All 30 Major League organizations run a full-time training academy in the Dominican Republic. From the day a teenager signs his first contract to the day he boards a flight for spring training, here's what that path actually looks like.
Fly into Las Américas International Airport outside Santo Domingo, and you're roughly 45 minutes from more professional baseball infrastructure per square mile than almost anywhere else on Earth. Boca Chica and the towns around it are packed with academies, one for nearly every MLB team, each one built to do the same thing — develop the next wave of Dominican talent from the ground up.
It's one of the most unique setups in professional sports: a country where a 16-year-old can sign a pro contract, move into a team facility full-time, and start the same development track as the players he grew up watching on TV. Here's how that journey actually unfolds — and it's exactly the world our players get to step into on every Passport Sports trip.
For most Dominican prospects, the road to a contract starts years earlier with local trainers who spot talent early and help players get in front of scouts. By the time a player is in his mid-teens, he's usually attending showcases and tryouts, hoping to catch the eye of one of the 30 MLB clubs scouting the island.
MLB's international signing rules set the minimum age at 16, and each year's signing period opens on January 15 — turning that 16th birthday into one of the biggest days of a young player's life. The most sought-after prospects can spark real bidding wars between organizations, with signing bonuses that instantly change a family's life. Once a player puts pen to paper, he's officially part of that organization — and his new address becomes the academy.
This is where the Dominican system stands apart from anywhere else in baseball. Instead of reporting to a stadium a few days a week, signed players move into their team's academy full-time — living on-site in dorm-style housing, eating meals built around a real nutrition program, and training on a daily schedule that would look familiar to any professional athlete.
Mornings are built around on-field instruction — hitting, fielding, pitching mechanics, broken out by position group. Afternoons shift to the classroom, where players work on English language skills, U.S. cultural orientation, and financial literacy, alongside continued academic coursework for players still finishing school. Add in strength and conditioning work, athletic trainers, and medical staff most players have never had access to before, and it's easy to see why these academies function less like a tryout camp and more like a small, self-contained boarding school built entirely around baseball.
It's a deliberate approach. Teams aren't just developing a swing or an arm — they're preparing 16- and 17-year-olds for an eventual move to a country where they may not speak the language, thousands of miles from their families, for the first time in their lives.
Before a Dominican prospect ever sets foot on a U.S. field, he plays in the Dominican Summer League — a full rookie-level league made up almost entirely of academy players, with nearly every MLB organization fielding its own DSL team. It's where players get real, live competitive reps against other pro prospects, all still training and living at their home academy.
From there, the path north opens up. Once an organization feels a player is ready, he's assigned to the U.S. side of the system — typically the Arizona Complex League or Florida Complex League, the rookie-level leagues that operate right out of teams' spring training complexes. It's often a player's first trip to the United States, arriving on a P-1 athlete visa and stepping into a locker room with prospects from all over the world for the first time. From the complex leagues, it's on to full-season affiliates and the long climb through the minor leagues that every prospect — Dominican-born or not — has to make on the way to the Majors.
The results speak for themselves. This academy system has helped produce generations of big leaguers — from Pedro Martínez and Vladimir Guerrero to a long line of current stars — and it's the biggest reason the Dominican Republic sends more players to MLB rosters than any other country outside the U.S.
The Dodgers got there first. In 1987, longtime scout Ralph Avila helped open Campo Las Palmas, the first academy in the country run directly by a major league organization. It gave Los Angeles a head start on a market nobody else had fully tapped — and within a few years, every other team wanted in. Today Campo Las Palmas spans 70 acres and houses close to 100 players and staff; nearly 40 years later, all 30 MLB clubs have a permanent academy presence in the Dominican Republic.
Los Angeles Dodgers — Campo Las Palmas. The original. Opened in 1987 in San Antonio de Guerra under scout Ralph Avila, it set the template every other organization eventually copied, and its fields and buildings are named for the Dodger legends who came out of the Dominican pipeline.
New York Yankees — Boca Chica. Opened in 2005 in the heart of the country's academy corridor, it's one of the largest and most visible complexes in the region and a first stop for Yankees prospects before they ever see the U.S. minor leagues.
The rest of the league. Nearly every other MLB club has built a comparable operation in or around Boca Chica, San Pedro de Macorís, and the towns between them — enough that the region has become, quite literally, a cluster of professional baseball facilities unlike anywhere else in the sport.
It's easy to watch a Dominican-born star in the big leagues and not think much about how he got there. But once you've stood on the same fields where teenage prospects are living out that exact dream, the game looks different. It's the same passion, the same instincts — just with a full-time system behind it that most fans never see.
That's exactly what our players get to experience firsthand. Every Passport Sports trip includes tours through MLB academy complexes, so your team can walk the same fields, watch the same drills, and get an honest look at the path so many of their favorite players once took to get where they are.