Download or read book Full Count written by Milton H. Jamail and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Baseball Cop written by Eddie Dominguez and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuban Star written by Adrian Burgos, Jr. and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Pride of Havana written by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-05-24 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first amateur leagues of the 1860s to the exploits of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, here is the definitive history of baseball in Cuba. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria expertly traces the arc of the game, intertwining its heroes and their stories with the politics, music, dance, and literature of the Cuban people. What emerges is more than a story of balls and strikes, but a richly detailed history of Cuba told from the unique cultural perch of the baseball diamond. Filling a void created by Cuba's rejection of bullfighting and Spanish hegemony, baseball quickly became a crucial stitch in the complex social fabric of the island. By the early 1940s Cuba had become major conduit in spreading the game throughout Latin America, and a proving ground for some of the greatest talent in all of baseball, where white major leaguers and Negro League players from the U.S. all competed on the same fields with the cream of Latin talent. Indeed, readers will be introduced to several black ballplayers of Afro-Cuban descent who played in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier once and for all. Often dramatic, and always culturally resonant, Gonzalez Echevarria's narrative expertly lays open the paradox of fierce Cuban independence from the U.S. with Cuba's love for our national pastime. It shows how Fidel Castro cannily associated himself with the sport for patriotic p.r.--and reveals that his supposed baseball talent is purely mythical. Based on extensive primary research and a wealth of interviews, the colorful, often dramatic anecdotes and stories in this distinguished book comprise the most comprehensive history of Cuban baseball yet published and ultimately adds a vital lost chapter to the history of baseball in the U.S.

Download or read book Roberto Clemente written by Peter C. Bjarkman and published by Facts On File. This book was released on 1991 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the baseball superstar from Puerto Rico who, before his untimely death in a 1972 airplane crash, was noted for his achievements on and off the baseball field.

Download or read book Smoke written by Mark Rucker and published by Total Sports. This book was released on 1999 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Baseball s Other All Stars written by William F. McNeil and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball is played in all corners of the world, so it is no surprise to learn that some of the greatest hardballers of all time never played on a U.S. major league diamond. Who knows what major league records would have been shattered had Sadaharu Oh of Japan, Josh Gibson of the Negro Leagues, Martin Dihigo of Cuba, Francisco Coimbre of Puerto Rico and Hector Espino of Mexico played in the United States. This work is a survey of the greatest baseball players who never played in the U.S. major leagues. The greatest players from the various professional leagues outside organized baseball in the United States are reviewed, and all-star teams are selected for each league. Finally, the author selects an "all-world all-star team" from the individual all-star teams from Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Negro Leagues.

Download or read book Game Seven written by Paul Volponi and published by Speak. This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Viking, 2015.

Download or read book The Duke of Havana written by Steve Fainaru and published by Villard. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Straits written by Randy Wayne White and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable new novel in the Doc Ford series by New York Times–bestselling author Randy Wayne White. Doc Ford’s old friend, General Juan Garcia, has gone into the lucrative business of smuggling Cuban baseball players into the U.S. He is also feasting on profits made by buying historical treasures for pennies on the dollar. He prefers what dealers call HPC items—high-profile collectibles—but when he manages to obtain a collection of letters written by Fidel Castro between 1960–62 to a secret girlfriend, it’s not a matter of money anymore. Garcia has stumbled way out of his depth. First Garcia disappears, and then the man to whom he sold the letters. When Doc Ford begins to investigate, he soon becomes convinced that those letters contain a secret that someone, or some powerful agency, cannot allow to be made public. A lot happened between Cuba and the United States from 1960–62. Many men died. A few more will hardly be noticed.

Download or read book Back Channel to Cuba written by William M. LeoGrande and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Download or read book Pitching Around Fidel written by S.L. Price and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-02-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an artful pastiche of observation, personal narrative, interviews, and investigative reporting, S.L. Price, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, describes sports and athletes in today's Cuba. On his journeys to the island, Price finds a country that celebrates sports like no other and a regime that uses games as both symbol and weapon in its dying revolution. He finds Olympic and world champion boxers, track stars, volleyball and baseball players, but he also finds that with Castro's revolution staggering beneath the weight of a great depression, Cuba's famed sports system is imploding. Athletes are defecting by plane and raft. Superstars bike to games and legends like boxer Teofilo Stevenson are forced to lost themselves in a bottle of rum. Beyond an examination of sports in the hothouse of revolution, Pitching Around Fidel presents a vibrant and realistic portrait of Cuba today, complete with sex-happy tourists, blackouts, Fidel's famous former lover, and a black-power fugitive wanted in the U.S. for murder and hijacking. At once a biting travelogue and a meditation on sports in both America and Cuba, Pitching Around Fidel is a valuable document about a time and place that is close to fading away.

Download or read book Fidel Castro and Baseball written by Peter C. Bjarkman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

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 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 Cuban Baseball Legends written by Peter C. Bjarkman and published by Society for American Baseball Research. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minnie Minoso. Martin Dihigo. Luis Tiant Sr. and Jr. "El Duque" Orlando and Livan Hernadez. These are only a few of the leading lights profiled in this SABR BioProject book. The 47 individuals profiled here represent only a small handful of the legions of memorable and sometimes even legendary figures produced over nearly a century and a half by an island nation where the bat-and-ball sport known as baseball is more than a national pastime, it is the national passion. The book presents 47 biographies in all, plus essays on Cuban baseball. Profiled in this book: Aquino Abreu by Peter C. Bjarkman Rafael Almeida by Zack Moser Santos Amaro by Rory Costello Sandy (Edmundo) Amoros by Rory Costello Steve (Esteban) Bellan by Brian McKenna Ramon Bragana by Lou Hernandez Bert (Dagoberto) Campaneris by Rich Schabowski Jose Cardenal by Ray Birch Paul Casanova by Rory Costello and Jose Ramirez Sandy (Sandalio) Consuegra by Rory Costello Mike (Miguel) Cuellar by Adam Ulrey Tommie (Tomas) de la Cruz by Peter C. Bjarkman Martin Dihigo by Peter C. Bjarkman Pedro Formental by Tom Hawthorn Mike (Miguel) Fornieles by Thomas Ayers Barbaro Garbey by Doug Hill Silvio Garcia by Joe Gerard Mike (Miguel Angel) Gonzalez by Joe Gerard Tony Gonzalez by Rory Costello and Jose Ramirez Mike (Fermin) Guerra by Bill Nowlin El Duque (Orlando) Hernandez and Livan Hernandez by Peter C. Bjarkman Mike (Ramon) Herrera by Bill Nowlin Pancho Herrera by Jose Ramirez Omar Linares by Peter C. Bjarkman Dolf (Adolfo) Luque by Peter C. Bjarkman Bobby Maduro by Rory Costello Connie (Conrado) Marrero by Peter C. Bjarkman Armando Marsans by Eric Enders Rogelio Martinez by Rory Costello Roman Mejias by Ron Briley, Rory Costello, and Bill Nowlin Jose de la Caridad Mendez by Peter C. Bjarkman Minnie (Orestes) Minoso by Mark Stewart Willy (Guillermo) Miranda by Rory Costello Julio Moreno by Rory Costello Tony Oliva by Peter C. Bjarkman Alejandro Oms by John Struth Camilo Pascual by Peter C. Bjarkman Tony (Tani) Perez by Phil Cola Pedro Ramos by Peter C. Bjarkman Cookie (Octavio) Rojas by Peter M. Gordon Chico Ruiz by Rory Costello Jose Tartabull by Joanne Hulbert Tony Taylor by Rory Costello and Jose Ramirez Luis Tiant Jr.by Mark Armour Luis Tiant Sr. by Rory Costello Cristobal Torriente by Peter C. Bjarkman Zoilo Versalles by Peter C. Bjarkman"

Download or read book Castro s Curveball written by Tim Wendel and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When an old scrapbook stirs memories, Billy Bryan looks back to the year 1947 when he was playing winter ball in Cuba, enjoying Havana's decadent nightlife, and dreaming of a major-league career.