Via Bronx Banter, Andrew McCutchen takes his place as senior editor at The Players’ Tribune, Derek Jeter‘s site for players to communicate directly with the fans. McCutchen takes the Jackie Robinson West Little League scandal as a jumping off point for discussing trying to play baseball when your family doesn’t have a lot of money:

But the thing is, nobody outside of Fort Meade knew who I was, even when I was 12 years old, the same age as those kids playing in the Little League World Series. When you’re a kid from a low-income family who has talent, how do you get recognized? Now, you have to pay thousands of dollars for the chance to be noticed in showcase tournaments in big cities. My parents loved me, but they had to work hard to put food on the table, and there wasn’t much left over. They didn’t have the option of skipping a shift to take me to a tournament over the weekend. The hard choices started when I was very young. “Do you want that video game system for Christmas, or do you want a new baseball bat?”

A lot of talented kids my age probably picked the Playstation, and that was it. It was over for them. I always chose the new bat or glove. But all the scraping and saving in the world wasn’t going to be enough for my family to send me an hour north to Lakeland every weekend to play against the best competition. That’s the challenge for families today. It’s not about the $100 bat. It’s about the $100-a-night motel room and the $30 gas money and the $300 tournament fee. There’s a huge financing gap to get a child to that next level where they might be seen.

Andrew was lucky that someone noticed his talent and helped out. McCutchen also notes the difference in the Dominican Republic:

Fixing that problem is complicated, but when I was a kid, I looked at baseball players growing up in Latin America with a lot of envy. If you’re a talented kid in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, a team can come along and say, “We’re going to sign you for $50,000 and take you into our organization and develop you, feed you, take care of your travel.” To me, as a 14-year-old kid whose family was struggling, that would have meant everything to me. I would have taken that deal in a second.

That deal is no longer available because of the draft. MLB did develop talented youngsters in the US before the draft. Then they moved to Puerto Rico, but left for the DR after the draft was extended to Puerto Rico. I’ve seen GMs say the solution is not that simple, but the draft makes US talent more expensive. Abolish the draft (which was put in to hurt the Yankees), and teams will invest in youngsters like McCutchen. Teams are all rich enough now that the Yankees money advantage won’t be overwhelming.

On a side note, if this is what we can expect from The Players’ Tribune, it will be an excellent site.