(
)
The footage is grainy and shot from a high angle, and then the video runs out, with only the audio remaining. It’s something you would expect from a cheesy reality TV show. Except there’s nothing contrived about this.
Rene Gayo, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ director of Latin American scouting operations, is being surreptitiously filmed by the family of Miguel Sano, a highly touted Dominican prospect who is being investigated for falsifying his age.
“We can sign right now,” Gayo tells Sano and his family in Spanish. “All you have to do is say OK [Sano lied about his age], and we can sign. The only real offer he has is mine for $2 million. … Unfortunately, this is the country of lies. … What I’d do is get him amnesty [from a suspension].
“I have influence. It’s not a problem. All you have to do is cooperate. … You don’t have any problems because you’ve got me.”
It’s a very provocative scene, part of a compelling new documentary called “Ballplayer: Pelotero,” which is being released nationally on July 13 and will hold its New York City premiere tonight at the Schomburg Center in Harlem.
The film’s executive producer is someone who is no stranger to controversy: Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine. Which is why baseball commissioner Bud Selig called Boston ownership last week to express his concerns about the endeavor.
“It’s not anyone acting. It’s just the way things are done,” Valentine, the former Mets manager, told The Post in a telephone interview. “It might seem foreign to some people watching it here. I’m sure it’s been the way things are done for years to get the upper hand.
“It’s just the way you do things. I don’t think it’s slander.”
The documentary, which tracks Sano and fellow Dominican infielder Jean Carlos Batista leading up to and following the July 2, 2009 signing date for 16-year-old international players, is more eye-opening than damning. The filmmakers point out, at the conclusion, that Major League Baseball took more efforts to regulate the Dominican Republic the subsequent year.
Specifically, Selig hired Sandy Alderson in March 2010 to oversee age verification and other improvements, which Alderson did effectively until the Mets hired him as their general manager in October of the same year.
Nevertheless, the movie has its share of explosive moments. In addition to the hidden surveillance of Gayo, the film airs Sano’s family attorney Salmon Francisco calling MLB “a mafia” and accusing baseball of trying to steer Sano toward signing with the beleaguered Pirates — even accusing Gayo of creating the uncertainty over Sano’s age. Those comments in particular caught baseball’s attention.
MLB, in a statement, pointed out Alderson’s role in improving matters in the Dominican, as well as MLB’s and its clubs’ efforts to give back to the community. The statement concluded: “Lastly, we are disappointed not to have had the opportunity to respond on camera to the film’s inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”
As for Gayo, Pirates senior director of communications Brian Warecki defended Gayo’s conduct and added, in a statement: “With respect to the Miguel Sano signing process, we thought highly enough of Miguel to offer him a contract and significant signing bonus regardless of the outcome of the MLB investigation.”
An industry source asserted the Pirates arranged the amnesty deal with central baseball, which Sano never accepted. Instead, baseball eventually cleared Sano, who signed with Minnesota for $3.15 million; Pittsburgh went as high as $2.6 million. However, an MLB spokesman said amnesty would not have been available to Sano at that juncture.
Said Ross Finkel, the film’s co-director: “During our stay [in the Dominican], we tried desperately to get in touch with someone at the MLB Investigations Office to be able to answer questions about how the process works and what they do to investigate. And then again, as we were editing, we tried to reach out to them to get comments of the film. Their final words were they declined to interview for the film.”
Finkel and co-directors Jonathan Paley and Trevor Martin spent nine months in the Dominican Republic, inspired not to stir up trouble, Finkel said, but sparked by this thought: “There’s the stereotypical picture of Dominican kids playing on dirt streets with rolled-up socks as balls and with brooms as bats. And then we had another image of Big Papi [David Ortiz] under the lights at Fenway. Our question was: How do you guys get from one of these images to the other? How does the Major League Baseball maturation and development process work?”
Valentine, meanwhile, had formed a sports film production company, Makuhari Media, during his time as an ESPN broadcaster. He partnered with Andrew Muscato, a producer on the 2008 documentary “The Zen of Bobby V,” which focused on Valentine’s 2007 season managing the Chiba Lotte Marines.
“Ballplayer: Pelotero” came to be when the filmmakers showed Valentine and Muscato their raw footage from the Dominican.
“It’s close to my heart because the Dominican Republic and I have been together for decades,” Valentine said. “I played there in the early ’70s, I met my wife there. We took our honeymoon there. I own property there. I’ve visited there many times. There are so many great players from the Dominican Republic. It just seemed to be a natural.”
Said Muscato: “Bobby and I, every month, would go into the editing office in downtown Manhattan and watch a cut of the film. Bobby was able to point out and explain some baseball stuff. He brings that credibility and knowledge where, as a baseball fan, you can trust what you’re seeing is pretty accurate.”
Valentine also helped recruit actor John Leguizamo to narrate the film.
To Valentine, Muscato and the filmmakers, the film is more about the stories of two young men and their aspiration than an exposé of MLB’s role in the Dominican. And though Valentine is now back inside baseball, he said he has no regrets about committing to the project.
“I wasn’t going to stand in the way of the investors and of young producers making a living,” Valentine said. “If these were actors, then you’ve got to change the script. But it’s a documentary. You don’t do it if you don’t want it to be what’s real.”
kdavidoff@nypost.com