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What: “Beisbol: The Latin Dream”

Where: Channel 4, Oct. 10, 3 p.m

This season nearly one in five players in the major leagues was born in Latin America. But there are other numbers that better tell the tale of Latin America’s growing influence on the game: At one point this season, virtually every important statistical category was led by a Latin American-born player, from batting leader Tony Fernandez and ERA pace-setter Pedro Martinez of the Dominican Republic to home run leader Jose Canseco of Cuba.

You’d think those numbers would be fascinating to the makers of “Beisbol: The Latin Dream,” a one-hour television magazine. But very little of what’s included in “Beisbol” could be considered fascinating--or even new.

Narrated by Jose Tolentino, the Mexican-born former big leaguer who calls Angel games for Spanish-language radio station XPRS, “Beisbol” consists of seven short, largely fawning segments on players such as Martinez of the Red Sox and Houston’s Jose Lima. But only once--in a profile of Orlando Cepeda, who overcame a jail term for drug possession to earn a place in the Hall of Fame--does “Beisbol” attempt to deal with the trials and tribulations Latin players have overcome simply to reach the major leagues.

Nowhere, for example, does “Beisbol” address the crushing poverty that marks the childhood of many Latin major leaguers, such as Martinez. Or the criticism that baseball is exploiting that poverty to sign young players cheaply, taking them away from schools and families to fill minor league rosters, only to abandon them--jobless and uneducated--a few years later.