Sandy Alderson to head baseball reform efforts in Dominican Republic

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Commissioner Bud Selig on Monday announced that he had appointed longtime baseball executive Sandy Alderson to help reform baseball’s operations in the scandal-plagued Dominican Republic.

Last year, Alderson headed a blue-ribbon committee that evaluated baseball in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. The committee wrote a report summarizing its findings and suggesting fixes. Monday’s appointment essentially means Alderson has been asked to serve as a consultant in the implementation of his report’s findings.

‘Major League Baseball faces significant issues there,’ Alderson said of the Dominican Republic in a statement. ‘But all of them can be resolved favorably through the cooperative efforts of the Office of the Commissioner, the major league clubs and the government and the people of the Dominican Republic.’

Major league baseball spends an estimated $100 million in the Dominican Republic each year, making it one of the largest sectors of the Caribbean nation’s economy behind tourism. But in recent years, it has been beset by a number of scandals, including the use of performance-enhancing drugs by players in the Dominican Summer League, document fraud and the skimming of bonus money paid to Dominican prospects. A decade ago, a compliance office was opened in Santo Domingo to monitor major league baseball operations there. But recent probes by baseball and the FBI found some of the fraud was being committed by the very investigators hired to fix the problem.

Among some off the proposals Alderson is reportedly considering is the use of fingerprinting to help prevent age and identity fraud.

-- Kevin Baxter