For this week’s readings, I read “From La Bamba to Baseball” and the first chapter of “Raceball”. These readings mainly revolve around the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Origins of their love of Baseball. Not surprisingly this love of the sport came directly from America. While in the case of Cuba it seemed as though the origins of baseball seemed more natural as many Cubans fleeing turmoil during the 19th century spent time in America, and during this time developed a fondness for the game. This interest resulted in many bringing it back with them once they eventually returned to Cuba. However based on the reading “From la Bamba to Baseball” it seemed that baseballs introduction to Puerto Rico was much more intentional by the U.S. In both cases, the U.S. saw sport as a chance to instill American Ideals and culture into their recently acquired lands after the Spanish-American War. However, in both of the places baseball quickly became exceptionally popular. One part of this push to Americanize these places that I found interesting was that despite the inhabitants of these places being largely not white, they still took steps to exclude those of African heritage. I found this odd since the Hispanic populous obviously experienced some degree of racism at the hands of Europeans, you might have expected them to have some sympathy towards Africans. However this was not the case at all as in both places segregation was a big part of the early days of baseball before professional leagues took over. That leads into another thing I found interesting in the readings, only once it had become profitable for blacks to play baseball were they allowed to play with everyone else. This all seems so hypocritical to me especially in these places simply because essentially everyone had extremely diverse and multicultural backgrounds and still fell into the trap of racial prejudice.
