The increasing success of Latin American baseball players in the North American big leagues has provoked baseball administrators, journalists, and finally scholars to consider the reasons for baseball’s popularity in the circum-Caribbean, especially in the Dominican Republic. This nation has sent more than 125 representatives to the majors and in 1987 had 70 shortstops scattered through various levels of professional ball. Even the Japanese have begun to exploit Dominican talent.
Ruck s study is one of four books in English on Latin baseball to appear in the last three years and one of two to focus on the Dominican Republic. Most agree that baseball’s introduction into the Dominican is owed mainly to Cubans, though the sport received additional impetus from the U.S. Marine occupation (1916-1924) and the family of Rafael Trujillo. Also crucial was the role of the sugar industry: plantation owners constructed baseball facilities for their employees, and the seasonal cycle of the business permitted long periods of recreation. Organized baseball’s integration after 1946 opened more doors to dark-skinned Latins, and the Cuban Revolution cut off a rich talent flow, sending scouts to other regional hotbeds.
Ruck also emphasizes the spontaneity and joy that mark Dominican baseball, as well as the conflict inherent in using an imported cultural form, one associated with Yankee invaders, to achieve national identity and economic success. He points out that Dominican professional baseball is somewhat in decline due to the export of star players, but correctly avoids blaming misplaced dreams of making it big in baseball for unemployment and a lack of interest among Dominican youth in certain types of work.
Perhaps Ruck’s most exciting contribution is his discussion of the Cocolos, British West Indians who migrated to labor in the Dominican cane fields. Hard workers, they carried a sense of discipline and community, and a love for cricket. “Without these English-speaking, cricket-playing sojourners, Dominican baseball would never have become the best in the Caribbean” (p. 118); it was Cocolos’ sons and grandsons who transferred their skills and ambitions to the diamond.
This book will cause scholars some problems. It includes no notes, no bibliography, practically no discussion of methodology or theory. Spanish accents are erratic, maps inadequate, the sources of many quotes unstated, the narrative disjointed, the time frame often unspecified. Given these limitations and the price, it is unclear who the intended audience is. Although informative, Ruck’s work must be read with Alan Klein’s Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (1991) and other studies to gain a fuller sense of Dominican baseball.
