Customer Reviews

Armando Marsans: The First Cuban Major League Baseball Player

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd list this up there with Halberstam's The Teammates, Brashler's Josh Gibson biography, and Kahn's Boys Of Summer as one of the great baseball books.
Toot's love of the game and deft prose is elegantly interwoven with the history of this one groundbreaking player.

Its surprising how a very good book can receive so little publicity.
We always refer to Jackie Robinson when talking about racial prejudices, but we never stop to think what early Latino players suffered.
Peter Toote has done an impressive job documenting Armando Marsans' career in the Major Leagues, describing his intelligent and agressive style to play the game.
We can read how Marsans became one of the iconic scapegoats that the Major Leagues used to expand its monopolistic tentacles against the Federal League. Take a look on Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis' role to protect the Major Leagues.
Perhaps, one of the disadvantages that I find in this book is the little research that the author does about Marsans' career in Cuba.
American authors must realize that language is not a barrier anymore as there are many Latin experts that speak English and can give a big help to complete a research project.
Anyway, I give 5 stars. I really liked it.

If he were playing today, Armando Marsans would be a household name. Until this remarkable book, Marsans' name survived only in boxscores, in the occasional mention in the sports pages, and in the memories of those few surviving fans who remember seeing him play. Through his in-depth research, Toot manages to rescue the player from obscurity and bring his story to life.

Toot's book is also an interesting sociological study of our country's first hispanic celebrity's struggle for acceptance. Further, it provides an eye-opening picture of the early days of baseball, when players played year-round, when sharp metal spikes threatened devastating injury with every slide, and when there was still the prospect of multiple professional leagues in the US.

...then you have to read this book. Toot is that rare breed of writer who can weave together an impressive array of details and facts into a compelling story. This is a great baseball tale with larger-and-lower-than-life characters, nail-biting games, and interesting off-the-field background. It's also an important book about the integration of hispanics into baseball--their experience and the reaction from the American baseball community. In this day and age of hispanics playing such an integral role in baseball, it's more important than ever to understand where they got their start.