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 O. Regalado reveals the shocking racism faced by these immigrant athletes in a white culture. In addition to mining the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown, New York, and the Sporting News" "archives, Regalado conducted interviews with some twenty-five Latin baseball stars, including Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Tony...

Nikkei Baseball examines baseball's evolving importance to the Japanese American community and the construction of Japanese American identity. Originally introduced in Japan in the late 1800s, baseball was played in the United States by Japanese immigrants first in Hawaii, then San Francisco and northern California, then in amateur leagues up and down the Pacific Coast. For Japanese American players, baseball was seen as a sport that encouraged healthy competition by imposing rules and standards of ethical behavior for both players and fans. The value of baseball as exercise and...

This new collection examines not only how athletes looked to the nation s judicial system to solve conflicts but also how their cases trans-formed the interpretation of laws. These essays examine a vast array of social and legal controversies including Heywood v. NBA (1971), which allowed any player to enter the draft; Flood v. Kuhn (1972), which considered baseball s antitrust status; the Danny Gardella lower level 1948 case regarding free agency and baseball; Muhammad Ali s celebrated stance against the U.S. draft; Renee Richards s 1976 lawsuit against the U.S. Tennis...