Money and a promise.
That is what Amada and Alfredo Edmead needed to allow their son to leave the Dominican Republic to play baseball in the U.S. in 1974. About to turn 18, Alfredo Jr. was a medical student at Santo Domingo Autonomous University, a school whose roots trace to 1538, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the Americas.
El Tiburon took care of the money.
Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
Howie Haak, then 62, was El Tiburon (The Shark), because of how relentlessly and stealthily he worked the far-flung towns of Latin America to sign ballplayers as a scout for the Pirates.