Ricardo Aramboles

Ricardo B. Aramboles

• Born Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 4", Weight 220 lb.

• Born December 4, 1981 in Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional D.R.

BR Minors page

Biographical Information

Ricardo Aramboles was a pitcher who made news for lying about his age, signing his first pro contract with the Miami Marlins on July 2, 1996 when he was still 14, by using a fake birth certificate claiming he was 16 and thus eligible to sign. His signing bonus was a paltry $5,500 and the scheme was apparently engineered by his father, Domingo Aramboles (in fact, in some of the stories, he is called by his dad's name). He pitched for the DSL Marlins in 1997, when the scheme was discovered and the contract was voided.

What made his case particularly interesting was that his first pro season, was a successful one - his ERA was 1.71 - so that when he became legitimately eligible to sign before the 1998 season, his services elicited a bidding war, with the New York Yankees coming out on top by offering him a huge bonus said to be in the vicinity of the record $1.6 million given to OF Jackson Melian in 1996. There were questions asked about the morality of this and of a similar case which became public around the same time, that of Josephang Bernhardt who signed for $750,000 after his original under-aged contract was voided, and a few years after the Los Angeles Dodgers had signed Adrian Beltre when he was underage, but had only been assessed with a fine and allowed to keep the budding star. But since Ricardo's parents weren't originally looking to game the system or to engineer a big payday (the original minimal bonus was already plenty of money for them), they couldn't really be punished. The net results was that teams and Dominican authorities then became more aware of the need to check birth documents carefully, in order for others not to attempt to deliberately manipulate the systems this way.

After all of this build-up, Aramboles' professional career was a disappointment. He pitched in the Yankees' system from 1998 to 2001, until he was traded in return for Mark Wohlers on June 30 of that year. He reached AAA for the Columbus Clippers before the trade, but only for 4 games, spending most of his time in Class A ball with only mediocre results. For example, he went 5-13, 4.31 as a starter for the Greensboro Bats of the South Atlantic League in 2000. The Reds had him back in the Midwest League after the trade, and he also pitched 6 games for their AA affiliate, the Chattanooga Lookouts in 2001 and 2002, but the latter season was ended after 4 games, likely by an injury as he did not resurface until 2004. That year, he was back in Class A, with the Potomac Cannons of the Carolina League and went 4-10, 5.21, his once promising career petering out at 22.

Further Reading

• Murray Chass: "Baseball: Free-Agent Pitcher, 16 Years Old, Is on Cusp of Riches", The New York Times, January 28, 1998. [1]