Here is the link for the interview from the Kojo Nnamdi show where we talk Latinos, baseball, and the recent scandal around bonus-skimming that resulted in the resignation of Jim Bowden of the Washington Nationals.
http://wamu.org/audio/kn/09/03/k2090309-25062.asx
Friday, March 13, 2009
Talking Dominican Baseball Scandal and Wash. Nationals
Here is the link from my most recent appearance on the Edge of Sports.
http://edgeofsports.com/audio/media/03-07-09_segment3.mp3
http://edgeofsports.com/audio/media/03-07-09_segment3.mp3
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Author Profile by Champaign News Gazette
Monday, August 4, 2008
Burgos debut on TV, Fiesta Tigres, August 9th
A unique opportunity has come my way, and as you can read below, I will be making my broadcast debut on FSN Detroit as part of their special Spanish-language telecast of the Tigers August 9th game versus the Oakland Athletics. For those in the FSN coverage area, tune in.
FSN PLUS TO OFFER SPANISH-LANGUAGE PRESENTATION
OF AUG. 9 TIGERS-A’S GAME
¡Fiesta Tigres! Night to be First-Ever Tigers Local Telecast en Español
Accomplished Spanish Broadcaster Clemson Smith Muñiz to provide Play-by-Play,
Noted Latino Baseball Historian Adrian Burgos, Jr. Serves as Analyst
Saturday, August 9 is the Detroit Tigers annual ¡Fiesta Tigres! Night at
The Spanish-language presentation – the first ever for a Tigers local television production – will be available to most cable and satellite households throughout the FSN
The Spanish-language coverage begins at 7:00 PM with play-by-play announcer Clemson Smith Muñiz and analyst Adrian Burgos, Jr. The English-language telecast of that night’s Tigers-A’s game with Mario Impemba and Rod Allen airs as usual on FSN Detroit and FSN HD.
¡Fiesta Tigres! is the Tigers annual salute to the contributions of Hispanics and Latinos to the game of baseball. The team’s 2008 roster includes Magglio Ordoñez, Carlos Guillen, Miguel Cabrera and Armando Galarraga (Venezuela); Placido Polanco, Fernando Rodney, Ramon Santiago, Freddy Dolsi, Aquilino Lopez and infield coach Rafael Belliard (Dominican Republic); Edgar Renteria (Colombia); and Joel Zumaya (Mexico).
“This is the perfect opportunity for FSN
"This is a historic telecast for the Tigers, and for our ¡Fiesta Tigres! celebration," said Duane McLean, Tigers' Senior Vice President of Business Operations. " We're thrilled FSN
Smith Muñiz, a native of
- continued -
FSN PLUS DELIVERS AUG. 9 TIGERS GAME IN SPANISH – page 2
FSN Detroit and FSN PLUS coverage of the Tigers is available in 3.2 million cable and satellite households throughout
Friday, July 18, 2008
Latin Week NY Interview
Journalist Ismael Núñez published the following interview on Latino baseball and Playing America's Game this past Wednesday for Latin Week NY, a Latino alternative newspaper.
-------------------------------------
Where are the Latino Legends in Baseball?
Article by:
Called a must-read by Slate Magazine and the San Franciso Chronicle, Adrian Burgos’ Jr. recent book, “Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line,” examines an era in baseball history largely ignored by historians and sports fans until now: Latinos in professional baseball pre-1947. Burgos, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois, has long been an expert on the Latino struggle for acceptance both in the major and Negro leagues, serving on the screening and voting committees for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2006 special election on the Negro Leagues. Latin Week sat down to talk with Burgos about how Latinos helped break the color line in baseball long before Jackie Robinson, and how Latinos still face a fight for respect on the field today.
Not a single Latin American was voted to the all-century team? Does that still hurt?
The absence of Roberto Clemente from the all-century team is a major issue on several levels… Whether Clemente is the greatest outfielder or rightfielder in baseball history is a debatable matter, but whether he is one of the most important baseball figures of the 20th century is without debate. An all-century team without Clemente and all he represented to the game’s history is just not right. The fact that Major League Baseball (MLB) had the discretion to address this oversight and opted not to is telling of the need for an understanding of baseball history through a Latino framework.
Focusing on the book, one thing people are not aware is that there were Latinos playing baseball long before Jackie Robinson. Why we are not given the credit for opening the doors for other peoples of color?
The full story of Latinos in U.S. professional baseball is unknown to the American baseball public. Many do not know that over fifty foreign-born and US-born Latinos performed in the majors from the 1880s through 1947, when Jackie Robinson began the dismantling of organized baseball’s color line. Fewer realize that the overwhelming majority of Latinos who played in the States during the era of baseball’s segregation performed in the Negro leagues, over 250 Latinos played in the Black baseball circuit starting in 1900.
In “Playing America’s Game,” I argue that the manner that major league team officials manipulated racial understandings served as a template for how Branch Rickey would approach the official launch of the racial integration of Major League Baseball… officials for teams such as the Cincinnati Reds, Boston Braves, New York Giants, and, most notably, Washington Senators, brokered access for lighter-skinned Latinos in the 1900s and by the mid-1930s began to allow increasingly darker, more racially ambiguous Latino players into the Majors. However, these Latino players were not given the same exact treatment as Jackie Robinson did, because these officials were not engaged in trying to overturn the color line system of racial division, but rather to manipulate it for their own gain—signing talented Latino players for lower salaries than what they would earn if they were white Americans.
In your book you describe the many obstacles Latino ballplayers had to face, for example speaking English. Do they still face these problems?
Learning to navigate the English-language press remains an extremely challenging obstacle once they “make it” in the United States. It is in the press coverage of Latinos we continue to see how Latino difference as racial beings constantly in production. For example, during last year’s American League Divisional Series Manny Ramirez became embroiled in a controversy after stating that he was not worried whether the Red Sox would defeat Cleveland, because his team had been down before and had overcome a 3-game-to-none deficit in defeating the New York Yankees a few years earlier. Some stated this was another example of “Manny being Manny,” but what really perturbed me was hearing a prominent ESPN reporter stating that Manny did not know what he was saying because he lacked mastery over the English language. What?! Manny came over from the Dominican Republic at ten years old and was schooled in the United States before graduating from George Washington High School in Washington Heights (NYC). But this reporter lumped all Latinos into a familiar stereotype, and then he used that to frame his analysis. And thus continues a practice of portraying Latino players as ignorant, dumb, or not as smart as the white American player, a practice that dates back to the earliest era of Latino participation in organized baseball.
The New York Cubans [a team of Latino players that competed in the Negro leagues] won the Negro League Championship in 1947. There is hardly any talk about this team [in popular and official histories of baseball] – why?
The NY Cubans were one of three NYC-based teams to enjoy a banner season in 1947, and yes, they are the least discussed in part because the other two were the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Yankees. So there is the issue of timing. The NY Cubans enjoyed their greatest success in the Negro Leagues during the same year that Jackie Robinson initiated the dismantling of organized baseball’s color line system.
Another part of the reason the Cubans team suffers today from a lack of attention is the misperception that they were not a significant team in the Negro Leagues or in New York. Much to the contrary, a look at two main Black weeklies published in NYC (The New York Age and Amsterdam News) one sees that the Cubans and not the NY Black Yankees were celebrated as “Harlem’s Own”…
Much of the story of Black baseball is told as just that of African Americans, leaving out the Latinos who participated in the Negro Leagues from its inception … Moreover, the NY Cubans (and its predecessor the Cuban Stars) were trailblazers in bringing in talent from throughout the Americas. While operating these teams, Alex Pompez introduced the first Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Panamanian players to play in either the Negro Leagues or the Majors. The NY Cubans represent a vital part of baseball history in the Americas for they offer a different approach to diversity in U.S. professional baseball long before “Los Mets.”
One player on the team you talk about highly is Martin Dihigo. Many former Negro League Players say he was the best!
Dihigo is quite a unique figure in the annals of baseball history because he was an ace pitcher and a fabulous everyday player (and a pretty good team manager on top of that). Think of someone who was on a Hall of Fame level as a pitcher in Black baseball (the Smokey Joe Williams, Jose Mendez, and Satchel Paige type pitchers) and then think of the very best everyday players from the Negro Leagues. Put that together and you begin to imagine El Maestro, El Inmortal, Martin Dihigo.
Should Roberto Clemente’s number (21) be retired?
I am of two minds on this question. For one, I want Latino players to be a living memorial to the meaning and significance of Clemente to all Latinos. The best memorial is seeing a great Latino player chose to take the number 21, and demonstrate mastery on the field and also grace, dignity, and a willingness to speak for the cause of social justice off the field…
No greater example has been set for all of those involved in any capacity within organized baseball than what Clemente did… How best do we recognize that vital historical lesson? I am for a living memorial, the Latino players keeping his (and our) story on the field for all to see.
http://www.latinweekny.com/?c=118&a=1488
-------------------------------------
Where are the Latino Legends in Baseball?
Article by:
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:30:00
Called a must-read by Slate Magazine and the San Franciso Chronicle, Adrian Burgos’ Jr. recent book, “Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line,” examines an era in baseball history largely ignored by historians and sports fans until now: Latinos in professional baseball pre-1947. Burgos, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois, has long been an expert on the Latino struggle for acceptance both in the major and Negro leagues, serving on the screening and voting committees for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2006 special election on the Negro Leagues. Latin Week sat down to talk with Burgos about how Latinos helped break the color line in baseball long before Jackie Robinson, and how Latinos still face a fight for respect on the field today.
Not a single Latin American was voted to the all-century team? Does that still hurt?
The absence of Roberto Clemente from the all-century team is a major issue on several levels… Whether Clemente is the greatest outfielder or rightfielder in baseball history is a debatable matter, but whether he is one of the most important baseball figures of the 20th century is without debate. An all-century team without Clemente and all he represented to the game’s history is just not right. The fact that Major League Baseball (MLB) had the discretion to address this oversight and opted not to is telling of the need for an understanding of baseball history through a Latino framework.
Focusing on the book, one thing people are not aware is that there were Latinos playing baseball long before Jackie Robinson. Why we are not given the credit for opening the doors for other peoples of color?
The full story of Latinos in U.S. professional baseball is unknown to the American baseball public. Many do not know that over fifty foreign-born and US-born Latinos performed in the majors from the 1880s through 1947, when Jackie Robinson began the dismantling of organized baseball’s color line. Fewer realize that the overwhelming majority of Latinos who played in the States during the era of baseball’s segregation performed in the Negro leagues, over 250 Latinos played in the Black baseball circuit starting in 1900.
In “Playing America’s Game,” I argue that the manner that major league team officials manipulated racial understandings served as a template for how Branch Rickey would approach the official launch of the racial integration of Major League Baseball… officials for teams such as the Cincinnati Reds, Boston Braves, New York Giants, and, most notably, Washington Senators, brokered access for lighter-skinned Latinos in the 1900s and by the mid-1930s began to allow increasingly darker, more racially ambiguous Latino players into the Majors. However, these Latino players were not given the same exact treatment as Jackie Robinson did, because these officials were not engaged in trying to overturn the color line system of racial division, but rather to manipulate it for their own gain—signing talented Latino players for lower salaries than what they would earn if they were white Americans.
In your book you describe the many obstacles Latino ballplayers had to face, for example speaking English. Do they still face these problems?
Learning to navigate the English-language press remains an extremely challenging obstacle once they “make it” in the United States. It is in the press coverage of Latinos we continue to see how Latino difference as racial beings constantly in production. For example, during last year’s American League Divisional Series Manny Ramirez became embroiled in a controversy after stating that he was not worried whether the Red Sox would defeat Cleveland, because his team had been down before and had overcome a 3-game-to-none deficit in defeating the New York Yankees a few years earlier. Some stated this was another example of “Manny being Manny,” but what really perturbed me was hearing a prominent ESPN reporter stating that Manny did not know what he was saying because he lacked mastery over the English language. What?! Manny came over from the Dominican Republic at ten years old and was schooled in the United States before graduating from George Washington High School in Washington Heights (NYC). But this reporter lumped all Latinos into a familiar stereotype, and then he used that to frame his analysis. And thus continues a practice of portraying Latino players as ignorant, dumb, or not as smart as the white American player, a practice that dates back to the earliest era of Latino participation in organized baseball.
The New York Cubans [a team of Latino players that competed in the Negro leagues] won the Negro League Championship in 1947. There is hardly any talk about this team [in popular and official histories of baseball] – why?
The NY Cubans were one of three NYC-based teams to enjoy a banner season in 1947, and yes, they are the least discussed in part because the other two were the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Yankees. So there is the issue of timing. The NY Cubans enjoyed their greatest success in the Negro Leagues during the same year that Jackie Robinson initiated the dismantling of organized baseball’s color line system.
Another part of the reason the Cubans team suffers today from a lack of attention is the misperception that they were not a significant team in the Negro Leagues or in New York. Much to the contrary, a look at two main Black weeklies published in NYC (The New York Age and Amsterdam News) one sees that the Cubans and not the NY Black Yankees were celebrated as “Harlem’s Own”…
Much of the story of Black baseball is told as just that of African Americans, leaving out the Latinos who participated in the Negro Leagues from its inception … Moreover, the NY Cubans (and its predecessor the Cuban Stars) were trailblazers in bringing in talent from throughout the Americas. While operating these teams, Alex Pompez introduced the first Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Panamanian players to play in either the Negro Leagues or the Majors. The NY Cubans represent a vital part of baseball history in the Americas for they offer a different approach to diversity in U.S. professional baseball long before “Los Mets.”
One player on the team you talk about highly is Martin Dihigo. Many former Negro League Players say he was the best!
Dihigo is quite a unique figure in the annals of baseball history because he was an ace pitcher and a fabulous everyday player (and a pretty good team manager on top of that). Think of someone who was on a Hall of Fame level as a pitcher in Black baseball (the Smokey Joe Williams, Jose Mendez, and Satchel Paige type pitchers) and then think of the very best everyday players from the Negro Leagues. Put that together and you begin to imagine El Maestro, El Inmortal, Martin Dihigo.
Should Roberto Clemente’s number (21) be retired?
I am of two minds on this question. For one, I want Latino players to be a living memorial to the meaning and significance of Clemente to all Latinos. The best memorial is seeing a great Latino player chose to take the number 21, and demonstrate mastery on the field and also grace, dignity, and a willingness to speak for the cause of social justice off the field…
No greater example has been set for all of those involved in any capacity within organized baseball than what Clemente did… How best do we recognize that vital historical lesson? I am for a living memorial, the Latino players keeping his (and our) story on the field for all to see.
http://www.latinweekny.com/?c=118&a=1488
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Retro Post: On Remembering Jackie Robinson and Baseball Integration
From time to time I will provide a "retro post," pieces I have posted elsewhere before starting this blog. Here is a piece on the commemoration of Jackie Robinson Day and how baseball's other integration pioneers who followed in his stead are given short shrift.
-------------------------
On April 15, Major League Baseball (MLB) again celebrated its integration pioneer Jackie Robinson by allowing players to wear his retired jersey number in honor of his legacy. All the black players donning 42 spurred lamentations in the media about the decline numbers of African Americans in baseball.As African American numbers have declined, Latino numbers have skyrocketed, with many darker-skinned players from Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Venezuela owing thanks to Jackie's door-opening achievement. Little is said about why darker-skinned Latinos aren't so inclined to don 42, because so little is understood about how they relate to baseball's integration story.
The truth is, a major piece of the Robinson legacy is missing and MLB is blowing an opportunity to educate the American public about integration's full scope.
Latinos were drastically affected by segregation. While a select number of Latinos (just over 50) performed in the Majors before Robinson, over 230 played in the Negro Leagues, just as Robinson did before organized baseball's color line was dismantled.
The process wherein the overwhelming majority of Latinos were designated racially unacceptable for organized baseball remains one of baseball's lesser known stories. As I argue in my book Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (University of California Press, 2007), Major League team officials masterfully manipulated racial understandings throughout the time its color line stood in place to broker access for a few Latinos. Over time the Latinos officials ushered into organized baseball became increasingly racially ambiguous. "He's not black," they explained, "He's Cuban." Thus the Washington Senators, Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, and a handful of other organizations plucked players from the Spanish-speaking Americas. They so successfully muddled racial perception that it necessitated an unambiguously black player to destroy any semblance of ambiguity, enter Jackie Robinson.
It is extremely troubling that this history continues to be conveniently elided in the Robinson commemorations and the more recently instituted Civil Rights Game. For this year's game MLB convened a panel of seven African Americans and Mets GM Omar Minaya as the lone Latino to discuss baseball, race, and civil rights. The lineup of luminaries gathered reveals that MLB does not acknowledge Latino participation in the struggle to overturn segregation or their stake in the past, present, and future of baseball.
That this continues to occur at the moment when Latinos are nearing forty percent of Major Leaguers is shameful and contributes to the popular perception of Latinos as a people without a (long) history in America's game--although the first Latino played in the National League in 1882.
The way MLB (mis-)remembers Jackie and baseball integration also diminishes the legacy of the Negro Leagues and of the integrated Latin American leagues.
On the other side of organized baseball's racial divide African Americans and Latinos collaborated in the establishment of a circuit that for decades refined the ball-playing skills of the excluded. In Havana, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Mexico City, and Caracas, among other Latin American cities, African American players like Rube Foster, John Henry "Pop" Lloyd, and Willie Wells were welcomed in racially integrated leagues. Drawing on his own experience, Foster's vision for the Negro Leagues from his various failed start-ups until he successfully launched the Negro National League in 1920 always included Latinos.
Jackie Robinson was a product of the circuit they built. And let's not forget that it was in this circuit the multitalented athlete honed his skills in what was arguably his fourth best sport. And it was here where Branch Rickey and his men first scouted pioneering black players Robinson, Monte Irvin, Roy Campanella, and Orestes "Minnie" Minoso, among others.
For all the recent talk about engaging in a national conversation on race, we are constantly revisiting a narrative of race relations of black-white, whether inside or outside of baseball. That circumscribed narrative about race fails us all.
2009 will mark the 60th anniversary of Minnie Minoso's debut as the first black Latino to perform in the Majors. His pioneering achievement in overcoming a doubly complex set of racial and cultural challenges as a black Latino to develop into a major league star ought to be the centerpiece of a year-long series of events that portrays baseball's integration saga in its full multicultural splendor. Only then will we truly remember the full impact of Jackie's achievement and honor the entire roster of those who contributed to the overthrow of baseball's Jim Crow system.
Posted: April 18, 2008, http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/025991.php
Friday, July 11, 2008
Dave Zirin and the Work of Sport Sociologists
Check out Dave Zirin's insightful article in Contexts (publication of the American Sociology Association) calling for sport sociologist and others who engage in the critical study of sport to engage the wider public with their work. Zirin, who has a forthcoming book, People's History of Sports in the United States, gives props to yours truly and several other scholars for producing scholarship that is impacting the sporting world and its public.
http://contexts.org/articles/summer-2008/calling-sports-sociology-off-the-bench/
http://contexts.org/articles/summer-2008/calling-sports-sociology-off-the-bench/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
