Adrian Burgos 
Playing America’s Game 
Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line

Although largely ignored by historians of both baseball in general and the Negro leagues in particular, Latinos have been a significant presence in organized baseball from the beginning. In this benchmark study on Latinos and professional baseball from the 1880s to the present, Adrian Burgos tells a compelling story of the men who negotiated the color line at every turn—passing as ‘Spanish’ in the major leagues or seeking respect and acceptance in the Negro leagues.


Burgos draws on archival materials from the U.S., Cuba, and Puerto Rico, as well as Spanish- and English-language publications and interviews with Negro league and major league players. He demonstrates how the manipulation of racial distinctions that allowed management to recruit and sign Latino players provided a template for Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey when he initiated the dismantling of the color line by signing Jackie Robinson in 1947. Burgos’s extensive examination of Latino participation before and after Robinson’s debut documents the ways in which inclusion did not signify equality and shows how notions of racialized difference have persisted for darker-skinned Latinos like Orestes (‘Minnie’) Miñoso, Roberto Clemente, and Sammy Sosa.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introductions: Latinos Play America’s Game


PART ONE: THE RISE OF AMERICA’S GAME AND THE COLOR LINE

1. A National Game Emerges

2. Early Maneuvers

3. Holding the Line


PART TWO: LATINOS AND THE RACIAL DIVIDE

4. Baseball Should Follow the Flag

5. ‘Purest Bars of Castilian Soap’

6. Making Cuban Stars

7. Becoming Cuban Senators

8. Playing the World Jim Crow Made


PART THREE: BEYOND INTEGRATION

9. Latinos and Baseball’s Integration

10. Troubling the Waters

11. Latinos and Baseball’s Global Turn

12. Saying It Is So-sa!


Conclusion: Still Playing America’s Game

Appendix: Pioneering Latinos

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the author

Adrian Burgos Jr., is Assistant Professor of History at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was a contributing author to Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball (2006), served on the Screening and Voting Committees for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2006 Special Election on the Negro Leagues, and consulted on the Hall’s ¡Béisbol_Baseball! The Shared Pastime project.