Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold Story

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.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Prologue: A Rationale PART I: THE MYTHS Chapter 1: “History Will Absolve Me” Chapter 2: Baseball's Most Outrageous Myth Chapter 3: The Infamous “Barbudos” Game PART II: THE TRANSFORMATION Chapter 4: Sugar Barons and Sugar Kings and the Death of Cuba's Professional Baseball Chapter 5: The Grand Socialist Baseball Experiment Chapter 6: The Other Big Red Machine and Cuba’s Dominance in International Baseball PART III: THE LEGACY Chapter 7: The Fictional Personas of Fidel Castro Chapter 8: The Cuban Baseball Defectors Phenomenon Chapter 9: The Ultimate Collapse of Cuban Baseball Chapter Notes Sources and Further Readings Index About the Author

About the Author :
Peter C. Bjarkman (1941-2018) is widely acknowledged as the leading authority on post-revolution Cuban baseball and a prolific writer and commentator on the sport. He was interviewed on the subject on national and international radio and television networks, including NPR, PBS, BBC, and MSNBC. Bjarkman appeared as a Cuba baseball expert on the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations Cuba,” ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary, Brothers in Exile, and the MLB Productions documentary film Cuba: Island of Baseball. Bjarkman was a contributing writer for the Hall of Fame-sponsored website www.LaVidaBaseball.com. He is the author of A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864–2006 (2014) and Cuba’s Baseball Defectors: The Inside Story (2016) which won the SABR Baseball Research Award. He was also awarded the SABR Henry Chadwick Award in 2016, which honors baseball’s great researchers.

Review :
In this thorough history, Bjarkman examines Cuba’s baseball leagues after Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, . . . Bjarkman’s insightful survey of Castro-era baseball deserves a broad audience. Bjarkman’s exhaustive research paints a detailed history of baseball on the island after the revolution in 1959 and delves into the politicization of the wildly popular game and diplomatic relations with baseball and government in America . . . Bjarkman’s rich history is a grand slam addition to Cuban and baseball history. This book contextualizes the historical, social, political, and cultural effects of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution on the development of modern nonprofit professional baseball. Bjarkman organizes his book into three major critical sections; they focus on the US political and social myths surrounding Cuban baseball, the sport's social and cultural transformation, the sports legacy of Fidel Castro, and the making of modern Cuban baseball. This scholarship challenges US perspectives on the foundation of nonprofit professional Cuban baseball and the role Fidel Castro played. An independent scholar, Bjarkman provides an in-depth review and analysis of this critical subject; his findings are based on historical accounts, oral interviews, and primary materials, which add to the book's credibility. This is the first text that examines the historical and cultural foundation of Cuban baseball and the ideological role Fidel Castro had in the making of nonprofit professional sports in Cuba. As such, it represents a major contribution and invites future research and scholarship in an understudied area. Every library should obtain a copy for its Latin American, sports, and history collections. [Thi] well researched and knowledgeable volume . . . should be treasured by baseball historians and students of international relations, as well as, anyone interested in baseball, Cuba, and American foreign policy.” Peter Bjarkman is by far the number one American authority on Cuban baseball and the Cuban government's role in it. When I want to know something about Cuban baseball, he is the first, and only person, I call. As in all his previous works about Cuban baseball, Bjarkman dispels long-held myths. Whether or not you agree with his take on Castro's role in the development of Cuban baseball, you will find this a fascinating read. Peter Bjarkman deserves the largest hurrah for his exceptional research, analysis, and captivating writing style in detaching myth from reality, debunking long established political and sporting biases, and ultimately detailing the extraordinary story of Fidel Castro and baseball. It would have been easy to accept past reporting follies, or to reduce diplomatic matters to good and bad guys, and even turn a complex individual like Castro into a cartoon character. Fortunately he avoids this trap by choosing the much harder route of examining motives and “paths not taken” with a critical but often sympathetic eye. We the reader are the wiser and better served by a book in which the conflicted nature of major league baseball’s interests and those of the Cuban baseball establishment operate within the larger arena of history’s judgment. Peter Bjarkman’s Fidel Castro and Baseball navigates the complex dynamics of Castro, baseball, and Cuban-American relations with authority and attitude. The author provides context, flavor, and history—and debunks myths—with fervor and passion. Misconceptions, often willful, abound about Cuba. With the recent opening to that nation, now’s the time to set the record straight. Given baseball’s central place in its culture, the sport provides a revealing window into the real Cuba. To understand baseball’s role in post-revolutionary Cuba, few people are as qualified as Peter Bjarkman to capture the story, given his long years immersed in the sport on the island nation. In this book, he exposes the myths and illuminates the realities behind Fidel Castro’s own baseball prospects, his revolutionary uses for the sport, and Cuban baseball’s professional-to-amateur transition. Bjarkman provides the first, detailed account of baseball in Cuba after the revolution (and in its current status today) while also demystifying Castro and his revolutionary objectives. This is a well-written, compelling story, filled with surprising anecdotes. Highly recommended. For nearly three decades Peter C. Bjarkman has been the preeminent English-language interpreter of the magic and mystery of Cuban baseball. Reaching beyond the romance and the rhythms of the island, he has been our guide to the passion, pride, and religious devotion to a different kind of game, one long hidden from U.S. fans just 90 miles off their own shores. In his latest effort, perhaps his most important to date, Bjarkman blends that unique knowledge in an uncompromising work that refutes some of the most durable myths about the Cuban game and its chief benefactor, Fidel Castro. Like an ace hurler on the mound, Bjarkman certainly has “great stuff!” He fires off and delivers a masterful, precise, and thoroughly-researched chronology of the real story of Fidel Castro’s Cuba and baseball. Dispelling decades-old misinformation, Bjarkman enlightens readers to the truth. This one bats 1.000! With Fidel Castro and Baseball, Peter C. Bjarkman drives the readers to one of the most complex personalities of the 20th century. Peter, once again controversial, breaks traditional barriers to bring down many myths about Fidel Castro's relationship with baseball. All readers, whatever their political views, will find much to stimulate their thinking in this book. Peter Bjarkman’s meticulously-researched volume thoroughly illuminates a blind spot long shared by Fidel Castro’s many biographers and Cuba historians: the crucial role that baseball has played in the Cuban Revolution. In the process, Fidel Castro and Baseball establishes how baseball itself came to be an indispensable cog in a sports machine inextricably intertwined with the Revolution’s political ideals—one that shared the latter’s failings and miscalculations. But the book’s most important contribution is its demystification of Fidel’s own relationship to the island nation’s beloved game, and the debunking, once and for all, of the persistent myth of Fidel as would-have-been MLB pitcher. Required reading for anyone who cares about either Cuba or baseball, or both.