San Diego Padres 'Outsource' Baseball

(Sign Five Foreign Players for $4.8 Million - Four of Them Are Only 16 Years Old!)

Last week the San Diego Padres went absolutely loopy spending an inconceivable amount of money on five foreign players - an unprecedented total of 4.8 million dollars in signing bonuses. The real frightening aspect of this deal was that four of these players are 16 years old! Probably not even yet old enough to drive, they can now buy the whole car lot out!

Two of the child athletes are from the Dominican Republic, two are from Venezuela, and one is Australian. The sixteen year old pitcher from Venezuela, Adis Portillo, was guaranteed a two million dollar signing bonus, a Padre record for a foreign amateur and more than they have paid any player drafted for the past four years - Americans included. (The poor Australian boy only received $500,000.)

The Padres have been courting these kids, probably not even shaving yet, for a time. Such exorbitant spending can be neither healthy for baseball nor these young kids. It will be years before they can make it to the majors and even that is iffy. So many things can go wrong with kids growing up and developing into adult players. What a gamble when the Padres need desperately to spend now on a team struggling to keep afloat in the National League West where they have resided in or near the basement most of the season. That kind of money could have gotten them a pretty good hitter which is so needed.

The Padres have made their presence known in Latin America with an elaborate $8 million baseball complex opening this spring in the Dominican Republic, an academy of baseball for foreign players - mostly Latin Americans. Their future is apparently hinged on Latin players.