The American Dream

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The truth is that today baseball players arrived more prepared to face the american dream because in the academies they teach them the basics and how to handle them selves in a much different environment and culture, in the past Dominican Players arrived in the states and ate the same food for months until they learned to order something else.


The story of Ricardo Rodriguez and Jose Garcia, two Dominican teenagers pursuing a quintessential American dream: becoming big-league baseball players.

Already recruited to the Los Angeles Dodgers' training camp in the Dominican Republic, these young men often express the most explicit desires.

Early on, 18-year-old Rodriguez states, "My American dream is to make it to the big leagues and stay there for many years. The day I get on the plane for Miami will be the happiest day of my life."

Yet there also is a painful sense of inferior status as another key aspect of the immigrant undertaking that "New Americans" pulls into focus.

Although Rodriguez and seven other lucky candidates make the next step up to Dodger spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., they quickly realize they have been signed for much less than their white American counterparts.

"We are as good as Americans," says one, resignedly. "But we are helpless because we are poor." Likewise, Israel Nwidor will find himself straining on $7 an hour in Chicago.

Another fascinating segment on Rodriguez and Garcia features the cultural training the Dodgers provide to Latino and Asian rookies.

The Dodgers' efforts to instill reasonable expectations convey how much America's image has been filtered through the rosy spectacles of entertainment, for good and for bad.