The Veracruz Blues

Mark Winegardner

Todd, if you haven't read this one, get it. Winegardner is a local Clevelander and here writes about a period in baseball history that I had never heard about. And writes about it quite well. The book is fiction, but deserves more of an explanation than that. Winegardner, in the foreward, indicates that he read every newspaper account he could find (Mexican newspapers only) about the 1946 season for the Mexican league. Many of the people in the book are recognizable real people, but the ficion comes in from a few characters created to move the story along, and created dialog which may or may not have happened.

In 1946, Jorge Pasquel (a real, well known person, according to my representative in Mexico) was trying to make a run at a third major league. He did it by starting to sign black players in the winter, who had not yet broken the color line, paying them well -- generally much better than in the American or National league, and build the capability and creditbility of the Mexican league. However, black players were still considered 'second rate' up north, so he began to raid white players. The commissioner at the time put a ban on any player that jumped to the Mexican league. A lot of social history, and a lot of baseball, going on in this well written book.