About this item
Few political figures of the modern age have been so vilified as Fidel Castro, and both the vilification and worship generated by the Cuban leader have combined to distort the true image of Castro. The baseball myths attached to Fidel have loomed every bit as large as the skewed political notions that surround him. Castro was never a major league pitching prospect, nor did he destroy the Cuban national pastime in 1962.In Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold Story, Peter C. Bjarkman dispels numerous myths about the Cuban leader and his association with baseball. In this groundbreaking study, Bjarkman establishes how Fidel constructed rather than dismantled Cuba's true baseball Golden Age - one that followed rather than preceded the 1959 revolution. Bjarkman also demonstrates that Fidel was not at all unique in "politicizing" baseball as often maintained, since the island sport traces its roots to the 19th-century revolution.
About the Author
Peter Bjarkman is widely recognized as a leading authority on Cuban baseball, both pre- and post-revolution. He has covered the Cuban League and the Cuban national team for the popular website www.BaseballdeCuba.com since 2007 and has traveled widely with the Cuban national team to international tournaments for the past 18 years. His most recent book, CUBA'S BASEBALL DEFECTORS: THE INSIDE STORY, won a 2016 SABR Baseball Research Award. His volume entitled A HISTORY OF CUBAN BASEBALL, 1864-2006 (McFarland, 2007/2014) is also universally considered the seminal work on the history of the island nation's national pastime. Bjarkman has written widely over the past 20 years on Latin American baseball, major league baseball, and NCAA and NBA basketball. He has appeared in numerous television and radio interviews and in more than a dozen documentary films on baseball and basketball history. Bjarkman was recently featured with Anthony Bourdain on "No Reservations Cuba" (The Travel Channel, 2011) , appeared in the ESPN "30 for 30" documentary "Brothers in Exile" (November 2014) , is featured in the MLB Network documentary film "Cuba: Island of Baseball" (December 2016) , and has been profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (November 9, 2010) . The author can also be found at www.Bjarkman.com (his official Authors Guild Website) as well as at www.BaseballdeCuba.com (where he is Senior Baseball Writer and Columnist) .
