Rosecrans: Where baseball starts: 72 hours at the Reds’ Dominican Republic complex
From C. Trent Rosecrans at The Athletic on September 4, 2018:
Even from an airplane, a baseball diamond is distinguishable from anything else on the ground.
At its most simple, the separation from outfield to infield is a dead giveaway – whether it’s an all-dirt infield, cutouts in the bases or the standard grass infield – that baseball is played below.
I’ve done this since I was a kid – look out the window and try to spot baseball fields. No matter where I was, no matter where I was going, there was a familiarity, a comfort in seeing a baseball field, a place I spent much of my time.
When there was something besides water outside my window of Delta flight 686 on a recent Sunday, I looked down at the island I was visiting for the first time and saw the reason I was there: those diamonds. There were lone fields in the middle of farmland, stadiums for professional games and clusters of multiple fields together, even one with a half-field, a telltale sign of a professional complex.
All 30 Major League teams have academies in the Dominican Republic and nearly half are in Boca Chica, a beach town close to the Santo Domingo airport, including the Reds.
Read the full article here (subscription required): https://theathletic.com/491371/2018/09/04/where-baseball-starts-72-hours-at-the-reds-dominican-republic-complex/
Originally published: September 7, 2018. Last Updated: September 7, 2018.