MARK KURLANSKY / The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Marcoris
Friday, April 23 2010 at 7:30 PM
Mark
Kurlansky delivers the intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished
area in the Dominican
Republic that has produced a staggering
number of Major League Baseball talent.
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 have 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 influx 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 our country's history.
As with 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.
Mark Kurlansky is the author of not
only Cod and Salt, but also of The Food
of a Younger Land, The Last Fish
Tale, 1968. The Big Oyster, Nonviolence:
The History of a Dangerous Idea, and Bugaloo
on 2nd Avenue.
