The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, and: Full Count: Inside Cuban Baseball (review)
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarrfa begins his wonderful book by tracing the Caribbean passion for baseball all the way back to the conquistador Alonso de Ojeda, who is said to have thrown an orange that cleared the 250-foot Giralda Tower in Seville. The Pride of Havana combines erudition with a love of baseball that shines through on every page. The book resists the cliches (especially the temptation to see baseball as a metaphor for life itself) that mar most baseball writing by intellectuals. Gonzalez Echevarrfa celebrates instead the sheer physical pleasure of the game, and the rich tradition of Cuban baseball. Some readers may learn more than they want to know about the statistics of Cuban players through the generations, but in an age when even as venerable a publication as The Sporting News no longer prints box scores, this reviewer was grateful for each earned run average and runs batted in total that Gonzalez Echevarrfa provides.