Photo by afagen

Nearly every Major League Baseball franchise operates a training academy in the Dominican Republic in hopes of cultivating some of the sport’s next big phenoms. But, according to a damning new report in Mother Jones, the conditions at these facilities can verge on reprehensible. And, in the case of the Washington Nationals, sometimes fatal.

Mother Jones’ story is framed around Yewri Guillén, a shortstop who signed with the Nats in 2009, when he was 16 and enrolled in the team’s training academy two years later. He was on track to transfer to the Nationals’ rookie-league team in Florida in April 2011, but a few weeks before, he started suffering increasingly severe headaches.

According to Mother Jones, staff at the Nationals’ academy offered him tea and aspirin, but Guillén’s pain continued. Because his contract was not yet official yet, he also didn’t have health insurance, thus keeping him out of one of the country’s best hospitals. Guillén’s family took him to a more affordable clinic, where he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. He died a week after being admitted, though, with proper treatment, he likely would have pulled through.

The Nationals’ Dominican academy did not have a doctor or trainer on-site to treat Guillén, Mother Jones’ story continues. Furthermore, after the young shortstop’s death, the team reportedly forced his family to sign an agreement pledging not to sue in exchange for Guillén’s $30,000 signing bonus and life insurance.

The Nationals did not go on the record in Mother Jones’ story, but Johnny DiPuglia, the team’s head of international scouting, called the offer “the humane thing.”

But the conditions at these training academies seem far less than humane. The Chicago Cubs’ Dominican facility, for example, once provided 19 teenage boys with just a single bathroom without running water.