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In his comprehensive and vibrant picture of baseball in Cuba, Milton H. Jamail explores the sport's relationship to U.S. baseball. Jamail, whose personal love of the game matches that of the Cubans, examines the roots and traditions of baseball on the island and explains why Cubans play such excellent baseball. His analysis of the development of Cuban baseball after the 1959 takeover by Fidel Castro includes a detailed description of the formation of the Cuban amateur baseball system that has dominated international competitions for more than three decades. Before 1961, when the U.S. government severed diplomatic relations with Cuba and Castro abolished professional baseball, Cuba provided the bulk of the foreign players in the major leagues (more than one hundred since the color barrier was lifted in 1947). Major league interest in Cuban baseball remains high, Jamail notes, as he examines the changes necessary, both in the United States and Cuba, to return Cuban ballplayers to professional baseball in the United States. He discusses Cuban defectors, including Liván Hernández, and describes the intrigue surrounding agent Joe Cubas's courting of Cuban players and his attempts to spirit them away when the Cuban national team plays outside the country. An academic trained in Latin American politics, Jamail has spent twelve years as a Spanish-speaking journalist writing about Latinos and baseball. To write this book, he conducted extensive interviews with baseball officials, journalists, players, and fans in Cuba, as well as Cuban players who have defected. He also talked to scouts and front office people from U.S. baseball organizations.
In March 1999, the Baltimore Orioles played a team of Cuban all-stars, the first time a major league baseball team from the United States had played a Cuban team since 1959. Before communism, Cuba had a rich baseball history, fielding teams that often defeated U.S. major league opponents. This text presents basic statistical information and listings for every Cuban baseball team from 1878 until 1961, when the communist government of Fidel Castro shut down professional sports. The information for each season includes the final standings, team rosters, all-time records, individual statistics arranged by team, and background information. The appendix lists the Cuban players in the first three eras, all-time leaders for batting average, runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI, stolen bases, pitching, completed games, wins, losses, MVPs, Rookies of the Years, and much more. The book is profusely illustrated with photographs.
Contains some information on Hispanic-American baseball players.
In Cuban Star, an interpretive account of Alejandro "Alex" Pompez's life in context, Adrian Burgos, Jr. follows Pompez's--and baseball's--path through the twentieth century's changing social and racial landscape. When the selection committee voted Alex Pompez into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, some cried foul. A Negro-league owner during baseball's glory days, Pompez was known as an early and steadfast advocate for Latino players, helping bring baseball into the modern age. So why was his induction so controversial? Like many in the era of segregated baseball, Pompez found that the game alone could never make all ends meet. To finance his beloved team, the New York Cubans, he delved headlong into a sin many baseball fans find unforgivable—gambling. He built one of the most infamous numbers rackets in Harlem, eventually arousing the ire of the famed prosecutor Thomas Dewey. But he also led his Cubans, with their star lineup of Latino players, to a Negro-league World Series championship in 1947. In this effervescent biography, the historian and sportswriter Adrian Burgos, Jr., brings to life the world of professional baseball during a time of enormous change. Following Pompez from his early days to the twilight of his career, Burgos offers a glimpse inside the clubhouse as both owners and players struggled with the new realities of the game. That today's rosters are filled with names like Rodriguez, Pujols, Rivera, and Ortiz is a testament to Pompez and his lasting influence.
In February 1947, the most memorable season in the history of the Cuban League finished with a dramatic series win by Almendares against its rival, Habana. As the celebration spread through the streets of Havana and across Cuba, the Brooklyn Dodgers were beginning spring training on the island. One of the Dodgers' minor league players was Jackie Robinson. He was on the verge of making his major-league debut in the United States, an event that would fundamentally change sports--and America. To avoid harassment from the white crowds in Florida during this critical preseason, the Dodgers relocated their spring training to Cuba, where black and white teammates had played side by side since 1900. It was also during this time that Major League Baseball was trying its hardest to bring the "outlaw" Cuban League under the control of organized baseball. As the Cubans fought to stay independent, Robinson worked to earn a roster spot on the Dodgers in the face of discrimination from his future teammates. Havana Hardball captures the excitement of the Cuban League's greatest pennant race and the anticipation of the looming challenge to MLB's color barrier. Illuminating one of the sport's most pivotal seasons, veteran journalist César Brioso brings together a rich mix of worlds as the heyday of Latino baseball converged with one of the most socially meaningful events in U.S. history.
In the 125th anniversary of the first baseball game played on Cuban soil, the history of Cuban baseball has been brought to life like never before.
In 1998, a mysterious right-handed pitcher emerged from the ashes of the Cold War and helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Championship. His origins and even his age were uncertain. His name was Orlando El Duque Hernandez. He was a fallen hero of Fidel Castro's socialist revolution. The chronicle of El Duque's triumph is at once a window into the slow death of Cuban socialism and one of the most remarkable sports stories of all time. Once hailed as a paragon of Castro's revolution, the finest pitcher in modern Cuban history was banned from baseball for life for allegedly plotting to defect. Instead of accepting his punishment, he fearlessly fought back, defying the Communist party authorities, vowing to pitch again, and ultimately fleeing his country in the bowels of a thirty-foot fishing boat. Here, for the first time and in astonishing detail, the secrets behind El Duque's persecution and escape are revealed. Moving from the crumbling streets of post Cold War Havana to the polarized world of exile Miami, from the deadly Florida Straits to the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, it is a story of cloak-and-dagger adventure, audacious secret plots, the pull of big money, and the historic collision of ideologies. Present throughout are the larger-than-life characters who converged at this bizarre intersection of baseball and politics: El Duque himself, Fidel Castro, the Miami sports agent Joe Cubas, the late John Cardinal O'Connor along with scouts, smugglers, and the Cuban ballplayers who gave up their lives as tools of socialism to test the free market and chase their major-league dreams. Reported in the United States and Cuba by two award-winning journalists who became part of the story they were covering, The Duke of Havana is a riveting saga of sports, politics, liberation, and greed.
Few political figures of the modern age have been so vilified as Fidel Castro, and both the vilification and worship generated by the Cuban leader have combined to distort the true image of Castro. The baseball myths attached to Fidel have loomed every bit as large as the skewed political notions that surround him. Castro was never a major league pitching prospect, nor did he destroy the Cuban national pastime in 1962. In Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold Story, Peter C. Bjarkman dispels numerous myths about the Cuban leader and his association with baseball. In this groundbreaking study, Bjarkman establishes how Fidel constructed, rather than dismantled, Cuba’s true baseball Golden Age—one that followed rather than preceded the 1959 revolution. Bjarkman also demonstrates that Fidel was not at all unique in “politicizing” baseball as often maintained, since the island sport traces its roots to the 19th-century revolution. Fidel’s avowed devotion to a non-materialist society would ultimately sow the seeds of collapse for the baseball empire he built over more than a half-century, just as the same obsession would finally dismantle the larger social revolution he had painstakingly authored. A fascinating look at a controversial figure and his impact on a major sport, this volume reveals many intriguing insights about Castro and how his love of the game was tied to Cuba’s identity. Fidel Castro and Baseball will appeal to fans of the sport as well as to those interested in Cuba’s enduring association with baseball.
Exposing trafficking, theft, fraud, and gambling in the major leagues, a founding member of the MLB's Department of Investigations reveals a news-breaking true story of power and corruption. In the wake of 2005's sometimes contentious, sometimes comical congressional hearings on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and the subsequent Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball established the Department of Investigations (DOI). An internal and autonomous unit, it was created to not only eliminate the use of steroids, but also to rid baseball of any other illegal, unsavory, or unethical activities. The DOI would investigate the dark side of the national pastime--gambling, age and identity fraud, human trafficking, cover-ups, and more--with the singular purpose of cleaning up the game. Eduardo Dominguez Jr. was a founding member of that first DOI team, leaving a stellar career with the Boston Police Department to join four other "supercops"--a group that included a 9/11 hero, a mob-buster, and narcotics experts--keeping watch over Major League Baseball. A decorated detective as well as a member of an FBI task force, Dominguez was initially reluctant to leave his law-enforcement career to work full-time in baseball. He had already seen the game's underbelly when he worked as a resident security agent (RSA) for the Boston Red Sox in 1999 and become wary of the game's commitment to any kind of reform. Only at the persuasion a widely respected NYPD detective tapped to lead the DOI did Dominguez agree to join the unit, which was the first--and last--of its kind in major American sports. "We could clean up this game," his new boss promised. In Baseball Cop, Dominguez shares the shocking revelations he confronted every day for six years with the DOI and nine as an RSA. He shines a light on the inner workings of the commissioner's office and the complicity of baseball's bosses in dealing with the misdeeds compromising the integrity of the game. Dominguez details the investigations and the obstacles--from the Biogenesis scandal to the perilous trafficking of Cuban players now populating the game to the theft of prospects' signing bonuses by buscones, street agents, and even clubs' employees. He further reveals how the mandates of former senator George Mitchell's report were modified or ignored altogether. Bracing and eye-opening, Baseball Cop is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about America's national pastime.
According to the New York Times, Cuba is at an historic turning point. As Cuba catches up with political and economic changes, baseball will inevitably catch up and change as well. In Cuba Loves Baseball, photographer Ira Block, who has spent the past three years photographing the culture of Cuba through baseball, has assembled more than one hundred images of baseball players of all ages. In doing so, Block helps to preserve baseball's enduring presence in Cuba. The colorful photos cover everything from grass roots baseball to the pro teams, from portraits of old-timers to children playing baseball in the streets, and from exuberant fans at stadiums to vendors selling traditional food before the games. Cuba Loves Baseball incorporates sport with culture in a country that has been "closed" for so many years. It makes the perfect gift for sports fans, people interested in Cuba and travel, men and women who played baseball as children in cities or rural areas, and parents who have children playing baseball now.