Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color LineAlthough 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 86
Page xiii
... baseball. Black Latino players Rodolfo Fernández, Rafael Noble, Charlie Rivera, and Armando Vásquez shared stories ... professional baseball circuit, from players and executives to fans, émigrés, and others who followed the sport. In dif ...
... baseball. Black Latino players Rodolfo Fernández, Rafael Noble, Charlie Rivera, and Armando Vásquez shared stories ... professional baseball circuit, from players and executives to fans, émigrés, and others who followed the sport. In dif ...
Page xv
... professional baseball and tells how what transpired in Havana , Santo Domingo , and San Juan reverberated in Harlem , Chicago , and Cincinnati . Little did I know that a decade after I began this line of research , the National Baseball ...
... professional baseball and tells how what transpired in Havana , Santo Domingo , and San Juan reverberated in Harlem , Chicago , and Cincinnati . Little did I know that a decade after I began this line of research , the National Baseball ...
Page 2
... professional baseball . The problem of the color line emerged in part from a number of contradic- tory principles that guided professional baseball's operation . Viewing baseball as a commercial enterprise , league organizers and team ...
... professional baseball . The problem of the color line emerged in part from a number of contradic- tory principles that guided professional baseball's operation . Viewing baseball as a commercial enterprise , league organizers and team ...
Page 3
... baseball's first African American player in the twentieth century . My analysis of the dynamics of the color line in professional baseball focuses on individual agency — how specific actors sought to alter , negoti- ate , and transform ...
... baseball's first African American player in the twentieth century . My analysis of the dynamics of the color line in professional baseball focuses on individual agency — how specific actors sought to alter , negoti- ate , and transform ...
Page 4
... baseball's color line was a complicated process. As racialized individuals from the Spanish-speaking Americas, Latino participants in U.S. professional baseball blurred any line between in- clusion and exclusion, racial eligibility and ...
... baseball's color line was a complicated process. As racialized individuals from the Spanish-speaking Americas, Latino participants in U.S. professional baseball blurred any line between in- clusion and exclusion, racial eligibility and ...
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
PART TWO LATINOS AND THE RACIAL DIVIDE | 69 |
PART THREE BEYOND INTEGRATION | 177 |
Pioneering Latinos | 269 |
Notes | 275 |
Selected Bibliography | 321 |
Index | 345 |
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Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line Adrian Burgos No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
Adolfo Luque African American African American players Alex Pompez Almeida Alou Amer America’s game April ball barnstorming base big-league black baseball black players Cambria Caribbean catcher Cepeda Chicago Cincinnati Reds club color line Cuba Cuban baseball Cuban Giants Cuban players Cuban Stars cultural Dihigo Dodgers Dominican Republic Estalella ethnic fans Felipe Alou foreign-born Latinos González Harlem Havana historian History ican immigrants inclusion Indian integration Jim Crow José labor Latin American Latino players League team Luque major major-league organizations major-league teams Marsans Mexican League Miñoso National League native Nava's NBLA Negro leagues newspaper clipping North American numbers organized baseball performance pitcher Player File professional baseball Puerto Rican race racial knowledge racial understandings Rico Roberto roster scouting season segregation signing social Spanish Spanish-speaking Americas sportswriters spring training Tampa team officials teammates Tiant tion U.S. professional United University Press Vic Power Washington Senators Yankees York Age York Clipper York Cubans York Giants
Popular passages
Page 22 - ... of your Committee in this report are based upon this view, and they unanimously report against the admission of any club which may be composed of one or more colored persons.
Page 98 - With the admission of Cubans of a darker hue in the two big leagues it would then be easy for colored players who are citizens of this country to get into fast company.
Page 287 - First of all, we must define the construction and "technologies" of race as well as those of gender and sexuality.4 Second, we must expose the role of race as a metalanguage by calling attention to its powerful, all-encompassing effect on the construction and representation of other social and power relations, namely, gender, class, and sexuality.
Page 53 - If I had not been quite so black, I might have caught on as a Spaniard or something of that kind.
Page 164 - I did, including playing ball, was regulated by my color. They wouldn't even give me a chance in the big leagues because I was a Negro, yet they accepted every other nationality under the sun.
Page 71 - It followed the flag to the front in the sixties, and received then an impetus which has carried it to half a century of wondrous growth and prosperity. It has followed the flag to Alaska, where, under the midnight sun, it is played on Arctic ice.