Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Volume 23) (American Crossroads) Paperback – June 4, 2007

Great books for baseball fans like this one are hard to find in most bookstores. I purchased this book for a teenager interested in baseball history and he absolutely loved it!

I bought this book for my ethnicity in baseball class, and it was a really good book. I liked it a lot.

As someone who has not paid much attention to baseball in my life (my favorite sports leagues are the NBA and the NFL), Burgos' book was enlightening for several reasons: one, I learned that major league baseball (MLB) historically wasn't the only game in town, and that there used to be a much richer range of baseball leagues; two, I learned that the 'majors' hasn't always been everyone's first choice. Baseball itself has always seemed to me as a complicated sport to analyze due to the position in occupies in the American imagination. Burgos himself concedes that baseball has a special place for the country, as it is the only sport that has ever had the select service commission intervene, in order to regulate the amount of foreign players (170). Before this class, the only book I had read about the sport was for As per another book I read for a class here in Columbia (Baseball Goes West, by Lincoln Mitchell), who writes that baseball is one of those things that no one is ever objective about, since "many people perceive baseball to be at its best when they were between 9 to 12 years old", complicating our attempts to evaluate the sport on its own.In Adrian Burgos' sees his book as a challenge to the existing historiography that "simply categorizes the Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, among other Latinos, who entered organized baseball during the Jim Crow era as white" (263). His writing is attempt to explain the story of how Latinos navigated (and at times helped shape) the color line, which determined who could and could not play. These people, who had partial inclusion serving the role as "integration pioneers", who charted the path for minority participation in major leagues, until the watershed moment of Jackie Robinson's entry to the major leagues in 1947. His book not only discusses how Latino players decided for or against playing in these new environments, but also to build a community, transform themselves from colonial subjects into citizens, as well as display masculinity. In addition to the players, he also also how Hispanic executives (such as Alexjandro Pompez) successfully managed to grow the industry, at least until 1948. Burgos spends some time going into some detail about talking about individual teams, such as the New York Cubans or the Washington Senators, since integration was a series of localized struggles- just because certain teams in certain cities began to accept hispanic players . Of course, Burgos' book also discusses other racialized minorities too, as well as their struggle to fit into the Jim Crow era baseball leagues, such as native Americans like Louis Sockalexis.At the end of reading this book, I found myself thinking about Virginia Woolf's statement about how human nature "changed... on or about December 1910", and how the history that I know (at least with baseball) focuses around one point: Jackie Robinson's entry to the major leagues. In this sense, the two cleavages for me were before Jackie Robinson, and after Jackie Robinson. I get the feeling that one of the the things Burgos would like to do is to communicate that this specific point in history has a rich history to it that never would have been possible had so many Latino baseball players not pioneered the limits of the color line, and served as test subjects for what white America would and would not accept. In this way, I've begun to wonder as whether my view or understanding of history is overly pointillist, and whether I need to adopt a more continuous view of events.One thing that I felt like was missing from Burgos' work was some sort of salary or financial data. I found myself wondering the enter time what sort of incentives figures such as Jackie Robinson had to join the major leagues. I understand that Burgos' main goal is more to develop the conceptual framework as to how a gerrymandered color line was the precursor to ... for example, how much was Pedro 'Cap' Cepeda's refusal to play in the United States a matter of principle vs. financial? What kind of opportunity cost did he forego by choosing to forge his career in Puerto Rico instead? The answer (large opportunity cost vs. small opportunity cost) is of interest to me, and I think should be of interest to other scholars, because it would inform us if these decisions were financial, reactionary, or ethno solidarity-linked.Similarly, another thing that I felt like was missing was some sort of commentary on capitalism's role in overcoming (or not) the color line. Burgos in chapter 8 makes it clear that while the 1930s and 1940s had always been a high point for Latino representation within American baseball, it would not have had its breakthrough had commissioner Landis' death in 1944. However, all throughout his book, Burgos notes that economic pressure actually may have served as a big help in allowing ethnic minorities to participate in integrated baseball. For instance, Burgos writes that after Jackie Robinson helped the Dodgers get an increase in viewership, it prompted many other teams to try and replicate this model, making them more amenable to recruiting Latino and Black players. Similarly, Burgos also writes about how Vincent Nava most likely brought his team more viewership, which was an important step in making baseball executives realize that there was reason to allow non white people into the league. Perhaps crediting this to 'Capitalism' is a bit too generous to an unfeeling economic system, but I remain curious about how things would have unfolded had financial incentives been lined up differently.

GREAT LITTLE BOOK FULL OF UNKNOWN OR PREVIOUSLY LITTLE KNOWN FACTS. I WOULD RECOMMEND IT TO ANY LATINO WHO WANTS TO KNOW SOME OF THE HISTORY BEHIND THE STRUGGLE FOR LATIN BALL PLAYERS OF THAT ERA.

A scholarly book, and pretty dense. Good study, however.

This gives some interesting history but the author is not a writer! He presents a piece of information then drones on an on and repeats himself for 10 pages in different ways then repeats this writing style for the next piece of information.I had to read this for class, but couldn't even finish it, it is so dry and boring! Avoid picking this book for a book report.It gets one star because it was easy to get. Although it is far too expensive.