Baseball in the Dominican Republic has equal with Football in Samoa

Any reader of The Dominican Baseball Guy and any fan of Major League Baseball undoubtedly knows that baseball rules in the Dominican Republic.  Baseball is the culture in the Dominican Republic.  Kids, adults, men, and women all play the game.  Men want to be professional baseball players and women want to date them.  In very few countries does one sport dominate the culture of the country as it does with baseball in the Dominican Republic.

But in one place there is a sport that influences the national culture just like baseball does in the Dominican Republic, and that is with American Football in American Samoa.  Noted sports historian Rob Ruck tackles the subject of Football in Samoa in his latest book, Fa’a Samoa: So close to God, so far from the United States: American Football in American Samoa and Among the Diaspora. And he will speak on the book this Wednesday at the University of West Virginia.

Ruck has written extensively on baseball in the Dominican Republic, so he knows how a sport can affect the culture of a country.  His book, The Tropic of Baseball, is one of the seminal works on baseball in the Dominican Republic.  The Dominican Baseball Guy has blogged on Rob Ruck and other Dominican baseball books several times previously.

Anyone interested in sports and culture should get this latest work on Samoan Football from Rob Ruck, as well as his previous work The Tropic of Baseball, or any of his work that focuses extensively on sports and cultural history.

New book "Raceball" chronicles minority participation in MLB

Rob Ruck's new book Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game traces minority participation in Major League Baseball, and the efforts of MLB to incorporate minority talent.  See a review of the book here and here.

Rob Ruck is of course the author of one of the definitive books on baseball in the Dominican Republic, The Tropic of Baseball.  That work covers the history and culture of baseball in the Dominican Republic, and the Dominican Baseball Guy has blogged on this book previously.

Raceball focuses on the changes among minority groups in MLB, from a large number of African-American players up to the current landscape which features around 25% of the league being Latin American players.  Rob Ruck looks at these changes as well as the history of baseball in Latin America, and the somewhat parallel paths that the American Negro Leagues and Latin American Leagues are traveling.

Dominican Baseball Books

The Dominican Baseball Guy has posted on Dominican Baseball Books before. Basically the two most important books on Dominican Baseball are Alan Klein's Sugarball and Rob Ruck's The Tropic of Baseball. These are from a cultural anthropologist and a historian.

There are several other books which talk briefly about baseball in the Dominican Republic and they are listed on the Dominican Baseball Guy's first post on books.

A new book has been published by Mark Kurlansky which I think will be just as important as these first two I mention. Kurlansky is a journalist that has written on culture. He wrote two books that have been used in some of my anthropology classes: Cod and Salt. These both cover the history and culture of these two foods. Both are extraordinary.

His latest work is The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris. The Dominican Baseball Guy is so excited about this book he can hardly contain himself. Kurlansky is known for taking one subject (like Cod), and writing an all encompassing history of that subject.

San Pedro de Macoris is known as the town of shortstops. The Dominican Baseball Guy has talked before about all the shortstops and MLB players in general that have come from this town. They include Sammy Sosa, Robinson Cano, and Julio Franco. There have been 79 Pedromacorisanos in all play in MLB. An amazing number for a town of around 200,000 people. My hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas has had maybe 2 or 3 MLB players (including the surrounding areas) in my lifetime. And we are a city of 300,000 people. It is really astonishing.

Here is one review of the book, and another, and another. This should be a great read and tell you a lot about baseball in the Dominican Republic and in San Pedro de Macoris. One interesting thing to note from the title is that the Dominican Winter Baseball League team from this city is known as the Eastern Stars. 

Dominican Baseball Books

Being that I am an anthropologist, I have read a number of "academic" studies on Dominican baseball, as well as tons of popular stuff. It is kind of funny when Dominicans try to tell me about the history of the league or the team. I just act interested and let them tell me what they know (usually the most basic information). As an anthropologist, I am particularly interested in the culture of baseball, and how it affects the lives of people. I have created a list of these books on the right.

Alan Klein has been publishing on international baseball and culture for over 20 years. He is a professor of sociology-anthropology at Northeastern University. His book Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream, was one of the first academic studies of baseball that I read. He recently published Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball, which has one chapter devoted to baseball in the Dominican Republic. Additionally, he has published many other books and articles on international aspects of baseball. They are listed on his curriculum vitae. His book Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos, was also interesting to me, especially since I am from South Texas.

Rob Ruck is a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He wrote The Topic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic, a comprehensive history of baseball in the country. He has also published on black sports in Pittsburgh, and helped write the documentary The Republic of Baseball: The Dominican Giants of the American Game. A list of his publications is also listed on his curriculum vitae.

George Gmelch is also an anthropology professor at Union College in New York. His publications are listed at his website, and cover many aspects of baseball. He was actually a minor league player before gaining his PhD. in anthropology. He edited Baseball without Borders: The International Pastime, which has a chapter devoted to Dominican Baseball.

George Gedda just published Dominican Connection: Talents From Tropics Changes Face of National Pastime. He is a diplomatic journalist from the DC area, so it is interesting tht he published this. I have not read this, so will not be listing it with my other books.