Sugar

Sugar is the story of Dominican baseball player Miquel Santos who is attending the Baseball Academy for the Kansas City Knights and hoping to make it to America to play ball like everyone else around him. You really get a sense of the lack of opportunity and the crushing poverty that awaits all these young men if they don’t make the big leagues. There are always younger and stronger players to replace them. Like basketball dreams are to inner city youth in America, baseball dreams are to the poor of the DR. The worse thing next to not succeeding is going to America and failing to become a big star. Sometimes it is heartbreaking to watch.

After perfecting his pitches, Sugar starts to gain the attention of the home team and is invited to the states to attend spring training. Not only is it his dream but the dream of his whole community. Suddenly everyone is claiming to be a relative so they can cash in on the win fall.

Of course everything about coming to America is culture shock to the young man. Initially, seeing everyone that is as good or better than him shakes his confidence. Cut day is the worst but Sugar is not sent home and finds himself on a bus to Single A ball in Bridgetown, Iowa. He is put up with an older couple who board baseball players and live in the country.


Every step up the ladder comes with its own problems and challenges. The crowds get bigger and the pressure becomes more intense. Racism also becomes an issue like it had never been before in Sugar’s life. But at the same time he makes good friends on the team, most particularly a million dollar college prospect and grows as both an athlete and a man.

Behind all that, however, is a sadness. The loneliness and alienation of a man out of his element.

I totally got into the story of this young immigrant and his dream. I felt joy at his successes and sadness at his defeats. Any baseball fan will relate to the story. I know I will never look at major league players the same way again. For every one that makes it there must be a hundred just like them who don’t. Such is the search for the American Dream.