Slugging and Snubbing: Hugh Casey, Ernest Hemingway, and Jackie Robinson—A Baseball Mystery
"The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject. ..." Ernest Hemingway By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, Selected Articles and Dispatches from Four Decades Spring comes early to baseball. For most people living in the Northern Hemisphere, spring arrives officially on or about March 21, but for professional baseball players it starts in February when they gather to begin training for the upcoming season. Nowadays, major-league clubs train in Florida or Arizona, but years ago, trips to more exotic places were not unusual. Thus it was that in 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers and their top minor-league club, the Montreal Royals, found themselves training in Havana, Cuba. This was not the Dodgers' first excursion to the island nation. After making brief visits to Cuba in 1900, 1913, 1921, and 1931, they had trained there full-time in 1941 and 1942. But this trip was unusual, with a purpose much greater than getting players into shape. (1) The 1947 Dodgers were on the verge of doing something truly historic. Just before Opening Day, April 15, Brooklyn's president, Branch Rickey, announced that Jackie Robinson was being promoted from Montreal to the parent club, making him the first African American to play major-league baseball since 1884. The Dodgers had signed Robinson to a contract in the fall of 1945 and assigned him to the Royals. In 1946, both Brooklyn and Montreal had trained in Florida: the Dodgers in Daytona Beach, a relatively progressive southern city thanks to the heroic work of civil rights pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune, and the Royals in Sanford, a small town forty miles south and considerably less enlightened. Despite Rickey's hopes, the Montreal club ran into legal segregation every step of the way. Law enforcement officials cancelled a number of Royals games in several Florida cities and also in Savannah and Richmond as the team traveled north to open the season in Jersey City. Robinson encountered few problems once he and his wife Rachel reached Montreal. They were welcomed into the community, and he had a terrific season. His manager, Mississippian Clay Hopper, and his teammates adjusted. They had little choice. (2) Rickey wanted 1947 to be different. He kept Robinson on the Montreal roster, but he knew that the former UCLA student and Army veteran would be a Dodger when the season began. Aiming for spring training to be free from racial strife, he picked Cuba, a country where he believed the color of a player's skin would not be an issue. Still, when the players arrived in Havana, they noticed a peculiar housing arrangement. The players on the major-league roster stayed at the Hotel Nacional, a stately structure designed in an Andalusian-Moorish style and built in 1930. White members of the minor-league club stayed at the nearby Havana Military Academy. But Robinson and three other black players trying to make the Montreal roster were housed separately, away from their white teammates, in "a musty, third-rate hotel in the heart of town." Robinson, catcher Roy Campanella, and pitchers Roy Partlow and Don Newcombe endured this humiliation together. Robinson at first blamed the Cuban government for the segregated housing, but he soon learned that the idea was Rickey's. "I can't afford to take a chance and have a single incident occur," said the Dodgers executive. "This training session must be perfectly smooth." He was wary, he said, that some white Royals new to the club or American tourists staying at the Nacional might raise a stink. "I wasn't even allowed to go in the lobby of the Nacional to see Mr. Rickey on baseball business," Newcombe remembered. "I had to get permission from the bellhops. In fact, one [white] bellhop put me out of the lobby." (3) Rickey also wanted spring training to make a profit. He enticed three other major-league clubs--the Boston Braves, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Browns--to come to the Caribbean for exhibition games. …
Hemingway: The Final Years
Ernest Hemingway's triumphs as a writer during the 1940s and 1950s accompanied a life of risk and danger. Michael Reynolds discovers the truth about Hemingway's activities during the war years, including running a counterintelligence operation in Havana and riding a landing craft into Omaha Beach on D-Day. The post-war period, when he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Old Man and the Sea", was the most productive time of Hemingway's writing life but his physical and mental health deteriorated. In 1961 he committed suicide. Using interviews, letters, memoirs and previously classified documents, Reynolds brings his eyes to Hemingway's later years, recreating his life and the atmosphere of post-war America.
Cuba, or, The pursuit of freedom
Prologue With Albemarle to Havana, 1762 * The English Expedition * The Spanish Colony * Sugar and Society * The Victors and the Creoles The Great Leap Forward, 1763-1825 * Enter North America * The Challenge of Haiti * Rebellion in South America * The Ever-Faithful Isle The Golden Age, 1825-68 * The World of Sugar * Coffee * The Planters * The Slave Merchants * The Slaves * The Decade of Slavery The Political Struggle, 1823-98 * Captains-General in Search of Wealth * The Politics of Abolitionism * Mainfest Destiny * Annexationism * Reformism * The War of 1868:I * The War of 1868: II * The Spanish Counter-Revolution * The Sugar Crisis of the 1880s * The End of Slavery * Jos Mart * The New America * The War of 1895 * General Weyler * Cuba and U.S. Public Opinion * The Maine * McKinley and the War * The Spanish-American War * San Juan Hill and Santiago * End of Empire From Occupation to Occupation * Cuba Prostrate * The Proconsuls, I: General Brooke * The Proconsuls, II: General Wood * The U.S. Stake in Cuba, 1899-1902 * Don Toms * The Second Intervention: Magoon The Young Republic, 1909-32 * Cuba in 1909 * Gmez and the Good Life * The Negro Project * Menocal * Sugar, 1906-20 * The Dance of the Millions * The Sugar Troubles of the 1920s * Zayas * Machado: I * Machado: II The Revolution of 1933 * Summer Welles * The Fall of Machado * The Middle-Class Government * The Sergeants Revolution * Graus Girondin Revolution * The Battle of the Hotel Nacional * The November Revolt * The Counter-Revolution The Age of Democracy, 1934-52 * Batista and the Puppet President * Batista and the Communists * The Constitution of 1940 * Batista: The Democratic President * Grau * Pro el Presidente de la Cordialidad * The Fall of Pro The Struggle, 1952-9 * Batista: II * Fidel Castro: Childhood and Youth * Moncada: the Idea * Moncada: the Fight * Indian Summer * The Civic Dialogue * Castro in Mexico * The Gramma and the Sierra * Herbert Matthews goes to the Sierra * The Attack on the Palace * War in the Sierra (March-May 1957) * The U.S. enters the Controversy * Miami and Santiago * The Naval Mutiny at Cienfuegos * The Arms Embargo * The Strike of 9 April * Batistas Big Push of May 1958 * The Collapse LIllusion Lyrique, 1959 * Springs of Victory * Castro and the Americas in 1959 * LIllusion Lyrique * First Shadows Old Cuba at Sunset * The Island * The Class Structure of Cuba * Black Cuba * The Church * Education * Sugar * Tobacco and other Industries * The Economy: Labour * The Economy: the Central Neurosis The Clash, 1959-62 * Castro in America * Agrarian reform: Politics and Crisis * The Eclipse of the Liberals * A Sword is Drawn * The End of Capitalist Cuba * The U.S. Prepares for Battle * Cuba Socialista: I * Cuba Socialista: II * Battle of Cochinos Bay * Between the Crises * The Missile Crisis: I * The Missile Crisis: II * The Missile Crisis: III Epilogue * The Utopians * The Ten Million Ton Harvest and its Implications * The New Men * The Guardians * New Friends and Old * The Pursuit of Freedom Appendices * The Cuban Oligarchy * Cuban Governors and Presidents * Who were the Cuban Indians? * Kennions Slave Concession * Estimated Cuban Slave Imports * Outfit of a Slave Ship, 1825 * Slave Ships from Havana, 1825 * Affidavit of Lieutenant Nott * Chinese Imports to Cuba, 1847-73 * The Last Slave Journey across the Atlantic, 1865 * The Attack on Moncada and Bayamo * The State of Agriculture in 1959 * Cuban and World Sugar Production, 1770-1970 * World Raw Sugar Prices, 1900-1962