Audiobook8 hours
The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris
Written by Mark Kurlansky
Narrated by Ed Sala
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this audiobook
In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, seventy-nine boys and men from San Pedro had gone on to play in the Major Leagues-that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States looking for opportunity, wealth, and a better life.
Because of the sugar industry and the influxes of migrant workers from across the Caribbean to work in the cane fields and factories, San Pedro is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Dominican Republic. A multitude of languages are spoken there, and a variety of skin colors populate the community; but the one constant is sugar and baseball. The history of players from San Pedro is also a chronicle of racism in baseball, changing social mores in sports and in the Dominican Republic, and the personal stories of the many men who sought freedom from poverty through playing ball. The story of baseball in San Pedro is also that of the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on a broader level opens a window into U.S. history.
As with Mark Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this small story, rich with anecdote and detail, becomes much larger than ever imagined. Kurlansky reveals two countries' love affair with a sport and the remarkable journey of San Pedro and its baseball players. In his distinctive style, he follows common threads and discovers wider meanings about place, identity, and, above all, baseball.
Because of the sugar industry and the influxes of migrant workers from across the Caribbean to work in the cane fields and factories, San Pedro is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Dominican Republic. A multitude of languages are spoken there, and a variety of skin colors populate the community; but the one constant is sugar and baseball. The history of players from San Pedro is also a chronicle of racism in baseball, changing social mores in sports and in the Dominican Republic, and the personal stories of the many men who sought freedom from poverty through playing ball. The story of baseball in San Pedro is also that of the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on a broader level opens a window into U.S. history.
As with Mark Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this small story, rich with anecdote and detail, becomes much larger than ever imagined. Kurlansky reveals two countries' love affair with a sport and the remarkable journey of San Pedro and its baseball players. In his distinctive style, he follows common threads and discovers wider meanings about place, identity, and, above all, baseball.
Author
Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of Milk!, Havana, Paper, The Big Oyster, 1968, Salt, The Basque History of the World, Cod, and Salmon, among other titles. He has received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bon Appétit's Food Writer of the Year Award, the James Beard Award, and the Glenfiddich Award. He lives in New York City. www.markkurlansky.com
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Reviews for The Eastern Stars
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
4 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I've read & enjoyed Mark Kurlansky's "The Big Oyster" so I decided to give a go at his newest book, which was advertised as an investigation into why San Pedro de Macoris has provided a disproportionately large number of major league short stops. It may have been a poor move on the part of his publisher's marketing division, because the book would have worked much better at addressing the question of "why the Dominican Republic" than "why San Pedro" and left out short stops all together. It's a highly disjointed book that offers some periods of brilliance, but stumbles on providing a coherency that is needed in constructing a well-timed argument. Currently major league baseball has an abundance of players from the Caribbean and Kurlansky does a good job at explaining the reasons behind it, but he falters at providing a solid explanation for his narrower thesis.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I've read some of Kurlansky's other books over the years and thought that he should be able to create a somewhat engaging story about the Dominican Republic's baseball stars, specifically for the town of San Pedro de Macoris. I felt that the author may have been rushing to meet a deadline as the book seemed to lack the focus on the town that it should have and seemed to lack the organization that a less-rushed effort would have yielded. While Kurlansky does provide a bit of a history of baseball in the Dominican and attributes the first Dominican players in the United States to the problems with Cuba in the early 1960s, he really fails to deliver on the promise of describing how the town itself was changed. The appendix provides a list of persons associated with the Dominican Republic who have played Major League Baseball. In the end, that may be the most useful part of the book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A dry, fact-filled report of the town of San Pedro de Marcoris in the Dominican Republic. The author takes us back almost to Columbus, and marches forward through every 'owner/exploiter' of the town. On peripherially do we get to Baseball in the later 1/3 of the book, and then the story concerns more the history of baseball and stories of individuals and their struggles with baseball teams, terms, contracts, etc. Very little is actually said about how much impact baseball had on the town. I was particularly disappointed not to find any mention of players from the DR, other than those who specifically came thru this town, although the author never stated that he intended otherwise. A good solid book for someone doing research on socio-economic developement in the Dominican Republic, or someone who is a die-hard baseball trivia fan. As general reading, it falls short.