Dragones de Ciudad Trujillo were a professional baseball team in the Dominican Republic that played a single season in 1937. The club was the result of a temporary merger between two existing teams, Tigres del Licey and Leones del Escogido, in the capital of Santo Domingo (then officially known as "Ciudad Trujillo" in honor of dictator Rafael Trujillo). The 1937 squad included several Negro league baseball players from the United States, and is considered one of the strongest baseball teams in Dominican history.[1][2] However the team's exorbitant contracts directly led to the collapse of professional baseball in the country, which would not be re-established until the modern Dominican Professional Baseball League (LIDOM) was founded in 1951.
History
As more import players signed with Dragones, it caused a massive jump in the league's average pay. At the outset of the 1937 campaign, the average Dominican ballplayer earned 24 pesos a month, and a regular foreigner between 50 and 150. But as the campaign progressed, Trujillo resorted to extravagant salaries to attract American Negro leaguers.[3] An agent of Trujillo approached Satchel Paige, offering him $6,000 to play in the league and an extra $24,000 to dole out to recruit players on the Paige's Negro league team, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. [4] Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell were among six Dragones players to be paid paid $3,000 for five weeks of play.[3]
In the Dominican Republic, the American players were shadowed by armed guards. Although the purpose of the guards was to protect the players, the players were fearful that Trujillo would unleash them in anger if his team lost the championship.[4]
^ abTye, Larry (2009). Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. New York: Random House. pp. 110–114. ISBN978-1400066513.
Further reading
Smith, Averell (2018). The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige's Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN9781496206695.
