This story has a big chance of breaking this weekend, if the Sun Times and /or Tribune don't quash it. If it is true, it is nasty.
Juicy Story Brewing in the White Sox Organization?
Baseball, Drugs TheBigLead May 22nd. 2008, 1:00pm
Intern Bill really is earning his keep - he’s got a second post coming later today - because this story regarding the White Sox could pop over the weekend if reporters at the Sun-Times and the Tribune feel like doing some digging. If often-unreliable message boards are to be believed, it seems like there may be much more to the firing of Dave Wilder, director of player personnel.
Last Friday, the Chicago White Sox released a statement saying that they had fired the Director of Player Personnel Dave Wilder, and two scouts based in the Dominican Republic. As noted by TBL commenter chiefingilliniwek…”I haven’t seen jack anywhere about the whole White Sox firing 3 Latin American scouts for skimming signing bonuses story, if you wanted to do some digging on that. It was barely even in the Trib/Sun-Times, and the Sox buried the news late on a Friday night. Feds involved, could get interesting.” Looks like the Chief might be onto something. According the message board SoxTalk, (via SouthSideSox) a White Sox front office scout (and former MLB bureau scout) was in the mood to dish. Anonymously. Quoth “BureauEmployee171”:
Here is the concept of what was going on (and no, this is not something that happens throughout the industry - and the Chicago White Sox did not “find this out and report it to MLB.” It was found out by MLB & reported to the White Sox through arrests & warrants).
Dave Wilder and his staff were in control of California (most of the Western part of the USA), and all Latin American operations (including Cuba, etc.). Wilder signed many (MANY!) latin-americans to rather large contracts (+ $100,000) who had no representation in the latin-countries. Now - for anyone who knows and understands latin scouting - there are almost ZERO players without latin representation (meaning - players in these countries are in academies run by agents from these countries who then sell players off to MLB teams to put in their own academies). Now - when a player has no representation - there is generally a reason, i.e., they’re terrible. Now - what happened was this:
Wilder would find these players and sign them for a large amount of money (as mentioned above) and then take their money as their “agent.” Now - he had to get permission to pass these players off & what he was doing was supplying these players with fake birth cerficates taking as many as 5 years off their age & also supplying them with HGH & steroids (even as they were in MiLB). He was then taking this money and putting it into an off-shore account, taking the maximum amount possible at any given time and washing it through a business he opened up in Arizona that rehabs houses.
Usual caveats apply, of course (it’s anonymous, it’s a message board, guy’s got an axe-to-grind, Bissinger!, etc.), but this is either the craziest thing to come out of Chicago since giving Scott Linebrink 20 million over four years, or Dave Wilder is the Stringer Bell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_Bell) of Latin American scouting. And since these are the White Sox, either is possible.
More wild claims (but probably worth looking into if you are covering the team) from the anonymous poster:
* Anderson Gomes was caught with PED’s after being in the Futures Game and Paulo Orlando’s hyped up speed is a myth. Both are Wilder’s “sign-and-collect” prospects.
* our Latin stud 16 year old SS Juan Silverio is actually 20.5 years old, not 16.
* Outside of Wilder – Regier was the single most despised person by our entire staff. He was the one who made the “decisions” on who went where & when. Wilder was Regier’s “pimp” in that he hired Regier and told him where to put his players. The funny thing is – a Farm Director makes about 100K/season (not peanuts, but not extravagent either) and Regier was driving around in a 150+ K Porsche and wearing a 15 K watch with 500+ dollar shoes & belts. You don’t make that kind of money as a Farm Director.
So is this fiasco as bad as it looks? Probably no worse than trading for Chone Figgins, but Ozzie loves him his fast guys, don’t he? Either way, if/when this goes mainstream, Mr. Negative will have a field day.
Huge hat-tip to South Side Sox.
