The world's game

By Trevor Hayes

I got into a discussion last week about players' places of birth.

I was watching a Royals-Blue Jays game and noticed something interesting about my hometown team. Kansas City had five players of Dominican origin -- exactly 20 percent of its 25-man roster. That got me to start looking at the rest of the roster to see where those players were from. With a Venezuelan, a Mexican and a Cuban also on their Opening Day roster, 32 percent of the Royals' active roster was foreign born. In Major League Baseball overall, 24 percent of players hail from Latin America.

So it's easy to see why the Hall of Fame is opening a new exhibit -- dedicated to Latin American heritage in baseball -- entitled ¡Viva Baseball! on May 23.

Looking at the numbers, though, a question pops up: Where are the Haitians?

On April 5, 229 of the 818 players on 25-man rosters, the disabled list or the restricted list were foreign-born. The Dominican Republic produced the most with 81, followed by Venezuela (52), Puerto Rico (28), Mexico (14), Canada (13), Japan (13), Cuba (seven), Curaçao (four), Panama (four), Australia (three), South Korea (three), Colombia (two), Nicaragua (two), Taiwan (two) and the Netherlands (one).

In the history of the game, the numbers shake out fairly similarly with 15,051 players hailing from the United States. The Dominican is second with 475 Major Leaguers.

The rest of the top 10 countries all time are: Venezuela (236), Puerto Rico (226), Canada (215), Cuba (158), Mexico (109), Panama (49), Japan (47) and Ireland (40). There have been more than 280 players of unknown origin, but using several research sites, Haiti has never had a confirmed professional.

This intrigued me. Haiti is, after all, the Dominican Republic's neighbor. They share the island of Hispaniola. Sure, Haiti is smaller (it occupies a third of the island), and the 193-mile border between the two countries marks a very deep and very strong cultural and political divide. Without digging too far, some of the telltale differences are that Haitians speak French -- due to their colonial rulers -- while Dominicans speak Spanish. Haiti's national sport is soccer, while Dominicans, obviously, love baseball.

One of our library researchers, Freddy Berowski, helped me come to an understanding. Canada's total number of Major Leaguers makes up just 1.4 percent of the Americans who have played in the big leagues. This is relevant to the Hispaniola question in that Canada has some French speakers and shares a land mass with a baseball-loving country: the United States.

If just seven Haitians had played Major League Baseball, it would equal 1.47 percent of the Dominican baseball players. So even without any Haitian players in the history of Major League Baseball, the percentage is rather similar to the U.S./Canada percentage.

I bring this up to make a point about the game we love. Despite Haiti's lack of MLB players, baseball is an international event. The recent World Baseball Classic provided several memorable moments, many of which are represented in the Hall of Fame's Today's Game exhibit, such as the bat David Wright used to secure the United States' second-round win over Puerto Rico.

And on May 23, the Hall of Fame will open the new permanent exhibit ¡Viva Baseball!, which chronicles the story of Latin Americans' contributions to the national pastime. The exhibit will stretch from the origins of the sport to present stars, and Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda (Puerto Rico) and Juan Marichal (Dominican Republic) will be on hand for the 11 a.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony.

For more details, please click here.

Trevor Hayes is the editorial production manager at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.