Since baseball’s modern era began in 1901, 27 players born in the United Kingdom have appeared in major league games, according to Baseball Reference.

The Dominican Republic has produced a total of 749 major league players, including about 126 who have appeared in the majors this season alone.

No country outside the United States has come close to producing more players than the Caribbean nation.

And so as the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox play the first regular-season MLB games in Europe this weekend in hopes of reaching a new audience, several players from the Dominican Republic cannot help but feel left out.

“It’d be a good idea to play in the Dominican Republic,” said New York Mets shortstop Amed Rosario, a native of the country, in Spanish. “I’ve always asked myself about that. It would be a nice opportunity, not just for other Latinos but for the Americans to see our country.”

Since MLB began tracking this in 1976, it has played nearly 230 games outside the mainland U.S. through the 2018 season, including regular season, spring training, exhibitions and all-star tours, according to a list provided by their office. Puerto Rico and Japan have been the most popular destinations, and Mexico has become a recent go-to: four series, including three during the regular season, have been played in Monterrey since the start of 2018.

MLB teams have played games — albeit some of them exhibitions — as far away as China (2008) and Australia (2014) as well as fraught locations like Cuba (1999 and 2016). But since 1976, the Dominican Republic has hosted just four games: two games between the Montreal Expos and the Mets in 1999, and two between the Houston Astros and Red Sox the following year, all of them exhibitions.

“It’s something that’s been talked about a bunch but still not known why a regular-season game hasn’t been played there,” said Domingo German, the Yankees’ injured Dominican starting pitcher.

Playing regular-season baseball in England and the Dominican Republic are not mutually exclusive, of course. But it creates odd optics for some when MLB prioritizes playing in a country where soccer is king and baseball is a niche sport before a baseball factory of a country with an avid audience.

“People would welcome the game with a lot of pride and tons of fans,” said Yankees star catcher Gary Sanchez, who hails from Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. “It would be the best.”

Commissioner Rob Manfred has prioritized spreading baseball to new audiences, including at the Little League World Series. In the collective bargaining agreement, MLB and the players’ union earmarked $40 million for an ambitious schedule of games abroad. The Dominican Republic was listed as an option, along with Puerto Rico for May 2018 and May 2020, and it was also one of three choices, along with Puerto Rico or Mexico, for a 2019 spring training game. MLB hosted regular-season games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in April 2018, and Monterrey, Mexico, won out this spring.

During the owners’ meetings in New York earlier this June, Manfred announced that the Dominican Republic would host spring training games in 2020, and the revelation was a hot topic of conversation on sports talk radio in the country the next morning. A regular-season game is not in the works, though Manfred said playing regular-season games in London and not the Dominican Republic was not “an either-or proposition.”

“We don’t want to just be strong where we already have baseball culture,” he said. “We want to grow and expand into areas where baseball is not being played. The best way to start that process is by taking games live. And I think we saw London as one of those opportunities.”

There are business reasons for MLB pursuing the European market, as the NFL and NBA have done by holding regular-season games there in recent years. London is known as the financial capital of the world. The per capita income in the Dominican Republic was about $16,000 in 2017, compared with about $45,000 in the United Kingdom, according to the World Bank. The Dominican Republic has a population of nearly 11 million, six times smaller than the United Kingdom.

But few places are as important to MLB’s player pipeline as the Dominican Republic. With all 30 clubs having established academies there, the country is a significant source of cheaper labor — signing bonuses for many teenage amateurs are just several thousand dollars, while a few top talents sign for millions.

MLB has contended that the biggest roadblock to holding games in the Dominican Republic is its facilities. Most of the stadiums used by the professional winter league teams there are at least four decades old.

The largest two, Estadio Quisqueya in Santo Domingo and Estadio Cibao in Santiago, hold about 14,000 and 18,000 people. When Dominican architects proposed $30 million worth of renovations to Estadio Quisqueya last year, they said they were indignant that their country had not hosted any parts of the four World Baseball Classics and wanted to bring the facility up to modern MLB standards.

“They have to do a pair of adjustments with the stadiums there,” said Sanchez, who played in parts of three Dominican winter league seasons when he was younger.

MLB certainly has the resources. For a 2016 regular-season game between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves, MLB and the players’ union reportedly spent $5 million to build a 12,500-seat stadium on Fort Bragg in North Carolina. MLB has committed money and resources to upgrading facilities for other international games, including overhauling London Stadium for this weekend.

“They’ll figure it out somehow and get it done,” said Yankees star relief pitcher Dellin Betances, who was born in New York to Dominican parents, played for the Dominican national team and visits every offseason. “It would be a lot of fun. Especially for me, I’ve never gotten a chance to play in my home.”

Some players have noted safety concerns, even before the shooting of David Ortiz, the former Red Sox superstar, earlier this month.

“It’s not the same as here. We know it’s Latin America, but there are more secure places than there,” said Cleveland Indians third baseman Jose Ramirez, though he would also like to play major league games in his native Dominican Republic.

It is not just Dominican players who long for a game there. Carlos Correa, the star shortstop for the Houston Astros, hails from Puerto Rico, but when he was in Monterrey earlier this year he welcomed the opportunity to make games in Latin America more regular.

“They love baseball in the Dominican Republic, obviously Puerto Rico — MLB has been there before — but it would be good to bring it once a year,” Correa told the Houston Chronicle.

A nation as obsessed with baseball as the Dominican Republic would “really appreciate” being able to see the game’s best players compete there more often, he added. It will not happen this year, but still, many of the country’s players see it as just a matter of time.

“It’ll be great to take baseball to Europe, but to also play in the Dominican,” said Guerrero’s son, Vladimir Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays. “We have to wait for the day, and I bet it’ll come.”