The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball

Rating:
Summary: An essential book
Review: A masterpiece! This book is a cultural history of Cuba by a major literary critic and historian and a work of literature in its own right. Gonzalez Echevarria's rich narrative is captivating because of his attention to detail and profound knowledge of Cuban history and culture. This book is a treat to both lovers of baseball and of literature.

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Summary: Best book on Cuban baseball!
Review: I loved this book! From the very beginning Gonzalez Echavarria had me smelling the air in a Cuban baseball satdium and feeling the tension in the crowd as the pitchers winds up.

But what this book truly delivers, is a history lesson to those who think they know Cuban baseball, which has often been "presented" through American eyes (such as PBS specials or even through Ken Burns' documentary on Baseball).

Cubans not only exported baseball through Latin America, but because of the paradox of the intense Cuban racism at the amateur level and integrated leagues at the professional level, many young black Cuban players found fame and fortune in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and other places (including the Negro Leagues in the US), while many US professional Negro Leagues got to play alogside white US teammates in professional Cuban teams. Even the virulent Ty Cobb!

It also tells the stories of Cuban legends - such as Adolfo Luque - who played in the US Major Leagues in the 20's through the 60's - both as pitcher and manager in a time when white Cubans were allowed to play US professional baseball while their talented black countrymen couldn't.

This is a must read - from a Cuban perspective - for fans of baseball - not just Cuban baseball!

Rating:
Summary: Canseco Over Linares or Tony Oliva?
Review: In the months that have passed since the publication of RGE's monumental book on Cuban baseball history the nature and value of his work has slowly come more clearly into focus. The dedicated scholar-author is to be praised for his valuable contribution in providing rich detail on the early years of Cuban baseball not found in other English-language sources. But as David Skinner has pointed out in a recent on-target review in the scholarly journal NINE (Canadian Scholars' Press), Professor Gonzalez has throughout engaged in a good deal of mythmaking of his own. While RGE provides many delighful nuggets about early Cuban baseball and Negro league barnstorming on the island, and while he also does service for monolingual baseball enthusiasts by translating into English accounts and statistics from early seasons heretofore found only in Spanish-language books like those of Raul Diez Muro and Angel Torres, Skinner emphasizes rightly that there are many shortcomings in PRIDE OF HAVANA as a comprehensive history of Cuba's national pastime. RGE's heavy anti-Castro's politics causes him to lace the 40s and 50s era "Golden Age" with a thick coat of unwarranted nostalgia (baseball was actually near its death-knell in Cuba at the time), to dismiss the exciting and competitive brand of Cuban League baseball played after the revolution as totally worthless and unworthy of detailed chronicle, and to ignore the crucial fact (which should be central to any comprehensive history of island baseball) that the sport has only been national in its scope in Cuba after 1962 (the professional league which ended in 1961 was restrict to the city of Havana). Skinner's review also underscores other shortcomings: facts of Negro League barnstorming in Cuba are often presented without documentation and sometimes even inaccurtate; abilities and accomplishments of recent defectors and Cuban-born major leaguers are highly exaggerated (especially the claim that one-dimensional slugger Jose Canseco is perhaps the best-ever Cuban born player, rather than Martin Dihigo or Tony Oliva or Luis Tiant Jr.); legitimate island stars like Omar Linares, Jose Ibar and Jose Contreras are taken lightly because "they have not played against major leaguers," and the outright dismissal of the past forty years of Cuban baseball development (about one-third of the time frame covered by the saga of Cuban baseball) undermines any claim for a full-scale comprehensive history of the subject. THE PRIDE OF HAVANA has its many merits. But if one wants to see the true coloration of RGE's approach and discover what is missing in this rather incomplete history of Cuban baseball, an excellent start is David Skinner's perceptive review (NINE, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 2000).

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Summary: Not a Fan's Book
Review: Roberto Gonzalez Echavarria is fascinated by the relationship between communal cultural activities and ideology over the history of Cuba--he has published articles about dance, popular music, and of course literature. In this book he writes about baseball in Cuba, particularly its relationship with the Cuban national consciousness and the two revolutions it created. But the book also contains vivid lives, of the author himself as well as so many baseball men and baseball fans from the island of his youth, which give the book an immediacy I haven't found in any other history of Cuban culture.

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Summary: Papa Montero Says...
Review: This book filled many voids for me with regard to the history of Cuban baseball. It is especially good in discussing the heyday of Cuban baseball in the twenties and thirties. Like one of the other reviewers, though, I was dissappointed that the author did not discuss baseball since the revolution in greater detail.