Pitching Around Fidel
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| Author | : S.L. Price |
| Publisher | : Harper Collins |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 2002-02-05 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 0060934921 |
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.
| Author | : Peter C. Bjarkman |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 400 |
| Release | : 2018-12-07 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 1538110318 |
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.
| Author | : Oscar Valdes Estevez |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 120 |
| Release | : 2003-09 |
| Genre | : Drama |
| ISBN | : 9781410782977 |
| Author | : Tim Wendel |
| Publisher | : U of Nebraska Press |
| Total Pages | : 308 |
| Release | : 2006-07-25 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 9780803259577 |
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.
| Author | : Karl Alexander |
| Publisher | : Forge Books |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2010-04-27 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 142994689X |
This novel about fathers and sons, hope and redemption, the author of Time After Time brilliantly evokes cultural icons in a thriller that captures the essence of its famous protagonists in a poignant, compelling drama that just might have been true. Cuba, 1957: Ernest Hemingway, long a resident of Cuba, is past his prime, feeling old, and fighting the twin problems of liver disease and writer's block. Then he meets Fidel Castro, who, in the Sierra Maestra mountains, is building a growing force of idealistic young guerrillas, determined to overthrow the corrupt, bloated regime of Generalissimo Fulgencio Batista. After Castro wins his revolution and takes power, he and Hemingway grow to respect and admire each other, and Hemingway helps Castro heal his relationship with his estranged son Fidelito, showing the boy how to throw a curve ball, something that eluded his father and kept him from pitching in the major leagues. Like Time After Time, this is a rousing novel that brings a famous author to vivid life in a great story of a memorable time. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
| Author | : Brin-Jonathan Butler |
| Publisher | : Picador |
| Total Pages | : 134 |
| Release | : 2014-06-03 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 1250044707 |
THE STORY OF CUBAN BOXER AND POLITICAL PARIAH GUILLERMO RIGONDEAUX'S HARROWING DECISION TO DEFECT IN HOPES OF REAPING THE REWARDS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM "What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?" This was the question posed by legendary boxer Teofilo Stevenson in the 1970s, crowned by many as the Muhammad Ali of Cuba, in response to an offer of five million dollars to leave his island to fight Ali. But not all Cubans have come to the same conclusion, let alone with such apparent ease. Guillermo Rigondeaux, two-time Olympic champion and heir to Stevenson's throne, sacrificed everything he had in his home country—his wife, his son, his government-subsidized car and house, as well as universal reverence among his fellow citizens—to try to make it in the mecca of big-money boxing, the United States of America. But has the chance to make good in America been worth the loss of his national identity and the love of his countrymen? And to what extent has he been corrupted by the promise of untold riches? In A Cuban Boxer's Journey, author, filmmaker, and journalist Brin-Jonathan Butler chronicles the fascinating and tumultuous career of Rigondeaux—moody, driven, and almost mythically talented––as he attempts to capture the elusive and often punishing American dream. See how this athlete's most daunting challenge becomes how he can survive the complex forces outside of the ring.
| Author | : S. L. Price |
| Publisher | : Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Total Pages | : 399 |
| Release | : 2016-10-04 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 080219009X |
From a Sports Illustrated senior writer, “a richly detailed history of Aliquippa football . . . A remarkable story of urban struggle and athletic prowess” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). In the early twentieth century, down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company built one of the largest mills in the world and a town to go with it. Aliquippa was a beacon and a melting pot, pulling in thousands of families from Europe and the Jim Crow South. The J&L mill, though dirty and dangerous, offered a chance at a better life. It produced the steel that built American cities and won World War II and even became something of a workers’ paradise. But then, in the 1980s, the steel industry cratered. The mill closed. Crime rose and crack hit big. But another industry grew in Aliquippa. The town didn’t just make steel; it made elite football players, from Mike Ditka to Ty Law to Darrelle Revis. Few places churned out talent like Aliquippa, a town not far from the birthplace of professional football in western Pennsylvania. Despite its troubles—maybe even because of them—Aliquippa became legendary for producing football greatness. A masterpiece of narrative journalism, Playing Through the Whistle tells the remarkable story of Aliquippa and through it, the larger history of American industry, sports, and life. Like football, it will make you marvel, wince, cry, and cheer. “Looks at the struggling steel town of Aliquippa, Pa., through the prism of its high school football team. The author understands the Rust Belt particulars of the region better than most political professionals.” —The Wall Street Journal
| Author | : William M. Simons |
| Publisher | : McFarland |
| Total Pages | : 229 |
| Release | : 2019-03-12 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 1476670153 |
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.
| Author | : Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 513 |
| Release | : 2001-05-24 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 0195349172 |
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.
| Author | : Steve Fainaru |
| Publisher | : Villard |
| Total Pages | : 579 |
| Release | : 2001-06-01 |
| Genre | : Sports & Recreation |
| ISBN | : 0375506691 |
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.
