivers in the city of Boston to use Square. Cabbies are required to be members of a radio company—a group that provides communication for drivers and directs them to riders—and those associations have all contracted exclusively with one of two mobile-payment companies, Verifone and Creative Mobile Technologies. Those are the companies that set the high rates and profit from them.

That hasn’t stopped all Boston drivers—who are required by law to accept credit cards—from trying to pay less in fees. “I do know for a fact some of them are [using Square],” says Steve Sullivan, the general manager of Metro Cab, one of the five big radio companies in Boston. Sullivan says he believes that the number of Boston drivers using the app is relatively small, and that most of the ones who do are just keeping it as a backup, in case their normal credit card readers go out.Trade Warehouse have partnered with one of the worlds largest solarlight producers. But since the evidence is purely anecdotal, and it would be difficult for authorities to tell if a driver were using Square, it’s hard to know how prevalent use of the app is in the city.