¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas

Abstract

¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas is a collaborative work from Margaret Salazar-Porzio, Adrian Burgos Jr., Robin Morey, and other contributors that spotlights the many ways that baseball has served as a suitable vehicle to examine the cultural and social experiences of Latinas/os in the United States. This dual-language text accompanies a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH), which “blend(s) together the major league stories and the community stories in order to name our extraordinary, everyday heroes of the game” (116). Laden with several sources from the exhibit's collection of artifacts, oral histories, newspapers, scrapbooks, and player testimonies, ¡Pleibol! merges the exhibit's artifacts and narratives together with the authors’ scholarly perspectives about how baseball helped forge Latina/o community, citizenship, and identity.The authors proceed thematically, sharing stories of the project's artifacts and narratives to reveal how the sport helped shape the lives, identities, and experiences of Latinas/os within both professional and community baseball. They consider the diversity that exists within the Latina/o label, paying attention to differences in region, nationality, citizenship status, labor, race, and temporality, which all contribute to the breadth of Latina/o experiences over the past century and a half. The opening chapter discusses two pioneers in Latina/o professional baseball, Roberto Clemente and Marge Villa. Clemente is idolized by many Latinas/os, especially those who share his Afro-Latino and immigrant identities, known among fans for his stellar tenure with the Pittsburgh Pirates and commitment to humanitarian work and as someone who overcame significant challenges to find success in the sport. Similarly, Villa joined the short-lived All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in the 1940s as the only Mexican American out of eleven Latina players. The significance of Villa's career, as noted by Sandra L. Uribe, was her ability to assert “autonomy, cultural pride, and athleticism” in the sport by testing “socially constructed notions of femininity” (39). One of the strengths of this text is its attention to the role of women in the sport. Chapter 3 includes the contributions of women such as Olympian softball player and broadcaster Jessica Mendoza, Colorado Rockies owner Linda Alvarado, and community players like Carmen Lujan. Scattered throughout these analyses are photographs, artifacts, and oral histories that NMAH and other community organizations have archived, emulating the immersive experience one may encounter in a museum exhibit.The authors also note how baseball figures used the sport to claim physical spaces. This is best exemplified through Mexican pitcher Fernando Valenzuela and Spanish-language broadcaster Jaime Jarrín, both from the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. After the controversial forced relocation of Mexican Americans from Chávez Ravine to make way for the construction of Dodger Stadium, the team came to represent the traumatic incident to ethnic Mexicans in Southern California. The careers of Jarrín, who began broadcasting in 1959, and Valenzuela, who joined the Dodgers in 1981, not only helped the Dodgers attract Mexican fans but also helped Mexicans reclaim a space that symbolized so much of their history and community identity. Latinas/os also used the sport to exert their agency in spaces at the community level, especially in the workplace. Many Latinas/os, specifically recent migrants, found work in places like citrus groves and beet fields, often laboring under difficult circumstances. One reprieve these workers and their families found was the incorporation of baseball into their work lives, forming company teams and using the sport as a vehicle to fraternize with each other or organize to improve working conditions. Outside the workplace, players used the sport to develop camaraderie with their peers, both at the professional and community levels. When they interacted with each other, they found commonalities “based on their shared cultural practices and the common experiences of dealing with race and ethnic realities on and away from the baseball diamond” (106). Baseball gave them the chance to reconnect with their roots, validate their identities, and redefine what it meant to be “American.”¡Pleibol! is successful in two ways. First, it repositions community history alongside the familiar exploits of professional players and organizations, turning “whispers from the margins . . . into roars” (116). This framework lends credence to the validity of community history as a lens to study how the sport has helped Latinas/os confront challenging social and cultural conditions in the United States and should encourage scholars to seek out communities and stories about baseball that are not represented in this book. Second, ¡Pleibol! achieves the goal of making complex scholarly analyses accessible to general readers, using baseball as a gateway to introduce audiences to discourse surrounding race, identity, and citizenship. Even the casual reader will become inspired to visit the museum's collections in person or at least discover new meaning in the ways that baseball has shaped the Latino experience.