All provide accommodation, food, uniforms, implements and English courses. Of the 30 organizations, 27 have a secondary education, even for those players who for some reason leave the sporting process.
“If the young man does not reach the Major Leagues, he leaves at 18 years old graduated with a technical degree, with knowledge in English and with leadership values, management of emotions, with a well-planted dream of life, that is, they give us a better youth and better citizenship. This is great news for Barranquilla and we are going to start with a pilot plan ”, he added.
According to Junior Noboa, commissioner of Dominican professional baseball and vice president of operations for Latin America, “the baseball industry moves 400 million dollars a year” in this country “including player signings, travel, coaches accommodation” and other strictly related aspects. with training farms.
Jaime Pumarejo assured that next year, hand in hand with the Colombian Baseball Federation and with the support of Noboa, a training field will be opened to begin projecting Barranquilla as a fertile land for the baseball seedbed.
“Next year we will have one. Work has been done on the designs of an infrastructure with courts, bedrooms, a dining room, and psychosocial support, which would be built and operating in 2022, ”the mayor said.
“When they arrive, not a single one arrives, because they need to compete with others, and suddenly you have 10 or 15 schools that invest money in the city, create jobs, but also take 1,500 young people from the region and put them to study, eat , to live and dream of a future. We want this to be a bases loaded home run for Barranquilla, ”added Pumarejo.
“This is not a hit, this is a home run,” Cabrales said.
“It is something that we have been wanting to do for a long time and with which we are working to show MLB that Barranquilla is a city to promote academies,” said Jimmy Char.
“The most important thing is that Colombia has the talent, that is essential, and Colombia has young people with the talent to have similar organizations. It is a nation of athletes, it is proven, the only thing we have to do is, as football has developed, do it with baseball, “said Noboa.
The Major Leagues had many academies in Venezuela, but the socio-political situation in the country caused them to close their doors. There is the opportunity of Barranquilla and Colombia.
“This is a dream of many years and we want to materialize it,” said Pumarejo.
Apart from the visit to the Major League Baseball academies, the mayor and his delegation, among whom are the secretary of economic development, Ricardo Plata; the Secretary of Sports, Gabriel Berdugo; the manager of special events, Daniel Trujillo; and the city manager, Carlos Acosta Juliao, is to continue advancing approaches to reach the headquarters of the Caribbean Series 2023.
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