Brayan Bello did not sign a professional baseball contract until he was 18-years-old. To most of us, 18 is incredibly young. You don’t know anything about anything when you’re 18 – not who you are, not who you want to be, not what’s an appropriate appetizer to bring to a dinner party.
But for a select few people from certain other walks of life, 18 is actually incredibly old: female gymnasts, Disney Channel stars, kids who grow up as the eldest of 8 in one of those freak-show reality TV families, and, notably, Dominican baseball players. Some of the most talented Dominican players start training with buscones on a near-full-time basis when they’re as young as 12-years-old.