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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Papa Montero Says..., March 6, 2000
This book filled many voids for me with regard to the history of Cuban baseball. It is especially good in discussing the heyday of Cuban baseball in the twenties and thirties. Like one of the other reviewers, though, I was dissappointed that the author did not discuss baseball since the revolution in greater detail.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Best book on Cuban baseball!, May 1, 2003
I loved this book! From the very beginning Gonzalez Echavarria had me smelling the air in a Cuban baseball satdium and feeling the tension in the crowd as the pitchers winds up.But what this book truly delivers, is a history lesson to those who think they know Cuban baseball, which has often been "presented" through American eyes (such as PBS specials or even through Ken Burns' documentary on Baseball). Cubans not only exported baseball through Latin America, but because of the paradox of the intense Cuban racism at the amateur level and integrated leagues at the professional level, many young black Cuban players found fame and fortune in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and other places (including the Negro Leagues in the US), while many US professional Negro Leagues got to play alogside white US teammates in professional Cuban teams. Even the virulent Ty Cobb! It also tells the stories of Cuban legends - such as Adolfo Luque - who played in the US Major Leagues in the 20's through the 60's - both as pitcher and manager in a time when white Cubans were allowed to play US professional baseball while their talented black countrymen couldn't. This is a must read - from a Cuban perspective - for fans of baseball - not just Cuban baseball!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An essential book, December 11, 1999
A masterpiece! This book is a cultural history of Cuba by a major literary critic and historian and a work of literature in its own right. Gonzalez Echevarria's rich narrative is captivating because of his attention to detail and profound knowledge of Cuban history and culture. This book is a treat to both lovers of baseball and of literature.
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15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
Canseco Over Linares or Tony Oliva?, April 10, 2000
By A Customer
In the months that have passed since the publication of RGE's monumental book on Cuban baseball history the nature and value of his work has slowly come more clearly into focus. The dedicated scholar-author is to be praised for his valuable contribution in providing rich detail on the early years of Cuban baseball not found in other English-language sources. But as David Skinner has pointed out in a recent on-target review in the scholarly journal NINE (Canadian Scholars' Press), Professor Gonzalez has throughout engaged in a good deal of mythmaking of his own. While RGE provides many delighful nuggets about early Cuban baseball and Negro league barnstorming on the island, and while he also does service for monolingual baseball enthusiasts by translating into English accounts and statistics from early seasons heretofore found only in Spanish-language books like those of Raul Diez Muro and Angel Torres, Skinner emphasizes rightly that there are many shortcomings in PRIDE OF HAVANA as a comprehensive history of Cuba's national pastime. RGE's heavy anti-Castro's politics causes him to lace the 40s and 50s era "Golden Age" with a thick coat of unwarranted nostalgia (baseball was actually near its death-knell in Cuba at the time), to dismiss the exciting and competitive brand of Cuban League baseball played after the revolution as totally worthless and unworthy of detailed chronicle, and to ignore the crucial fact (which should be central to any comprehensive history of island baseball) that the sport has only been national in its scope in Cuba after 1962 (the professional league which ended in 1961 was restrict to the city of Havana). Skinner's review also underscores other shortcomings: facts of Negro League barnstorming in Cuba are often presented without documentation and sometimes even inaccurtate; abilities and accomplishments of recent defectors and Cuban-born major leaguers are highly exaggerated (especially the claim that one-dimensional slugger Jose Canseco is perhaps the best-ever Cuban born player, rather than Martin Dihigo or Tony Oliva or Luis Tiant Jr.); legitimate island stars like Omar Linares, Jose Ibar and Jose Contreras are taken lightly because "they have not played against major leaguers," and the outright dismissal of the past forty years of Cuban baseball development (about one-third of the time frame covered by the saga of Cuban baseball) undermines any claim for a full-scale comprehensive history of the subject. THE PRIDE OF HAVANA has its many merits. But if one wants to see the true coloration of RGE's approach and discover what is missing in this rather incomplete history of Cuban baseball, an excellent start is David Skinner's perceptive review (NINE, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 2000).
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A brilliant look at sport and history in Cuba, December 28, 1999
Roberto Gonzalez Echavarria is fascinated by the relationship between communal cultural activities and ideology over the history of Cuba--he has published articles about dance, popular music, and of course literature. In this book he writes about baseball in Cuba, particularly its relationship with the Cuban national consciousness and the two revolutions it created. But the book also contains vivid lives, of the author himself as well as so many baseball men and baseball fans from the island of his youth, which give the book an immediacy I haven't found in any other history of Cuban culture.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
great history for anyone who likes baseball., August 4, 1999
By A Customer
I bought 3 copies of this book - one for me, one for my uncle, and one for a friend of mine's father who left cuba as a child. We all loved it. Most information was a huge history lesson for me, but they both relived their childhoods through this book. Very well written and balanced. For anyone who loves baseball.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, April 11, 2007
Although the book offers a TON of information on the history of baseball in Cuba, there is definitely way too much reading and not enough pictures! I would have liked to see pictures along with the reading.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Half the Story, November 15, 1999
By A Customer
An important book for all the details that it fills in on Cuban baseball before the Castro Revolution. But there is little here about the mysterious role of baseball on the island after Castro's rise to power. This book is more of a personal memoir of Echevarria's own childhood baseball memories than a true history which explores the full Cuban baseball story.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Not a Fan's Book, December 30, 1999
By A Customer
While this book provides an important "scholarly" sociological study of the connections between sport (baseball), art, dance, and politics in Cuba throughout the century (as well as an engaging portrait of the author's own personal relationship with baseball in the 40s and 50s), it is far too dense and plodding in its treatment to engage most baseball fans. Also, while the author is condemnatory in his preface of others who have treated Latin baseball with a disregard for the Spanish language, he himself often mangles Spanish and English names (Gourriel/Gurriel, Ulrick/Ulrich/Ullrich, Willie/Willy Miranda, Aldolfo/Adolfo Luque, Ron/Don Blasingame, Buck O'Neill/O'Neil, Double Duty Radcliffe/Radcliff, Zavala/Zabala, Ramon/Roger Colorao/Colorado, Bustamente/Bustamante, Almendares/Almandares, Wilbur/Wilmur Fields, Franklyn/Franklin Murray, etc.) as well as historical facts (Marrero was 25 (35) in 1946, Prieto returned to Oakland in 1977 (1997), Pumpsie Green was an outfielder (infielder), the second Pan Am games were played in 1930, etc.). This is a solid book and in some places even a wonderful book. But poor editing leaves it short of a scholarly book; and the excessive emphasis on Cuban baseball during the author's own childhood (1940s and 1950s) also leaves the volume considerably short of being a definitive historical treatment of Cuban baseball.
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