Pitching Around Fidel

Pitching Around Fidel PDF Author: S.L. Price
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060934921
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
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.

Pitching Around Fidel

Pitching Around Fidel PDF Author: S.L. Price
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060934921
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Fidel Castro and Baseball

Fidel Castro and Baseball PDF Author: Peter C. Bjarkman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538110318
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
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.

Fidel Castro and the Baseball Pitchher

Fidel Castro and the Baseball Pitchher PDF Author: Oscar Valdes Estevez
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781410782977
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description


The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2017-2018

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2017-2018 PDF Author: William M. Simons
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476636311
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Widely acknowledged as the preeminent gathering of baseball scholars, the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture has made significant contributions to baseball research. This collection of 15 new essays selected from the 2017 and the 2018 symposia examines topics whose importance extend beyond the ballpark. Presented in six parts, the essays explore baseball's cultural and social history and analyze the tools that encourage a more sophisticated understanding of baseball as a game and enterprise.

Castro's Curveball

Castro's Curveball PDF Author: Tim Wendel
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803259577
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
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.

Cuba's Baseball Defectors

Cuba's Baseball Defectors PDF Author: Peter Costa Bjarkman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442247991
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
“Takes an inside look into the wave of player departures that has rocked the game both in Cuba and the U.S., while providing historical perspective.” —USA Today The stellar play and fascinating backstories of exiled Cuban sluggers and hurlers has become part of Major League Baseball history. On-field exploits by colorful Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, AL rookie-of-the-year José Abreu, home run derby champion Yoenis Céspedes, radar-gun busting Cincinnati fast-baller Aroldis Chapman, and a handful of others have been further enhanced by feel-good tales of desperate Cuban superstars risking their lives to escape Fidel Castro’s communist realm and chase an American Dream of financial and athletic success. But a truly ugly underbelly to this story has also slowly emerged—one that involves human smuggling operations financed by Miami crime syndicates, operated by Mexican drug cartels, and conveniently ignored by ball clubs endlessly searching for fresh waves of international talent. Given rare access to Cuba and its ballplayers, Peter C. Bjarkman has spent over twenty years traveling to all corners of the island getting to know the top Cuban stars and witnessing their struggles and triumphs. In this book, Bjarkman places events in the context of Cuban baseball history and tradition before delving into the stories of the major Cuban stars who have left the island. He reveals their personal histories, explains the events that led them to defect from their homeland, and details their harrowing journeys to US shores. Players whose big-league dreams failed are also discussed, as are Cuba’s efforts to stem the defection tide through working agreements with the Japanese and Mexican leagues. Cuba’s Baseball Defectors will fascinate baseball fans, those interested in the history of US-Cuba relations, and those wanting to learn more about the unsavory story of human trafficking in the name of baseball glory. “A revelation . . . an original social history for sports enthusiasts and readers interested in past and future Cuba–U.S. ties.” —Library Journal Includes photos

Sport and Revolutionaries

Sport and Revolutionaries PDF Author: John Nauright
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317519485
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This collection examines the role of sport in the lives of key revolutionary thinkers and leftist activists. In contrast to those who take a more romantic view of sport and believe in its apolitical nature, the eight essays help make clear how sport has served as a site for political activism and the revolutionary thought and practices of such individuals as Henry Mayers Hyndman, Vladimer Ilyich Lenin, Fidel Castro, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Harry Edwards, Charles Perkins, and Darius Dhlomo. Written by noted scholars with long publication lists, the essays in turn provide insights into the close connection among sport, politics, and revolutionary movements in countries varying widely in their history, governmental policies, and treatment of individuals and groups. Taken as a whole, the essays, which adopt a very broad definition of revolutions, are written with the hope of encouraging more serious thought regarding the transformative potential of sports which can be both individually liberating and responsible for co-opting the lower classes and helping maintain power among the political and economic elite in capitalistic as well as socialist societies. This bookw as published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot? PDF Author: Paul Aron
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470322128
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Advance Praise for Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot? "Aron has found the Rosetta stone to all of baseball's enduring mysteries, and he skips it along the pond with utter disregard for the ducks. His fortunate readers will have so much fun they may not even notice that they are becoming, page by page, real experts. Here is surefire water-cooler ammo." --JOHN THORN, editor of Total Baseball "Paul Aron puts a distant replay on the most famous controversies in baseball history. This is more fun than if he'd been there with a camcorder." --ALLEN BARRA, author of Clearing the Bases and Brushbacks and Knockdowns "Paul Aron has hit a home run for baseball fans. He dissects the evidence on baseball's 28 most charming mysteries. The result is a well-written, enjoyable, enlightening tour of the last hundred years of baseball history." --ANDREW ZIMBALIST, author of Baseball and Billions "Paul Aron's book on elements of baseball is both wise and fun, illuminating and entertaining." --ROBERT ADAIR, author of The Physics of Baseball "The essential last word for every fan who loves to debate baseball fact and fiction." --MICHAEL SHAPIRO, author of The Last Good Season

Baseball Without Borders

Baseball Without Borders PDF Author: George Gmelch
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803271255
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A collection of original essays about baseball in other cultures, notably Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Pacific, which explores a wide range of issues for each region.

The Cuba Reader

The Cuba Reader PDF Author: Aviva Chomsky
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478004568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description
Tracking Cuban history from 1492 to the present, The Cuba Reader includes more than one hundred selections that present myriad perspectives on Cuba's history, culture, and politics. The volume foregrounds the experience of Cubans from all walks of life, including slaves, prostitutes, doctors, activists, and historians. Combining songs, poetry, fiction, journalism, political speeches, and many other types of documents, this revised and updated second edition of The Cuba Reader contains over twenty new selections that explore the changes and continuities in Cuba since Fidel Castro stepped down from power in 2006. For students, travelers, and all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, The Cuba Reader is an invaluable introduction.