Venezuela's Baseball Pipeline

For the past 20 years, Milton Jamail has been living a double life. When he wasn’t lecturing on Latin American politics and economics at the University of Texas, he was reporting on young baseball prospects for the Houston periodicals. His new book Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom: Andres Reiner and Scouting on the New Frontier combines his two interests by depicting the relationship between economics and baseball scouting in a country whose players—including Johan Santana, Bobby Abreu, and Melvin Mora—have dazzled American baseball. Jamail takes us on a journey through the back roads of Venezuela, giving us first-hand insights into the life of a scout in a land where the romantic notion of finding the diamond in the rough still exists.