Photographer Villegas and sportswriter Wendel dramatically reveal the energy, talent, and hard-driving ambition of baseball players from Venezuela to the Dominican Republic, both the few who make it and the many who don't.

Learn about a man who many people said was born to play baseball because of his extraordinary throwing, fielding, and hitting.

Profiles the Latino baseball legends from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, and provides each player's statistics, anecdotes, playing style, and contribution to the sport.

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 Regalado reveals the shocking racism faced by these immigrant athletes in a white culture. Only a burning desire to succeed and a grim determination to leave behind the grinding poverty of their homelands could have driven these men to continue in the face of overwhelming hostility. In addition to mining the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York, and the Sporting News archives, Regalado conducted interviews with some twenty-five Latin baseball stars, among them Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Tony Oliva.

Although largely ignored by historians of both baseball in general and the Negro leagues in particular, Latinos have been a significant presence in organized baseball from the beginning. In this benchmark study on Latinos and professional baseball from the 1880s to the present, Adrian Burgos tells a compelling story of the men who negotiated the color line at every turn—passing as "Spanish" in the major leagues or seeking respect and acceptance in the Negro leagues. Burgos draws on archival materials from the U.S., Cuba, and Puerto Rico, as well as Spanish- and English-language publications and interviews with Negro league and major league players. He demonstrates how the manipulation of racial distinctions that allowed management to recruit and sign Latino players provided a template for Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey when he initiated the dismantling of the color line by signing Jackie Robinson in 1947. Burgos's extensive examination of Latino participation before and after Robinson's debut documents the ways in which inclusion did not signify equality and shows how notions of racialized difference have persisted for darker-skinned Latinos like Orestes ("Minnie") Miñoso, Roberto Clemente, and Sammy Sosa.

This full book explores the family background of Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams -- considered by many to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. With the Anglo surname of Williams, most people had no idea that his maternal grandparents came to America from Mexico until Bill Nowlin followed up on one line in Williams' autobiography where Ted had written, "if I had had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California." As Ben Bradlee Jr. wrote, "No reporter...dug into [Ted Williams'] Mexican heritage until Bill Nowlin explored some of the Venzor family lineage in an article for the Boston Globe Magazine published in June of 2002, a month before Ted died." -- Ben Bradlee, Jr., The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams The year after Ted Williams died, Bill Nowlin helped organize celebrations of Williams' life at the San Diego Hall of Champions, the Boston Public Library, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. For the San Diego celebration, he invited members of Ted's extended family to attend and 33 of them assembled in Balboa Park outside the Hall of Champions. Interviews with family members, with confirmation from Ted himself, helped build some of the backstory of one of the greatest baseball players -- and of a truly remarkable American family.

Told through profiles of the men who have made it a reality, this is the complex story of the triumphs achieved by—and challenges faced by—Latinos who have risen to the heights of Major League Baseball. Latino Baseball Legends: An Encyclopedia offers the most comprehensive, go-to source for everything relating to Latin American baseball stars, tracing the history of Latinos in baseball through the stories of those who have excelled at the game. Colorfully written 3,000-word entries explore the lives and careers of 25 dominant players, from legends such as Roberto Clemente to deserving, but comparatively unknown superstars such as Martin Dihigo. Shorter listings note another 75 Latinos who have figured prominently in the sport. The entries document the importance of baseball in Latin American culture and the way it has evolved in the players' home countries, but the encyclopedia does more than that. Its profiles also expose the difficulties faced by Latino players who are forced to overcome both a language barrier and the discrimination they face because of their skin color. And they demonstrate how proficiency with a bat and ball has become a great engine that can lift families out of poverty and provide hope for indigent youths.