ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. |
This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006
 |
 |
ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
|
MONTH: March 2008
Baseball greats caught at cockfight
SANTO DOMINGO, D.R. -- Pedro Martinez, a three-time Cy Young Award winner as the best pitcher in his league, and Juan Marichal, the first Latin American player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, are at the center of a controversy bringing cockfighting in the Dominican Republic under probably more scrutiny and criticism than at any point since it was introduced by Spanish sailors nearly 500 years ago.
"Martinez and Marichal were shown in a video posted this week on YouTube releasing roosters just before they engaged in a fight at the Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo, in the country's capital," summarized Jorge L. Ortiz of USA Today on February 7, 2008.
Organized animal advocacy has little presence in the Dominican Republic, but American denunciations of Martinez and Marichal were soon quoted by Dominican media that closely follow the deeds of 99 current Dominican major leaguers--more than 10% of the major league work force.
"Whether they play football or baseball, athletes know that animal fighting is a barbaric practice to be avoided at all costs," said Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle, a former high school catcher whose father was a longtime baseball and football coach in New Haven, Connecticut.
"Animal fighting has no place whatsoever among those who presume to be role models for youngsters," Pacelle continued, "not in this country and not elsewhere. Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal exhibited appallingly bad judgment in participating in a staged animal fight. It doesn't excuse the behavior to find a legal haven for this reprehensible and inhumane conduct. It's animal cruelty, no matter where it occurs. "Michael Vick," the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback now serving a 23-month federal prison sentence in connection with dogfighting, "brought home the lesson when his career was ruined," Pacelle said. "There is no moral distinction between dogfighting and cockfighting,"
Pacelle asserted. "Both involve animal torture for the titillation of spectators who enjoy violence and bloodletting. "HSUS calls upon the New York Mets to take appropriate action to distance themselves from Martinez's behavior. Major League Baseball should join us in condemning Martinez and Marichal for their shameful example. Cockfighting has been banned in all 50 states," Pacelle reminded, "and it is a federal felony to transport cockfighting weapons or birds across state lines or international borders for the purpose of fighting."
Wrote PETA assistant director Dan Shannon to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, "It seems that education on the importance of treating animals humanely is in order for Major League Baseball."
Shannon recommended that all major league players and nonplaying personnel should be required to take the day-long PETA course, "Developing Empathy for Animals," that Vick took on September 18, 2007 while awaiting sentencing.
No major league action
Major League Baseball routinely suspends players who are charged with crimes, but took no action against Martinez and Marichal because their participation in the Dominican cockfight was not illegal.
"We don't condone any kind of animal cruelty, but we're not going to comment on any individuals at this time," Major League Baseball spokesperson Rich Levin told Mike Fitzpatrick of Associated Press.
Both Martinez and Marichal sought immediately to distance themselves from the implication of the video that they were cockfighting contestants, if not entirely from cockfighting. Neither apologized for his participation.
"I understand that people are upset, but this is part of our Dominican culture and is legal in the Dominican Republic," said Martinez in a statement distributed by his present team, the New York Mets.
"I was invited by my idol Juan Marichal to attend the event as a spectator, not as a participant." Echoed the Mets on their own behalf, in a statement probably inciting more animal advocates than were mollified, "We do not condone any behavior that involves cruelty to animals. We understand, however, that in many other countries activities such as bullfighting and cockfighting are both legal and part of the culture."
"Somebody puts something that happened two years ago on the Internet, and now everybody's acting like Pedro's a major cockfighting fan, which he's not," added Martinez's agent, Fernando Cuza.
"Marichal said he and Martinez were invited because of their celebrity, and neither one owned the roosters they released," reported Ortiz.
"We agreed to release them, and that's all that happened," Marichal asserted. "I have great respect for the animal-protection society and for animals, and I didn't do anything inappropriate."
Marichal told Ortiz that he is a cockfighting fan, but said that Martinez is not. "But he was invited that day, just like I was," Marichal acknowledged. "It was a world championship," attracting cockfighters from 20 nations, "that was celebrated in our country," said Marichal.
Katie Thomas of The New York Times found reason to doubt Martinez's and Marichal's stories. "The manager of a cockfighting club in Martínez's neighborhood said that Martínez was a regular there," reported Thomas on February 13, 2008 "and that he had also been a guest at the Club Gallistico de San Martín. Martínez visited the Manoguayabo arena two weeks ago, said the manager, Raul Mendes Vargas.
"Marichal also raises fighting roosters, several cockfighting enthusiasts said. Marichal oversaw cockfighting when he served as his country's minister of sports in the 1990s," Thomas noted. His tenure included a national scandal over alleged improper deals involving sports equipment.
"It is no secret to anybody that Marichal likes cockfighting," Club Gallistico de San Martín manager José Delio Jiménez told Thomas.
"He's a professional cockfighter," elaborated Manoguayabo gallera visitor Ramón Dario Campusano. "A professional baseball player, and a professional cockfighter."
Thomas found other prominent Dominican ballplayers are involved in cockfighting. For example, "Chicago Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramírez is pictured in a recent issue of a Dominican cockfighting magazine, En La Traba, with several roosters that he raises for fighting," Thomas wrote.
Reporting to spring training in Mesa, Arizona on February 19, Ramírez declared that he would not discuss cockfighting with U.S. reporters.
Martinez grew up in Manoguayabo, a poor district, and is often praised for continuing to live there, remembering his roots.
"Dominicans call the Manoguayabo cockfighting arena the bajo mundo, the underworld," wrote Michelle Wucker in Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola (1999). "The term does not mean 'clandestine,' since fights are legal here. It means 'lower class.' Money, politics, and power are reserved for the sparkling Alberto Bonetti Burgos Cockfighting Coliseum, closer to town...The legendary San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal fights his roosters at the coliseum."
Marichal first became embroiled in controversy at the very start of his baseball career, when then-Dominican dictator Fernando Trujillo drafted him into the Dominican Air Force before he was old enough to enlist. Trujillo was then alleged to have covertly sold Marichal's contract to the Giants, long before a legal enlistee would have been eligible for discharge.
Marichal in 1965 clubbed Dodgers' catcher John Roseboro with a bat during the heat of the pennant race. Suspended for nine days, Marichal missed two pitching turns. The Giants lost both games and finished two games behind the Dodgers. Recollections of the incident apparently delayed Marichal's election to the Hall of Fame for two years, until Roseboro actively campaigned for him.
One star quit cockfighting
Marichal was not then known as a cockfighter. But his longtime teammate and mentor Felipe Alou, now 73, was a cockfighter in his early teens, following his father's example, and by his early thirties seemed to regret his participation.
Felipe Alou, the second-ever Dominican-born major leaguer, was in his third year with the Giants when Marichal joined the team in mid-1960. Alou's younger brother Matty was added to the roster late in the season. Matty Alou would win the National League batting title in 1966, but "could have ended his baseball career before he started," after a hard fall from a mango tree, Felipe recalled to co-author Herm Weiskopf in his 1967 autobiography My Life & Baseball.
"We had no money, and this was all right with the doctor," Felipe Alou continued. "The prize of our small barnyard was a fighting cock named La Ley, The Law. He wasn't much to look at, but he had earned some money for us, and had never been defeated in 10 fights. The doctor wanted him. There was no way out. It took a long time for us to walk back home to get La Ley, but it took much longer to walk back to the doctor's little office with La Ley's inquisitive head poking out from under my shirt. "
"At that time in our country," Felipe Alou explained, "almost everyone kept roosters, or wished they could. I had a rooster of my own. He won two matches," but "was run over by a pickup truck. Instead of a funeral, he was given a roasting and served for dinner. I took one look at the remains of my once-proud, once-honored rooster, began to cry, and left the table without eating."
Felipe Alou broke into professional baseball in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and played for Phoenix before joining the Giants. Cockfighting was still legal and openly practiced in both places, as in the Dominican Republic, but Felipe Alou never returned to it. "There's no place for cockfighting in the States," Felipe Alou concluded, 40 years before cockfighting was actually abolished by law in all states.
As to how long it may be before there is no place for cockfighting in the Dominican Republic, a hint at the pace of evolving attitudes may be found in the biography of early-20th century slugger John "Buck" Freeman, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a longtime umpire after his playing days.
"He spent much of his time cockfighting, and became well known as a breeder of fighting birds, keeping a flock of more than 100 gamecocks in his barn," recalled Eric Enders in the 2006 Society for American Baseball Research anthology Deadball Stars of the American League. "Even a 1937 police raid on a cockfight at Freeman's home did not deter him. 'I'd walk 20 miles to see a good cockfight,' he once said."
To be caught at a cockfight today would end an umpire's career--albeit for participating in an illegal activity and consorting with gamblers, not for involvement in cruelty per se. Umpires have been banned for life for crimes as seemingly trivial as shoplifting baseball cards, and are discouraged from attending horse races and greyhound races because of their association with gambling, but there is no prohibition against umpires participating in legal pursuits that harm animals, such as hunting and fishing.
On the other hand, umpiring and hunting appear to attract conspicuously different personalities. As far back as 1969, when 56% of the players on big league rosters identified themselves to the annual Baseball Register as hunters, only four of the 51 major league umpires said they hunted-- about 8%, half of the norm for men of their generation. Only one 1969 major leaguer, Dominican relief pitcher Pedro Borbon, listed cockfighting as a hobby. Borbon lasted 12 years in the big leagues, but may be best remembered as the oldest of the strikebreakers who played exhibition games toward the end of the big league players' strike of 1994-1995.
Videos & paraphernalia
The video showing Martinez and Marichal at the cockfight was taken off YouTube within hours, as a "terms of service" violation of a YouTube policy against posting offensive material which has also been invoked against SHARK videos of rodeo cowboys electrically shocking bulls and horses.
YouTube might have been concerned about possibly being charged with violating a 1999 U.S. federal law against creating, selling, or possessing photos, videos, or other images that show animals being intentionally injured or killed. Passed in response to pornographic videos depicting small animals being crushed by women and transvestites wearing spike heels, the law has been used to convict distributors of videos of cockfights and dogfights. The law exempts depictions of animal cruelty that have "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value," to avoid infringing on First Amendment rights of expression.
But the law is under constitutional challenge from Jason Atkins, 35, of Advanced Consulting & Marketing Inc. in Hollywood, Florida. Atkins contends in a lawsuit filed in July 2007 in Miami federal court that he should be allowed to webcast cockfights held legally in Puerto Rico at his web site ToughSportsLive.com.
Also pending is an appeal on constitutional grounds of the 2004 conviction of dogfight video distributor Robert J. Stevens, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. HSUS meanwhile contends in a case filed in February 2007 that Amazon.com is breaking the law by selling videos of dogfighting and cockfighting, and cockfighting periodicals.
"The company is so determined to continue selling these materials that it filed a motion against HSUS in federal court, essentially asking that federal and state laws to protect animals be gutted," charged HSUS president Pacelle in an August 2007 press release.
--Merritt Clifton