I have to wonder how successful it would be in today’s environment. It just seems like sports (and especially youth sports) have exploded to such an extent that there just aren’t very many rocks out there that won’t have already been turned over. And baseball seems so prevalent in LA (especially the Dominican) these days that any kid who has a speck of potential is already playing somewhere. Maybe you could make it work in non-traditional or emerging baseball countries like Australia, South Africa, etc. But the problem there is you might have a tough time figuring out how good a kid actually is if the only local or regional competition he has is other kids just starting to learn the game, too.

I think a better idea would be to invest more money into a dedicated R.B.I. sort of program for athletic kids who may have failed in other sports already. But then they’re behind the curve age-wise, even if they do have talent.

I also wonder how it would work with the current CBA and acquiring rights to your academy guys. I assume things were different back in the 70’s. What are the rules for having to pass through draft? When exactly can you sign an American kid as a free agent? Is it completely age-dependent, i.e. once you’re a certain age you’re automatically draft eligible, so that if no one drafts you, any team can sign you? And if that’s true, then you might create an American-based academy with a decent amount of potentially successful kids that OTHER teams come in and poach from you.

Frank was 20 when he joined the academy. His high school did not have a baseball program, but he was playing semi-pro ball in a local league.

UL Washington was 19 and hadn’t really played much baseball before the Academy.

Ron Washington was a HS catcher and went undrafted supposedly because teams wanted him to move to 2B and he didn’t want to move.

had an interesting article about whether a baseball academy could work today a couple of months ago. I was unable to find it again today, but if anyone does they should link it. It was interesting reading.