Latinos Still Struggle to Overcome Baseball’s Racial BiasesRandy Shawbyline‚ Mar. 13‚ 2008San Francisco Bay Area baseball fans have little to look forward to this season, which makes this the perfect time to relive past successes. Adrian Burgos Jr.’s Playing America’s Game fills this need, as it features a great cover photo of Giants legend Juan Marichal and explains how the Giants scouting system once led the league in finding quality Latino players. But Burgos has done much more than remind us of the rich history of such Latino Giant stalwarts as Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and the Alou brothers. He has written the best book yet on the history of Latinos in American baseball, particularly focusing on how they were impacted by baseball’s color line. Burgos shows that the disparate treatment of dark-skinned Latino players did not end when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947, but continues to this day; Bay Area sports fans saw this firsthand when KNBR sports talk show host Larry Krueger made racist comments against the Giants Latino players and manager Felipe Alou in 2005. Burgos provides a wealth of critical insights about the social context by which native Spanish-speaking young men play baseball in the United States, and all serious baseball fans should read this book. |