Download or read book The Rise of the Latin American Baseball Leagues 1947 1961 written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major League Baseball today would be unrecognizable without the large number of Latin American players and managers filling its ranks. Their strong influence on the sport can trace its beginnings to professional leagues established south of the border and in the Caribbean nations in the 1940s. This narrative history of Latin American baseball leagues during the 1940s and 1950s provides an in-depth, year-by-year chronicle of seasonal leagues in the seven primary baseball-playing areas in the region: Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The success of these leagues, and their often acrimonious competition with U.S. Organized Baseball, eventually ushered in a new era of contract concessions from owners and general labor advancements for players that forever changed the game.
Download or read book Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roberto "Bobby" Maduro (1916-1986) was a visionary baseball team owner and executive. His dedication to promoting the game internationally from the 1950s through the 1970s remains unrivaled. He headed Havana-based clubs in the Cuban Winter League and teams in the U.S. minor leagues, which helped brand Caribbean baseball in the eyes of North American fans. He co-built the first million-dollar ballpark in Latin America. His Havana stadium was confiscated by Castro's revolution, along with all his accumulated wealth. Maduro began a new life in exile in the U.S., first as a minor league owner, then as a front office executive. He founded the short-lived Inter-American League in 1979, composed of five Caribbean-basin teams and one U.S. entry from his adopted hometown of Miami. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn said of his many achievements, "No one was more dedicated, more knowledgeable or more concerned about the game than Bobby Maduro."
Download or read book Chronology of Latin Americans in Baseball 1871 2015 written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-07-13 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This combination reference book and history covers the inroads and achievements made on professional ball fields by Latin American athletes, the Major Leagues' greatest international majority. Following an "on this date in Hispanic baseball history" format, the author takes a commemorative look at generations of players from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America, from the earliest pioneers through the well-known stars of today. There are two appendices: first Latinos by franchise; and an extensive chronological listing of Latino milestones by country. The book is fully indexed by players, teams, ballparks, and other contributors to Latino baseball history.
Download or read book Cookie Rojas written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-05-27 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A professional baseball prospect given little chance of making the big time, Octavio "Cookie" Rojas nevertheless flourished at the sport's top level during a 16-year major league career. Never breaking ties with the profession he loved, after leaving the field as a player Rojas continued well into his 70s in the varied roles of coach, scout, manager, and broadcaster. Rojas broke into the big leagues in the early 1960s, a bygone era when there were only ten teams in each major league and the World Series was exclusively performed under the autumn sun. A native of Cuba, Rojas had to leave behind his country following the Cuban Revolution in order to pursue his ultimate baseball dreams. His side story of cultural assimilation, like those of his many ball-playing compatriots of the time, is a unique account of perseverance and dedication and a desire to succeed for himself and his family.
Download or read book The Statues and Legacies of Combat Athletes in the Americas written by C. Nathan Hatton and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-05-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The violence of combat sports left a mark on how fans and communities remembered athletes. As individual endeavors, combat sports have often produced more detailed, emotionally poignant, and deeply personal stories of triumph than those associated with team sports. Commemorative statues to combat athletes are therefore unique as historical markers and sites of memory. These statues tell remarkable stories of the athletes themselves, but also the people and communities that planned and built them, the cities and towns that memorialized them, the fans who followed them, and the evolution of memory and place in the decades that followed their inauguration. Edited by C. Nathan Hatton and David M. K. Sheinin, The Statues and Legacies of Combat Athletes in the Americas brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars from across North America to interrogate the intimate and layered meanings attached to these monuments to the lives and legacies of combat athletes.
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 304 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 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 264 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 Baseball s Great Hispanic Pitchers written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball has had many outstanding Latin American pitchers since the early 20th century. This book profiles the greatest Hispanic hurlers to toe the rubber from the mounds of the major leagues, winter leagues and Negro leagues. The careers of the top major league pitchers to come from Central and South America and the Caribbean are examined in decade-by-decade portrayals, culminating with an all-time ranking by the author. The grand exploits of these athletes backdrop the evolving pitching eras of the game, from the macho, complete-game period that existed for the majority of the last century to the financially-driven, pitch-count sensitive culture that dominates baseball thinking today.
Download or read book Pitching Democracy written by April Yoder and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book focuses on the history of baseball in the Dominican Republic, especially the sport's political ramifications. Yoder argues that Dominicans kept their sense of democratic idealism in part because they were intertwined with the aspirations of baseball as it developed into a transnational industry. Baseball became economically central to the Dominican Republic at the same time as the country was turning toward concerns of development, resulting in an economic and political "Third Way" that drew from both the Cuban and US models"--
Download or read book The Integration of the Pacific Coast League written by Amy Essington and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An account of the desegregation of baseball's Pacific Coast League, the first American League of any sport to desegregate all of its teams"--
Download or read book Manager of Giants written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades prior to the rise of Babe Ruth, the most recognized name in baseball was John McGraw. An outstanding player in the 1890s, McGraw--nicknamed "Mugsy"--was molded in the rough and tumble pre-20th century game where sportsmanship and fair play took a back seat to competition. Later, he became the successful manager of the New York Giants, dominating the National League in New York City for more than 30 years. McGraw led the Giants with authoritarian swagger--earning another moniker, "Little Napoleon"--from 1902 through 1932, before illness forced his retirement. In his 31 seasons in New York, his teams won three world championships and 10 pennants and rarely finished out of the first division. He was a trailblazer in the use of bullpen and position player substitutions, and pushed hit-and-run strategies over the then prevalent dictums of sacrifice bunting. An unconventional leader, McGraw missed considerable bench time during his reign on account of injury, illness and fiery temperament.
Download or read book The 1933 New York Giants written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Terry had some big shoes to fill in midseason 1932, when he took over managing the second division New York Giants for the iconic John McGraw. The next year, his first full season as player-manager, "Memphis Bill" guided the Polo Grounders to the pennant and a World Series victory over a strong Washington Senators team. This is the complete story of how Terry reshaped the club he inherited, molding them into world champions at the height of the Great Depression. The author provides a game-by-game season narrative, with detailed depictions of each Fall Classic contest. Biographical overviews of the Giants' primary players and an analysis of the first All-Star Game are included.
Download or read book The Curse of the Cobalt Moon written by Lou Hernández and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Curse of the Cobalt Moon, teenage hemophiliac, Joshua Puig discovers that he is a half-vampire. He has his life turned upside down when he is confronted with the existence of two types of half-vampires--a non-aggressive group, and another, infused with a much more combative and deadly blood stock. Joshua reluctantly accepts that he belongs to the group with the 'passive' supernatural strains. A cycle of seven blue moons completes the transformation for Joshua and all like him. Now, aged 16, a foster child living in Miami during the late 1960s, he is rapidly nearing this life changing event. Leading up to the "cobalt moon reckoning" Joshua, his fellow half-vampire, Milagros, and friends are thrust into their own life and death battle against the vengeance-seeking vampire vixen, Alegría Pérez.
Download or read book A History of Boxing in Mexico written by Stephen D. Allen and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals how boxing and boxers became sources of national pride and sparked debates on what it meant to be Mexican, masculine, and modern.
Download or read book Memories of Winter Ball written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-05-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an oral history of the Latin American baseball leagues of the mid-20th century. Interviews with dozens of former major league players, who participated in the winter leagues of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, provide a fascinating view of life in all of these countries during the most nostalgic era of baseball. For the majority of the players, it was the first time in their lives living in a foreign country; some of the more fortunate made trips to the Caribbean Series. The players' recollections range from their experiences on and off the field, to where they lived, what they ate, the ballparks, other players and irrepressible fans. The stories are often juxtaposed against the backdrop of Latin American political history, adding to the unique international flavor.
Download or read book Latinos In Beisbol written by James D. Cockcroft and published by . This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Details the history and contributions of Latin American players in major league baseball, describing the obstacles, including racism, that they have had to face.
Download or read book Who s Who in Cuban Baseball 1878 1961 written by Jorge S. Figueredo and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True professional baseball has not been played in Cuba since banned by the communist regime after the 1961 season, but there is a legacy of more than 70 years of continuous excellence by countless Cubans who played in the organized leagues of the island from 1878 to 1961. Scores of North Americans, white and black, and Latin Americans also played in Cuba during that time. Biographical and season-by-season statistical information for the many hundreds of Cuban, North American and Latin American players who took part in the Cuban leagues from 1878 to 1961 has been compiled in this work. The time period is divided into three eras. The first is from 1878 to 1899, the primitive years of the Cuban league; the second, 1900 to 1933, when the league opened its doors to welcome foreign players; and the third, from 1934 to 1961, the golden age that made Cuba then the second power in organized baseball. Birth and death dates for each player (if they could be determined) are provided. The statistical information for players includes the number of games played, at bats, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, and season average. The statistical information for pitchers includes the number of games pitched, complete games, win-loss record, and winning percentage.
