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Fidel Castro and Baseball
The Untold Story
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2018
Summary
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.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2018
ISBN-Print
978-1-5381-1030-0
ISBN-Online
978-1-5381-1031-7
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
364
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Prologue: A Rationale No access
1 “History Will Absolve Me” No access
2 Baseball’s Most Outrageous Myth No access
3 The Infamous “Barbudos” Game No access
4 Sugar Barons and Sugar Kings, and the Death of Cuba’s Professional Baseball No access
5 The Grand Socialist Baseball Experiment No access
6 The Other Big Red Machine and Cuba’s Dominance of International Baseball No access
7 The Fictional Personas of Fidel Castro No access
8 The Cuban Baseball Defectors Phenomenon No access
9 The Ultimate Collapse of Cuban Baseball No access
Notes No access Pages 319 - 344
Sources Cited and Suggested Further Readings No access Pages 345 - 354
