Longtime baseball man Sandy Alderson figures he's been traveling to the Dominican Republic for almost 30 years. In the early days of scouting in the Dominican, when safety was the most pressing concern, he'd sometimes be accompanied by armed guards who would wait on street corners while he conducted business. Scouting trips often involved taking a tiny car to some remote village where people had never met an English-speaking person, and there was always a constant fear that scouts would get mugged if they wandered too far by themselves. Player procurement in the country has grown much more sophisticated since then.
When Alderson left the Padres organization earlier this year -- a result of Jeff Moorad's takeover of the club -- MLB tapped him to deliver the results of a several-month long investigation into the improprieties surrounding player signings in the Dominican. Alderson had previously served as the executive vice president for MLB's commissioner's office and it was under his watch and guidance that the league opened up its only office in Latin America in Santo Domingo.
