| This dissertation focuses on the problems of acculturation and assimilation that Latin baseball players faced as they entered the professional ranks in the United States from 1871 to 1970. Not until 1911 did Latinos join the major league ranks with any regularity, but in the following decades their numbers slowly grew. During the 1950s and 1960s a great surge of ballplayers arrived from Latin America, encouraged in large part by expanded scouting efforts and, for many, by the integration of blacks in professional baseball. Latins entered an American sport that personified the American dream of opportunity, upward social mobility, and success. Like other immigrant groups, Latin ballplayers came to the United States pursuing that dream with skill, determination, and courage.;They, like other immigrants, faced language barriers, loneliness, nativism, and racial discrimination. American baseball, it turned out, mirrored American life itself, with its promises, its opportunities, and its disappointments.;For Latin players, the story was thus bittersweet. Some came to exhibit their skills against well-publicized American stars. Others came to escape their poverty-stricken environs. All came for financial gains. And all demonstrated a "special hunger" to succeed--to gain recognition in a land which was not their own. By 1970 many Latins had succeeded, highlighting a saga that had begun in American professional baseball almost a century before. |
