Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream [Paperback]

Assoc. Prof. Alan M. Klein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1993

In the Dominican Republic baseball is not only a game but a national obsession. Exported from the United States and still controlled by it, the game is also an arena of intercultural relations. "Sugarball" describes how Dominican baseball fosters national pride and competition with the United States while at the same time promoting acceptance of the North American presence in the country. Alam M.Klein traces the introduction and development of baseball in the Dominican Republic, provides sketches of fans, stadiums, and players, and discusses such issues as the origin of the Dominican baseball academies and the international competition for Dominican players. Throughout, he evokes the enthusiam that Dominicans have for the game and shows how it mirrors the conflict they feel between allowing and resisting American hegemony in their country. Klein relates the efforts of major league teams to seek talent in the Dominican Republic and shape the game to suit their own purposes - efforts that resemble other exploitative enterprises in the Third World. These activities evoke little resentment, because for many Dominican young men baseball is the only way out of a life of unemployment or of hard labour in cities or cane fields. At the same time, their prowess at baseball encourages the Dominicans to oppose further interference from the Americans.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One hundred years ago two Cubans introduced baseball to the Dominican Republic, where it became the national pastime. But the game has evolved into something other than a carbon copy of the U.S. sport, and Klein, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Northeastern University, shows how the two differ. After a jargon-laden introduction, he presents an excellent short history of Dominica, the development of teams sponsored by the large sugar refineries (hence the book's title), and an absorbing analysis of how the Dominican national persona affects players and fans today.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 189 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 11, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300052561
• ISBN-13: 978-0300052565
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #656,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > History > Americas > Caribbean & West Indies > Dominican Republic

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "What Makes Sammy Hit Those Runs ?", August 12, 2000

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (Paperback)

Growing up north of Boston in a small town, the Dominican Republic could not have been further from my consciousness. I knew it to be small, tropical and under the heel of a dictator who liked white suits and big cars. One day he had his date with a machine gun bullet and that was that. Subsequent political crises occasionally made the news, but not much more. But over the last 40 years, "La Republica Dominicana" gradually impinged on my consciousness. Nearby towns began to fill up with Dominican immigrants who cleaned houses, worked in restaurants and factories, and appeared at weekend yard sales. "Las Brisas del Caribe" takeout restaurants, "Quisqueya" travel agencies, many small store fronts offering "envios" and "llamados" began to be seen. I had never gone to Santo Domingo, but it had at last come to us. And so, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire slugged out their famous home run duel of 1998, Dominican flags flew from countless cars, people painted Sosa's name on the rear windows of their Fords and Chevrolets and nobody could remain unaware that Dominican patriotism ran strong in suburban Massachusetts. Why did Dominicans get so passionately involved in baseball ? What did that contest mean to them ?

Alan Klein did not mention Sosa in his book, as it appeared in 1992. Although many major league players are mentioned by name, SUGARBALL is not an account of the exploits of Dominican ballplayers. Rather it is a sober, readable book, with an absolute minimum of jargon, of how cultural imperialism works in the area of sport. If the USA dominates the Dominican Republic economically, in the areas of sugar, tourism, and small-scale manufacturing, it also dominates culturally. Using often-mentioned ideas like `hegemony' and `resistance', Klein shows that though Americans introduced baseball into the country, it remained independent until the Dominicans got so talented that American major league teams sent permanent scouts to recruit talent. Eventually the US teams set up baseball academies to train rookies and siphon them up north to minor and major league teams. These academies operate like any other colonial outpost, according to Klein. They locate raw material (players), refine it, and ship it home. The drain of talent became so drastic that the local baseball leagues faced ruin, since all their players were being taken. Yet, in the baseball that remained, we can see a defiant strain---the very game that is the arena for exploitation can also provide a focus for nationalism. Hence the flags north of Boston in 1998. It is in describing this process that SUGARBALL is best. Readers may bog down in the history of Dominican baseball found in Chapter One, the details of which must be too arcane to be of much interest. The last chapter, with its overview of sports and cultural resistance, might have better been made the first, so that we would have perceived quickly the direction Klein wanted to take. This book fits well into any course on the sociology of sport or into a course on US relations with Latin America. It may also be read by people who want to understand the difference in cultural approach to the same game or set of institutions. The chapter on the atmosphere of the national baseball stadium is excellent for this. I was hoping for more connection to Dominican culture as a whole, especially with more Dominican voices. Dominicans are the subject of this work, but seldom get to speak. The research style and focus mark SUGARBALL as more a work of sociology than anthropology. I am not aware of other books with the same approach, even though sport is a multi-billion dollar industry found in every single nation on earth. Thus, if you are looking for a book that connects sport with economics and cultural domination of one nation by another, you have come to the right place.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sugarball: The American Game: The Dominican Dream, July 3, 2002

By 

"s8675309" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (Paperback)

In Sugarball, author Alan Klein attempts to draw on the complicated relationship between baseball in the United States and the Dominican Republic by equating it to that of a neocolonial power to its subordinate nation. In the same way that all the resources are tapped from the underdeveloped nation and utilized by the parent, the United States has exploited the Dominican Republic's most lucrative export, baseball players. The exchange has become institutionalized and the top players from the Dominican leagues major aim is to move into the Major League Baseball system, leaving the economic desolation of home and depleting the nation's culture.

The relationship is both revered and abhorred by the people of the nation. As most boys in the Dominican Republic have few choices of employment after their minimal education, baseball is seen as a way out of the poverty that pervades the country. The Dominican attitude toward the Americans is typical of the aforementioned neocolonial relationships; we are loathed and imitated all at once. In a show against US control, the game has been altered by Dominicans to showcase their own culture and values, thereby serving to stamp their own mark on the sport in the most public fashion.

Though Klein's reasoning is mostly sound throughout, he does make some stretches in his interpretation of the hegemonic behavior exhibited by the Dominican people. It would have been beneficial to have more in-depth information about how the Dominican players feel about the choices they make in leaving their homeland. Additionally, further discussion into how the purported baseball resistance is making a difference throughout the country would have been of interest. Overall however, Sugarball is a valuable look into how the economic state of the Dominican economy lead to its virtual rule by American industry and how the all-time American game, baseball, has been used and altered by the Dominican people into a game with their own flair and culture stamped on it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sugarball, July 1, 2002

By 

Aaron Hayes (Pullman, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (Paperback)

In Sugarball, Klein examines the role of baseball in the Dominican Republic with all its cultural and economic importance, and specifically the part it plays in the hegemony and cultural resistance of the Dominicans in relation to the United States. Not only are there extensive arguments for these cultural implications, but Klein also focuses greatly on the history and culture of Dominican baseball by itself. He gives a clear picture of what baseball means there through extensive research and observations of life in the Dominican Republic. Filled with quotes and interviews of various people, as well as statistics and historical facts about Dominican baseball, this study clearly reflects the sociology and anthropology of sport as an emerging legitimate field.
Although he did give a well studied background of the Dominican baseball situation, Klein attempts to prescribe many other ideas to his findings, and only partially succeeds. Even he admits in his book that many of his preconceived notions of what he was going to find were clearly not there, from overt cultural resistance with baseball among certain groups to the pinning of all the social problems of Dominicans to the United States. The neo-Marxist interpretations of his findings bogged down his observations with jargon and implications that are not clearly there, and his admitted failures at finding certain schemas leads his readers to question the other aspects of his interpretation. However, his observations of this phenomenon should not be disregarded. His research alone provides a very valuable tool for the understanding of United States cultural influence in Latin America in general, and in the Dominican Republic in particular.
In all, Sugarball provides a very in depth look into the meaning of baseball in the Dominican culture. Whether or not it can be used for an argument in such a way as he implies it does remains a question, but his basic point of its incredible importance is well taken. This book will be a valuable tool for those who are interested in baseball and the culture of Latin America.