Download or read book Baseball on the Border written by Alan M. Klein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball), the "Tecos" had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities. Baseball on the Border is the story of the rise and unexpected demise of this surprising team. For Alan Klein, a cultural anthropologist specializing in sport, "the border" is almost a nation of its own. Having formed teams of players from both sides of the Rio Grande for almost a century, organizers and followers of the "Border Birds" often join forces but just as frequently squabble with each other in a chronic border tension. Throughout the book, Klein includes firsthand observations of the team and descriptions of its players. Readers will meet Dan Firova, the Tecos' beleaguered manager, a border-region native who nevertheless finds himself a target of the Mexican media. The "Ugly American," Willie Waite, is a young pitcher whose stunning success does nothing to diminish the disdain he has for his Mexican teammates. Ernesto Barraza, "The Trickster," once threw a no-hitter on only seventy-three pitches (on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough), but occasionally shows up at the park missing part of his uniform. And then there is Andres Mora, an aged slugger who, despite three seasons in major league baseball and a life of personal excesses, came within a few home runs of setting the all-time Mexican League record. This is just part of the roster of the Tecos and only a fraction of the lineup of Baseball on the Border. Anyone with an interest in baseball will be enlightened and entertained by this informative book.

Download or read book Border Ball written by Greg Selber and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Growing the Game written by Alan M. Klein and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-18 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociologist and anthropologist scientifically examines the worldwide growth of MLB and America’s favorite pastime. Baseball fans understand the game has become increasingly international. Major league rosters include players from no fewer than fourteen countries, and more than one-fourth of all players are foreign born. Here, Alan Klein offers the first full-length study of a sport in the process of globalizing. Looking at the international activities of big-market and small-market baseball teams, as well as the Commissioner’s Office, he examines the ways in which Major League Baseball operates on a world stage that reaches from the Dominican Republic to South Africa to Japan. The origins of baseball’s efforts to globalize are complex, stemming as much from decreasing opportunities at home as from promise abroad. Klein chronicles attempts to develop the game outside the United States, the strategies that teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Kansas City Royals have devised to recruit international talent, and the ways baseball has been growing in other countries. He concludes with an assessment of the obstacles that may inhibit or promote baseball’s progress toward globalization, offering thoughtful proposals to ensure the health and growth of the game in the United States and abroad. “A superb inside look at how the national pastime has reinvented itself . . . Klein’s writing is engaging, and his research is top-notch.” —Tim Wendel, author of The New Face of Baseball: The One-Hundred-Year Rise and Triumph of Latinos in America’s Favorite Sport “A timely contribution to our understanding of baseball in our contemporary age.” —Michael L. Butterworth, Sociology of Sport Journal

Download or read book Crisis on the Border written by Matt C. Pinsker and published by Regnery. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idealistic and eager to serve his country, Army Reservist JAG Captain Matt C. Pinsker volunteer to go to Laredo, Texas, for six months as a federal prosecutor, helping out the short-staffed U.S. Attorney's Office. What he saw in Laredo changed his life, and his riveting account of the breakdown of law and order will change how you think about border security. Crisis on the Border reveals: - That drug cartels are in control of the U.S.-Mexican border - The horrifying viciousness of the criminals who smuggle human beings into the United States - That drug abuse and disease are rampant among illegal aliens—many of whom have lengthy criminal records - That routine abuse of the U.S. asylum laws undermines legitimate asylum-seekers - That U.S. courts are generally more lenient with illegal aliens than they would be with American citizens - The hypocrisy behind the "children in cages" stories - Solutions: how to solve the crisis on the border Earnest, shocking, and revealing, Crisis on the Border is essential for understanding one of the greatest problems confronting our country.

Download or read book 100 Miles of Baseball written by Dale Jacobs and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From sandlots to major league stands, two fans set out to recapture their love of the game. For most of their lives together Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs couldn’t imagine a spring without baseball. Their season tickets renewal package always seemed to arrive on the bleakest day of winter, offering reassurance that sunnier times were around the corner. Baseball was woven into the fabric of their lives, connecting them not only to each other but also to their families and histories. But by 2017 it was obvious something was amiss: the allure of another Sunday watching their Detroit Tigers had devolved to obligation. Not entirely sure what they were missing, they did have an idea on where it might be found: in their own backyard. Drawing a radius of one hundred miles around their home in Windsor, Ontario, Dale and Heidi set a goal of seeing fifty games at all levels of competition over the following summer. From bleachers behind high schools, to manicured university turf, to the steep concrete stands of major league parks, 100 Miles of Baseball tells the story of how two fans rediscovered their love of the game—and with it their relationships and the region they call home.

Download or read book Mexican American Baseball in El Paso written by Richard A. Santillan, Eric Enders, Pete G. Flores, Donavan Lopez, and Jorge Iber and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexican American Baseball in El Paso chronicles the vibrant and colorful history of baseball in the El Paso-Juárez border region. For more than a century, baseball along the border has served as a means of bringing together people of all backgrounds, races, and nationalities, from the fly-by-night teams of the Pancho Villa era to the fabled semiprofessional clubs of the Lower Valley League. For the area's Mexican and Mexican American citizens, storied teams like the Juárez Indios, Fabens Merchants, 1949 Bowie Bears, and El Paso Diablos served as both community rallying points and signposts of cultural identity. From the legendary semiprofessional players of decades past to the most recent major leaguers, this book presents the photographic history of baseball in America's largest border community.

Download or read book The Line Becomes a River written by Francisco Cantú and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Download or read book Our 50 State Border Crisis written by Howard G. Buffett and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's most prominent philanthropists, an eye-opening, myth-busting new perspective on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules -- and killing us in record numbers. Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk. Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants -- all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.

Download or read book Making My Pitch written by Ila Jane Borders and published by University of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who despite formidable obstacles became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a college baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game. After Mike Veeck signed Borders in May 1997 to pitch for his St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League, she accomplished what no woman had done since the Negro Leagues era: play men’s professional baseball. Borders played four professional seasons and in 1998 became the first woman in the modern era to win a professional ball game. Borders had to find ways to fit in with her teammates, reassure their wives and girlfriends, work with the media, and fend off groupies. But these weren’t the toughest challenges. She had a troubled family life, a difficult adolescence as she struggled with her sexual orientation, and an emotionally fraught college experience as a closeted gay athlete at a Christian university. Making My Pitch shows what it’s like to be the only woman on the team bus, in the clubhouse, and on the field. Raw, open, and funny at times, her story encompasses the loneliness of a groundbreaking pioneer who experienced grave personal loss. Borders ultimately relates how she achieved self-acceptance and created a life as a firefighter and paramedic and as a coach and goodwill ambassador for the game of baseball.

Download or read book The Soul of Baseball written by Joe Posnanski and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When legendary Negro League player Buck O'Neil asked Joe Posnanski how he fell in love with baseball, the renowned sports columnist was inspired by the question. He decided to spend the 2005 baseball season touring the country with the ninety-four-year-old O'Neil in hopes of rediscovering the love that first drew them to the game. The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions—for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music—O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.

Download or read book Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and published by Lerner Publishing Group. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal

Download or read book Outsider Baseball written by Scott Simkus and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outsider Baseball is the story of a forgotten world, where independent professional ball clubs zig-zagged across America, plying their trade in big cities and small villages alike. Included among the former and future major leaguers were mercenaries, scalawags, and outcasts. This is where Babe Ruth, Rube Waddell, and John McGraw crossed bats with the Cuban Stars, Tokyo Giants, Brooklyn Bushwicks, dozens of famous Negro league teams, and novelty acts such as the House of David and Bloomer Girls. Legends emerged in this alternate baseball universe and author Scott Simkus sets out to share their stories and use a critical lens to separate fact from fiction. Written in a gritty prose style, Outsider Baseball combines meticulous research with modern analytics, opening the door to an unforgettable funhouse of baseball history. Scott Simkus is the founder and editor of the Outsider Baseball Bulletin. He is the winner of a research award from the Society of American Baseball Research for his work on the Negro League Database.

Download or read book Bigger Than the Game written by Dirk Hayhurst and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best writer in a baseball uniform." --Tyler Kepner, The New York Times After nearly a decade in the minors, Dirk Hayhurst defied the odds to climb onto the pitcher's mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Newly married, with a big league paycheck and a brand new house, Hayhurst was ready for a great season in the Bigs. Then fate delivered a crushing hit. Hayhurst blew out his pitching shoulder in an insane off-season workout program. After surgery, rehab, and more rehab, his major-league dreams seemed more distant than ever. From there things got worse, weirder, and funnier. In a crazy world of injured athletes, autograph-seeking nuns, angry wrestlers, and trainers with a taste for torture, Hayhurst learned lessons about the game--and himself--that were not in any rulebook. Honest, soul'searching, insightful, hilarious, and moving, Dirk Hayhurst's latest memoir is an indisputable baseball classic. Praise for The Bullpen Gospels and Out of My League "Dirk Hayhurst writes about baseball in a unique way. Observant, insightful, human, and hilarious." --Bob Costas "A fun read. . .This book shows why baseball is so often used as a metaphor for life." --Keith Olbermann "Entertaining and engaging. . .reminiscent of Jim Bouton's Ball Four." --Booklist "A rare gem of a baseball book." --Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated "A humorous, candid, and insightful memoir of Hayhurst's rookie season in the majors. . .Grade: Home Run." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

Download or read book The Northern Game written by Bob Elliott and published by Wilmington, Del. : Sport Media Pub.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opening at the 2004 Olympic baseball tournament, where the unheralded Canadian team came within an errant throw of the gold medal game, the author recounts Canada's rich baseball history, from 1838 to 2004, when the top rookie in both major leagues hailed form the Great White North.

Download or read book Hard Line written by Ken Ellingwood and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2005-07-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Southwestern border is one of the most fascinating places in America, a region of rugged beauty and small communities that coexist across the international line. In the past decade, the area has also become deadly as illegal immigration has shifted into some of the harshest territory on the continent, reshaping life on both sides of the border. In Hard Line, Ken Ellingwood, a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, captures the heart of this complex and fascinating land, through the dramatic stories of undocumented immigrants and the border agents who track them through the desert, Native Americans divided between two countries, human rights workers aiding the migrants and ranchers taking the law into their own hands. This is a vivid portrait of a place and its people, and a moving story of the West that has major implications for the nation as a whole.

Download or read book Baseball s First Mexican American Star written by Noe Torres and published by Aeon Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before Blacks and Hispanics became accepted in professional baseball in the U.S., a blazing-fast Mexican-American, Leo Najo, rose to national prominence. Overcoming great adversity, he transformed himself into one of the greatest players of the early 20th century.

Download or read book Dak To and the Border Battles of Vietnam 1967 1968 written by Michael A. Eggleston and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1967, the North Vietnamese launched a series of offensives in the Central Highlands along the border with South Vietnam--a strategic move intended to draw U.S. and South Vietnamese forces away from major cities before the Tet Offensive. A series of bloody engagements known as "the border battles" followed, with the principle action taking place at Dak To. Drawing on the writings of key figures, veterans' memoirs and the author's records from two tours in Vietnam, this book merges official history with the recollections of those who were there, revealing previously unpublished details of these decisive battles.