“We do not condone any behavior that involves cruelty to animals,” the Mets said in a statement. “We understand, however, that in many other countries activities such as bullfighting and cockfighting are both legal and part of the culture.”

Except for baseball, cockfighting is widely considered the Dominican Republic’s most popular sport. Almost every small town along the Caribbean nation’s highways boasts a covered fighting ring where trainers come to test their best roosters and rich and poor alike fill the wooden stands to drink, wager and watch the bloody spectacle.

One of the best-known fighting rings is in Martinez’s hometown of Manoguayabo, made famous in 1991 as the opening setting for Michelle Wucker’s noted history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, “Why the Cocks Fight.”

The island’s fighting Mecca is the Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo, a sparkling indoor arena on the outskirts of the Dominican capital where fights are tracked on an electronic scoreboard and waitresses walk the aisles with trays of beer and empanadas. Generals, politicians and cockfighting celebrities have their names painted onto assigned parking spaces outside.

On fight days, well-heeled Dominicans and curious foreigners — almost all of them men — put on their best suits, polo shirts and chacabanas for a card with as many as 30 fights. Between bouts, bettors tour the fiberglass cages where prime roosters are examined with the same keenness of eye as a regular in the paddock at Churchill Downs.

The fight begins when two roosters are lowered into the arena. Men in blue or white coats more at home in a laboratory or butcher shop prep the fighters, taunting them into a frenzy with a third rooster. As the timed fight begins, the crowd erupts in a flurry of one-on-one betting, flashing hand signals across the room to signal fast-changing odds with the ironclad frenzy of a New York trade floor.

Roosters are generally armed with a small bone or resin spur meant to inflict maximum damage on their opponents, and the blood, feathers and poultry stench that linger afterward are a testament to their potency.

But the roosters do not always die. Matches are timed, 10-15 minutes in length, and many end in a draw with both chickens bloodied and exhausted, but alive to fight another day.

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