SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Before he was invited to his first big league camp with the Giants, Kyle Harrison went to the Dominican Republic for culture camp.
At culture camp — the informal name for the program — Harrison and his fellow farmhands got a taste of what life is like for international prospects who sign professional contracts as teenagers and begin their baseball journey at the club’s Dominican outpost.
They stayed in the dorms with the younger Minor Leaguers, sleeping in bunk beds with six to eight players per room. They took cold showers. They participated in baseball workouts and practiced their Spanish, learning to navigate a language barrier for the first time in their careers.
“It was definitely a humbling experience,” said Harrison, the Giants’ No. 1 prospect. “Now I know what they go through and what they’re playing for. It was really awesome to go. Kids, the passion on their faces there, was unreal.”
The program was part of the Giants’ ongoing efforts to bridge cultural gaps among the hundreds of Minor Leaguers in their system. For the past several years, the organization has hosted a similar offseason camp in San Francisco, bringing a group of international and domestic prospects to Oracle Park to get a feel for Bay Area culture. They planned to introduce a Latin American equivalent into the rotation in 2020, but those plans were put on hold for two years due to the pandemic.
Once travel restrictions began to ease, the Giants finally got to launch the program, inviting select American prospects and player development staffers to make the trip out to the Dominican Republic last fall. Harrison didn’t hesitate to say yes — not that his parents would have given him much of a choice, anyway.
“You could either accept it or reject it,” Harrison, 21, said. “My parents were like, ‘You’re not rejecting it. You’re going to see what it’s like and going through that.’”
Kyle Haines, the Giants’ senior director of player development, said the feedback he received from participants was overwhelmingly positive.
“I think they were excited, and then it exceeded their expectations,” Haines said. “I think part of it was just amazing planning on our part to show what is culture and give them a good experience.”
When they weren’t at the baseball field, Harrison and other Giants prospects — including international signees like Jose Cruz, Diego Velasquez and Ghordy Santos — made excursions to Santo Domingo,…
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