Viva Baseball!: Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger

Lively and anecdotal, Viva Baseball! chronicles the struggles of Latin American professional baseball players in the United States from the late 1800s to the present. Even as "Fernandomania" raged in 1981, most Latin players felt lonely, shunned, and forgotten. Samuel O. Regalado reveals the shocking racism faced by these immigrant athletes in a white culture. In addition to mining the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown, New York, and the Sporting Newsarchives, Regalado conducted interviews with some twenty-five Latin baseball stars, including Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Tony Oliva.