* Author interview: Adrian Burgos, Jr.

“One of the interesting things to me is that there’s such a long history of baseball in these places that preceded the interests of Major League baseball,” said author Adrian Burgos. “The game was there before MLB stepped onto the scene.”

Burgos, an associate history professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is the author of Playing America’s Game: Baseball Latinos and the Color Line (University of California Press), which will no doubt come to be considered one of the seminal books on the topic.

He’s back in the classroom after a sabbatical, working on his next baseball project, a biography of the late Alejandro “Alex” Pompez, owner of the New York Cubans and later the director of international scouting for the New York/San Francisco Giants.

The book will be published by Hill and Wang, which means more of a press release presence. “Breaking out into the readership beyond a Latino baseball audience, I see it as broader than that. So having an apparatus within a publishing house to get the word out consistently, that would help,” he said.

Born in the Bronx not too far from Yankee Stadium, Burgos moved to New Jersey and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. “We went from where the Yankees played…to where they held spring training, which explains why I remain a Yankee fan to this day.” He jokes with his Illinois-based students and colleagues over the fate of his team while the White Sox and Cubs are excelling.

Playing America’s Game chronicles Latino participation in the game from the mid 19th-century to the present day. One misconception is that Latino ballplayers are “generic,” a concept Burgos takes great pains to refute. “The World Baseball Classic was able to bring that to the forefront of people’s mind. Now you see these people who are ballplayers on the Cubs, i.e., Zambrano and Soriano, playing on two different teams and understanding that these people aren’t all from the same countries.”

An ongoing topic of debate has been which group had a more difficult time breaking into the Majors: African-Americans or Hispanics. Burgos maintains that as much as black athletes had to deal with, they at least had communities in baseball towns where they could find some small comfort, while Latinos often did not have a similar “support system.” “You have the challenge of culture [and] the challenge of language” said Burgos.

Burgos believes MLB should do more to honor the pioneers of integration — Latino and African-America. “Integration is not celebrated as a independent triumph of Jackie Robinson,” he said, “but as a generation that ultimately transformed the game.”

In recent years, a push has been made to have Roberto Clemente’s number retired across the board, as the Majors did for Robinson in 1997. Burgos has mixed feelings.

“On the one hand, I love it when guys like Carlos Delgado put on the number and said ‘I want to honor Clemente’s legacy.'” By allowing players to continue to wear the numeral, Burgos believes they are serving, in a sense, as teachers, telling fans that such people as Clemente are important for their accomplishments both on the field and in more important circumstances. But he also recognizes the unique circumstances involved in designating this player was so special that no one should ever again be allowed to wear it.

“I’m Puerto Rican,” he said. “You look in my office at school, you look in my office [at home], you see Clemente all over the place.” At 39, Burgos was too young to have seen his hero play. His memories of Clemente are through videos and films.

In those days, an unenlightened press often relayed a Latino player’s interview answers in dialect. Part of it was a matter of impatience, as reporters rushed to meet deadlines. Whatever the reason, Burgos, says, it had the effect of making the player look stupid. Some managers — notably Al Dark, who led a San Francisco team that included Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Manny Mota, Jose Pagan, and Felipe and Matty Alou — demanded an “English-only” environment in the clubhouse, a source of frustration and tension. The 1963 team had a spring training camp with players from a dozen countries, said Burgos, describing the Giants that year as a better suited for the 1990s that the 1960s — with manager Dark more suited for the 1950s…as a football coach because of his dictatorial philosophy.

Language sensitivities are still a consideration in the 21st century. A few years ago, Paul LoDuca took the media to task for seeking out Caucasian players, rather than interviewing Carlos Beltran Carlos, Delgado, Jose Reyes and other Hispanics. Burgos noted that the complexion of the press room is still basically the same as in generations past; that is, populated primarily by white males. In Playing America’s Game, Burgos quotes Boston Red Sox DH David Ortiz on his feelings when dealing with the media: First he has to translate the question into Spanish, the answer it in Spanish, and finally translate it back into English, a cumbersome process for a medium that’s always ready to rush to the next item.

But Burgos believes progress is being made: several teams are setting up their minor league to include instruction in English and this has a long-term effect. Prospects see to what lengths the big league clubs are willing to go, and might be more apt to sign with them as a result.

Tagged as: Adrian Burgos, Latin America, Latino baseball