Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball [Hardcover]

Mark Rucker (Author), Peter C. Bjarkman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

Shrouded in mystery for decades, Cuban baseball has become the final frontier for fans of the sport in America. An unprecedented collection of photographs, statistics, and lore, Smoke explores the depth and range of the island's baseball heritage - from its origins in the 1870s, to Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb's barnstorming tours, to Fidel Castro and the Cold War that closed off access, to Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the world-champion 1998 Yankees. The combined efforts of Latin baseball's leading historian and the recognized authority on baseball images provide an exciting reading and viewing experience, bringing to life a rich baseball culture that has remained hidden.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Along with photo archivist and designer Mark Rucker, Peter Bjarkman made three trips to Cuba to gather material for Smoke, a lavish and poignant panorama of the island's national passion from its 19th-century origins to the 1999 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

Smoke reproduces hundreds of exquisite photographs, trading cards, handbills and other visual artifacts going back to the days when Cuban ballplayers, like their counterparts to the north, struck stony poses with handlebar mustaches and hightop shoes.

"A lot of the stuff was literally crumbling in his hands," Bjarkman says of Rucker's adventures in purchasing and copying memorabilia. "You see the cracks in some of these, and many of them have been greatly computer-enhanced. We have tried to create a pictorial record that's going to last."

Bjarkman and Rucker both hope Smoke will do more than help solidify Cuba's colorful baseball past. They'd like to contribute to its future. -- Indianapolis Star

Product Details

• Hardcover: 259 pages
• Publisher: Total/Sports Illustrated (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892129329
• ISBN-13: 978-1892129321
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 3.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,223,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BASEBALL HISTORY/BASEBALL HEAVEN-CUBA, December 28, 1999

By 

FRANK DIAZ - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball (Hardcover)

the history of cuban baseball is full of tradition.this book explores the sense and emotion of the cuban people and its passion for the game of baseball.good job.well done.US,THE CUBANS ARE GREATFUL FOR THIS BOOK.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cuban baseball history, December 11, 1999

By 

Carlos Eguaras (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball (Hardcover)

It is about time that someone takes the initiative to research and account the rich baseball tradition and history of Cuban baseball. Often times writers convey the perception that baseball started in Cuba after the Castro coup, overlooking years of rich tradition and lore. Good Job

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authors' Response to Political Reviews, February 6, 2000

By 

Peter C. Bjarkman, Mark Rucker and Todd Radom (Lafayette, In and Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball (Hardcover)

SMOKE has received glowing reviews in almost all quarters. Richard Miller writes in Sports Collectors Digest that "rarely does a baseball book offer so much new information to a new audience (American fans) in such superb fashion" (1-21-00). LA Times reviewer Kevin Baxter praises the book's "warm and vivid picture of Cuba's 125-year-old love affair with America's pastime" and calls the volume "a fan-friendly Ciff's Notes version-brightly written and breezy, but still managing to hit all the high points" (9-23-99). Most significantly, El Nuevo Herald (the Spanish-language version of the Miami Herald)-often an uncompromising voice for Cuban-American anti-Castro sentiments-is lavish in its praise of SMOKE as "perhaps the most groundbreaking book on the history of Cuban baseball" (11-8-99) and touts the work for avoiding the "politicization" which weakens other Cuban baseball histories and also for giving equal voice to the stories of both pre-revolution and post-revolution baseball on the island.

Not surprisingly, however, even an unpolitical book will (like Elian Gonzalez) become a political "football" when Cuba is the subject of inquiry. Some of SMOKE's recent on-line reviewers, voicing a Miami-based Cuban-exile viewpoint which still finds anathema in any and all positive words about everything found in post-revolutionary Cuba, have taken to the internet to blast our book as insulting to the American-Cuban community because it does not find fault with Castro's purported human rights violations, and also to blast the book's authors as "knowing nothing about Cuba or its history."

It is our contention that potential readers of SMOKE would be well-warned to approach such off-target "reviews" in the context in which they are written. Yes, there are a small handful of typographical flaws in this book as in every other, and we are admittedly not at all shy about lavishly praising contemporary Cuban baseball as the refreshing and entertaining spectacle we have experienced it to be. Our book's considerable value and strong reception is best measured, perhaps, by the fact that SMOKE has been nominated for each and every one of this year's top literary awards in the field of baseball history: Spitball magazine's prestigious CASEY AWARD (finalist), The Sporting News-Society for American Baseball Research Award (finalist), The HAROLD SEYMOUR MEDAL (finalist), and the Davey Moore Baseball Literature Award (Honorable Mention). And Miami's Nuevo Herald found the book so meritorious that it ran an eight-week Spanish-language serialization during the months of November, December and January.

The charge that the book's authors know nothing about Cuba or the Cuban baseball scene is also quickly belied by the strong and enthusiastic reception of SMOKE in Cuba itself-among baseball officials, old-time dedicated baseball fans who are in touch with both the pre- and post-revolution Cuban League scene, the Cuban sporting press, and the dedicated "aficionados" in Havana's Parque Central who are the self-appointed caretakers of the island's grand baseball tradition. The book has been praised in the pages of GRANMA (the official government press) even though it has taken the bold step (not favored in many Cuban government circles) of carrying photos and relating accounts of the careers of players like "El Duque" Hernandez and Livan Hernandez who have subsequently fled the island for major league careers.

Contrary to nostalgia-based popular opinion found in some quarters of the Miami Cuban-exile community, baseball did NOT reach a final "golden age" in Cuba during the decades of the forties and fifties. In truth the sport was dying on the island in those mid-century decades (as it also was in the US, in the face of decade-long New York Yankees domination and the early advent of televised games). Havana's ballparks were half-empty for Cuban winter league games throughout the '50s and the AAA Sugar Kings ('54-'60) unsuccessfully begged for fans. More importantly, there was no Cuban national baseball whatsoever before the revolution; professional baseball on the island during the century's first six decades was strictly a limited Havana affair. And the amateur leagues of that era were unexceptionally reserved for white players only.

For all its other possible disastrous consequences, the revolution of 1959 launched a truly national baseball league on the island, revived waning fan enthusiasm, and opened some of Cuban baseball's most glorious chapters. Those chapters, as well as the ones that preceded, are more vividly recounted in both photos and text in SMOKE than in any other Cuban baseball history. We have also salvaged a photographic record of Cuban baseball that is slowly but surely being ravaged and destroyed by the passage of time and the existing economic conditions on the island. Open the pages of this book and step into any epoch of Cuban baseball you might chose. Be enthralled by the full-color imagery that is almost as lively as the island's national pastime itself. This is one book, we believe, that truly can be judged by its cover.