Download or read book Joe Cambria written by Paul Scimonelli and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-03-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most prolific scouts in baseball history, Joe Cambria almost single-handedly saved the Washington Senators from ruin. Signing a stream of young players from Cuba--as many as 20 per season for three decades--he fed the team affordable talent and kept them competitive during World War II, when many front-liners went to the front lines. Cambria subverted baseball's color line years before Jackie Robinson broke it, signing light-skinned Cubans--many of African descent--who could pass in the all-white Major Leagues. This first ever biography traces his memorable career, including the shady hiring practices and flamboyant deals that drew rulings from the bench of Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Download or read book Joe Cambria written by Paul Scimonelli and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most prolific scouts in baseball history, Joe Cambria almost single-handedly saved the Washington Senators from ruin. Signing a stream of young players from Cuba--as many as 20 per season for three decades--he fed the team affordable talent and kept them competitive during World War II, when many front-liners went to the front lines. Cambria subverted baseball's color line years before Jackie Robinson broke it, signing light-skinned Cubans--many of African descent--who could pass in the all-white Major Leagues. This first ever biography traces his memorable career, including the shady hiring practices and flamboyant deals that drew rulings from the bench of Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Download or read book The Search for Shoeless Joe written by Joseph Victor Michalowicz and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2017-06-05 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bobby Rogers has always had a driving ambition to be the best. As a teen, he excelled in baseball and dreamed of being recruited into the major leagues. But because Bobby also had a burning desire to make money, he decided to take another route that included Harvard Business School. Now it is 2010 and he is a hard-driving New York financial guru with a wife, a young son, and a desire to invest in something personally fulfilling. After he learns that investing in sports memorabilia might be lucrative, Bobby becomes hooked on collecting baseball cards. When a startling revelation leads him to focus on collecting cards of the legendary slugger Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bobby embarks on a quest that leads him from the Hamptons to Maryland's Eastern Shore and finally to Cuba to find a unique card. But after he lands a visit with former Senators pitcher Chico Marrero and has a frightening encounter with Fidel Castro, Bobby soon discovers that he is not just on a journey to locate baseball cards, but instead to gain deep insight into himself and what he really wants from life. In this exciting tale, an investor turned dedicated collector sets out on a pursuit of an elusive Joe Jackson baseball card that leads him to places he never imagined.
Download or read book Playing America s Game written by Adrian Burgos and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-06-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although largely ignored by historians of both baseball in general and the Negro leagues in particular, Latinos have been a significant presence in organized baseball from the beginning. In this benchmark study on Latinos and professional baseball from the 1880s to the present, Adrian Burgos tells a compelling story of the men who negotiated the color line at every turn—passing as "Spanish" in the major leagues or seeking respect and acceptance in the Negro leagues. Burgos draws on archival materials from the U.S., Cuba, and Puerto Rico, as well as Spanish- and English-language publications and interviews with Negro league and major league players. He demonstrates how the manipulation of racial distinctions that allowed management to recruit and sign Latino players provided a template for Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey when he initiated the dismantling of the color line by signing Jackie Robinson in 1947. Burgos's extensive examination of Latino participation before and after Robinson's debut documents the ways in which inclusion did not signify equality and shows how notions of racialized difference have persisted for darker-skinned Latinos like Orestes ("Minnie") Miñoso, Roberto Clemente, and Sammy Sosa.
Download or read book Last Seasons in Havana written by César Brioso and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 SABR Baseball Research Award Last Seasons in Havana explores the intersection between Cuba and America's pastime from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. César Brioso takes the reader through the triumph of the revolution in 1959 and its impact on professional baseball in the seasons immediately following Castro's rise to power. Baseball in pre?Castro Cuba was enjoying a golden age. The Cuban League, which had been founded in 1878, just two years after the formation of the National League, was thriving under the auspices of organized baseball. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, players from the Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, and Negro Leagues had come to Cuba to play in the country's wholly integrated winter baseball league. Cuban teams had come to dominate the annual Caribbean Series tournament, and Havana had joined the highest levels of Minor League Baseball, fielding the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League. Confidence was high that Havana might one day have a Major League team of its own. But professional baseball became one of the many victims of Castro's Communist revolution. American players stopped participating in the Cuban League, and Cuban teams moved to an amateur, state?sponsored model. Focusing on the final three seasons of the Cuban League (1958-61) and the final two seasons of the Havana Sugar Kings (1959-60), Last Seasons in Havana explores how Castro's rise to power forever altered Cuba and the course of a sport that had become ingrained in the island's culture over the course of almost a century.
Download or read book Viva Baseball written by Samuel Octavio Regalado and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lively and anecdotal, Viva Baseball! chronicles the struggles of Latin American professional baseball players in the United States from the late 1800s to the present. Even as "Fernandomania" raged in 1981, most Latin players felt lonely, shunned, and forgotten. Samuel Regalado reveals the shocking racism faced by these immigrant athletes in a white culture. Only a burning desire to succeed and a grim determination to leave behind the grinding poverty of their homelands could have driven these men to continue in the face of overwhelming hostility. In addition to mining the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York, and the Sporting News archives, Regalado conducted interviews with some twenty-five Latin baseball stars, among them Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Tony Oliva.
Download or read book Can He Play A Look at Baseball Scouts and their Profession written by Jim Sandoval and published by SABR, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They dig through tons of coal to find a single diamond. They spend countless hours traveling miles and miles on lonely back roads and way too much time in hotels. Their front offices expect them to constantly provide player reports and updates. So much of their time is spent away from family and friends, missing birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. Their best friend is Rand McNally. Always asking the question, "CAN HE PLAY?" Such is the life of a professional scout. CAN HE PLAY? collects the contributions of 26 members of the Society for American Baseball Research on the subject of scouts, including biographies and historical essays. The book touches on more than a century of scouts and scouting with a focus on the men (and the occasional woman) who have taken on the task of scouring the world for the best ballplayers available. In CAN HE PLAY? we meet the "King of Weeds," a Ph.D. we call "Baseball's Renaissance Man," a husband-and-wife team, pioneering Latin scouts, and a Japanese-American interned during World War II who became a successful scout--and many, many more. The legendary Tom Greenwade and the development of the New York Yankees scouting system, interviews with former players Johnny Pesky and Fernando Perez about being scouted, and much more.
Download or read book Twin Cities Sports written by Sheldon Anderson and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The histories in Twin Cities Sports are rooted in the class, ethnic, and regional identity of this unique upper midwestern metropolitan area. The compilation includes a wide range of important studies on the hub of interwar speedskating, the success of Gopher football in the Jim Crow era, the integration of municipal golf courses, the building of a world-renowned park system, the Minneapolis Lakers’ basketball dynasty, the Minnesota Twins’ connections to Cuba, and more.
Download or read book The Washington Senators 1901 1971 written by Tom Deveaux and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-08-10 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Washington Senators have a special place in baseball history as one of the most unsuccessful teams ever to play the game. The Nats (as headline writers had dubbed them by midcentury) got their start in 1901 thanks to Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson and endured 71 up-and-down seasons in the American League, which was created at the same time as the Washington ballclub. This huge work exhaustively chronicles the capricious history of the Washington Senators from the beginning to the end in 1971, with detailed information on the management and players who kept the organization going in good and bad times. Insights on how the team fit into the American League as well as statistics covering the team's records throughout its existence and the lifetime records of all members of the Baseball Hall of Fame who played with the Washington Senators are also provided.
Download or read book Early Latino Ballplayers in the United States written by Nick C. Wilson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1900 through the 1940s Latino baseball players suffered discrimination, poor accommodations, low pay and homesickness to play a game they loved. Those who were both talented and light-skinned enough to make it to the majors were mocked for being foreign. Those in the Negro Leagues were, like African American ballplayers, segregated and largely ignored by the public and major league scouts. Building on the work of researchers who focused on the seasons and careers of these pioneer athletes, Nick Wilson draws on primary documents and interviews to round out our knowledge of the players as people. José Méndez, Miguel González, Luis Tiant, Sr., Martín Dihigo, Rodolfo Fernández, Roberto Ortiz, Cristóbal Torriente, Hiram Bithorn and Pedro “Preston” Gómez are only a few examples of the players included here. Appendices on “Americans Who Positively Influenced Latin Migration” and “Latinos and the Washington Senators Spring Training Camps, 1939–1942” are included, along with 26 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
Download or read book Finding Baseball s Next Clemente written by Roger Bruns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines what it takes for Latino youngsters to beat the odds, overcoming cultural and racial barriers—and a corrupt recruitment system—to play professional baseball in the United States. Latin Americans now comprise nearly 30 percent of the players in Major League Baseball (MLB). This provocative work looks at how young Latinos are recruited—and often exploited—and at the cultural, linguistic, and racial challenges faced by those who do make it. There are exposés of baseball camps where teens are encouraged to sacrifice education in favor of hitting and fielding drills and descriptions of fraud cases in which youngsters claim to be older than they are in order to sign contracts. The book also documents the increasing use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs by kids desperately trying to gain an edge. In addition to discussing the hard road many Latinos follow to MLB, the work also traces the fascinating history of baseball's introduction in Latin American countries—in some cases, more than a century ago. Finally, there are the stories of great Latino players, of men like Roberto Clemente and Carlos Beltran who made it to the majors, but also of men who were not so lucky. Through their tales, readers can share the dreams and expectations of young men who, for better or worse, believe in "America's pastime" as their gateway out of poverty.
Download or read book Cuban Star written by Adrian Burgos and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shares the story of Negro League team owner Alex Pompez's founding of a notorious Harlem numbers racket as part of his efforts to finance the New York Cubans, describing his role in retaining the team throughout integration, transitioning players to the majors, and achieving a Negro League World Series Championship.
Download or read book Baseball s Endangered Species written by Lee Lowenfish and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023-04 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scouting has been called pro baseball's personalized way of renewing itself from year to year and a pathway to the game's past. It takes a very special person to be a baseball scout: normal family life is out of the question because travel is a constant companion. Yet for those with the genuine calling for it, there could be no other life. Hearing the special thwack off the bat that indicates a raw prospect may be the real deal is the dream that keeps true scouts going. Scouts have the difficult task of not only discovering and signing new players but envisioning the trajectory of raw talent into the future. But the place of the traditional scout has become increasingly dire. In 2016 Major League Baseball eliminated the MLB Scouting Bureau that had been created in the 1970s to augment the regular scouting staffs of individual teams. On the eve of the 2017 playoffs that saw the Houston Astros crowned as World Series champions, the team dismissed ten professional scouts and by 2019 halved the number of all their scouts to less than twenty. More and more teams are replacing their experienced talent hunters with people versed in digital video and analytics but who have limited field knowledge of the game, driven by the Moneyball-inspired trend to favor analytics, data, and algorithms over instinct and observation. In Baseball's Endangered Species Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business history: expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball's Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of "makeup": how a player copes with failure, baseball's essential, painful truth.
Download or read book Eye for Talent written by P.J. Dragseth and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball scouts are often unseen, seldom recognized, and usually underappreciated by fans, but they have contributed enormously to the development and evolution of baseball at all levels, from the players they signed to the changes in the business climate of the game. This book presents original interviews with 19 baseball scouts. In many cases, these veterans are a vanishing breed; among the most respected baseball men in the business, most have a minimum of forty years' experience in scouting. They share their experiences as players, their development as scouts while the business and the game continually evolved, the players they signed and the ones that got away. Along with each interview is a list of the scout's signed players who made it to the major leagues.
Download or read book South of the Color Barrier written by John Virtue and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-10-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of how Mexican multimillionaire businessman Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League hastened the integration of major league baseball. During the decade that preceded Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier, almost 150 players from the Negro League played in Mexico, most of them recruited by Pasquel.
Download or read book The Pastime in Turbulence written by Brent Kelley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1940s were years of change in the world of baseball. Minor league free agents were introduced to the game in 1940 by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis; Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and player after player left to join the war effort with players both below and well above draft age completing the rosters; 1946 marked the first time that two National League teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers, were tied for first place, forcing a best two-out-of three series; 1947 brought racial integration, with Jackie Robinson taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers; and the American League saw its own tie for first place in 1948 between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox, which was played out in a one-game playoff. This work focuses on 27 players of the 1940s, guys--like Gene Thompson, Elmer Valo, Damon Phillips, Joe Cleary, and Cliff Chambers--who witnessed these changes and firsts personally. The players interviewed for this work had different experiences in the major leagues--some experienced long careers and benefited from the changes while others did not--and they come from diverse backgrounds as well.
Download or read book The Franchise Minnesota Twins written by La Velle E. Neal III and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Franchise: Minnesota Twins, take a more profound and unique journey into the history of an iconic team. This thoughtful and engaging collection of essays captures the astute fans' history of the franchise, going beyond well-worn narratives of yesteryear to uncover the less-discussed moments, decisions, people, and settings that fostered the Twins' one-of-a-kind identity. Through wheeling and dealing, mythmaking and community building, explore where the organization has been, how it got to prominence in the modern major league landscape, and how it'll continue to evolve and stay in contention for generations to come.Twins fans in the know will enjoy this personal, local, in-depth look at baseball history.
