Mexican American Baseball in South Texas pays tribute to the former baseball teams and players from Edinburg, McAllen, Mission, Pharr, Donna, Alamo, San Juan, Brownsville, Harlingen, and other surrounding communities. From the late 19th century through the 1950s, baseball in South Texas provided opportunities for nurturing athletic and educational skills, reaffirming ethnic identity, promoting political self-determination, developing economic autonomy, and reshaping gender roles for women....

Mexican American Baseball in El Paso chronicles the vibrant and colorful history of baseball in the El Paso-Juárez border region. For more than a century, baseball along the border has served as a means of bringing together people of all backgrounds, races, and nationalities, from the fly-by-night teams of the Pancho Villa era to the fabled semiprofessional clubs of the Lower Valley League. For the area's Mexican and Mexican American citizens, storied teams like the Juárez Indios, Fabens M...

Mexican American Baseball in the Alamo Region celebrates the game as it was played in the Tejano and Tejana communities throughout Texas. This regional focus explores the importance of the game at a time when Spanish-speaking people were demanding cultural acceptance and their political and civil rights in cities like San Antonio, Corpus Christi, New Braunfels, San Diego, Kingsville, and Pleasanton. All had thriving Mexican American communities that found comfort in the game and pride in t...

The Sanchez Family is a family history detailing the Sanchez family’s experiences as immigrants to Wyoming and the ways that their US-born children’s interest in wrestling had cascading impacts across generations. By focusing on a sport and a state that have not received much attention, Jorge Iber conveys the importance of athletics as a part of the educational experience of the Latino community.The first members of this particular Sanchez clan arrived in Wyoming during th...

The history of baseball is filled with players whose careers were defined by one bad play. Mike Torrez is remembered as the pitcher who gave up the infamous three-run homer to Bucky "Bleeping" Dent in the 1978 playoffs tie-breaker between the Red Sox and Yankees. Yet Torrez's life added up to much more than his worst moment on the mound. Coming from a vibrant Mexican American community that settled in Topeka, Kansas, in the early 1900s, he made it to the Majors by his own talent and effort...

Gabriel “Gabe” Rivera was one of the greatest players in the history of Texas Tech football. He earned All American status, was enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame, and saw his name elevated to the Texas Tech Ring of Honor. After his college career, Rivera became a first-round selection of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1983, but his career would be tragically cut short by an accident during his rookie year that left him paralyzed from the waist down.Sports historian Jorge...

Both the U.S. population and Major League Baseball rosters have seen dramatic demographic changes over the past 50 years. The nation and the sport are becoming multilingual, with Spanish the unofficial second language. Today, 21 of 30 MLB teams broadcast at least some games in Spanish.Filling a gap in the literature of baseball, this collection of new essays examines the history of the game in Spanish, from the earliest locutores who called the plays for Latin American aud...

A story about NFL quarterback Tony Romo's journey to stardom, intended for young readers.

Born in a poor Panamanian fishing village, Mariano River Jr. did not think he would grow up to be a famous New York Yankees pitcher. In fact, he thought that he would follow his father into the fishing industry. After he replaced a poorly-performing pitcher during an amateur baseball game, the Yankees scout saw his talent.Mariano Rivera would go on to become a thirteen-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion. He holds two MLB records and has won many other awards. He is a...

In 1927 Cuban national Ignacio S. Molinet was recruited to play with the Frankford Yellow Jackets of the old NFL for a single season. Mexican national Jose Martinez-Zorrilla achieved 1932 All-American honors. These are the beginnings of the Latino experience in American Football, which continues amidst a remarkable and diversified setting of Hispanic nationalities and ethnic groups. This history of Latinos in American Football dispels the myths that baseball, boxing, and soccer are the cho...

Latinos and Latinas in American Sport: Stories Beyond Peloteros expands upon the significance of sport in U.S. Latino communities by looking at sports as diverse as drag racing and community softball, the rise of Latinas in high school basketball, and the role of Latinos in protesting social injustice through sport.Although the Latino/a population of the United States has significantly expanded since the 1960s, an analysis of this population’s place in the history of Ameri...

Although the Latino/a population of the United States has exploded since the 1960s, an analysis of its place in the history of American sport has, until recently, been sorely underrepresented. The thoughtful and coherent essays in More Than Just Peloteros demonstrate that participation in sport and recreation develops identity and involvement in the lives of Spanish-speaking people throughout what is now the United States. The articles feature accounts of eras and events as varied as the L...