I finished this book just before leaving for a longish vacation filled with diversions a bit more appealing than writing a book review. I didn’t want to let the reading pass, though, without saying a few words about an informative text that marks the end of a quarter century of baseball research in the Dominican Republic. Klein’s first book, Sugarball (1991), was an ethnographic account of the sport on the Caribbean island in the mid to late 80s, including extensive discussion of the developing system of buscones and the MLB’s increasing interest in the country as a source of cheap and highly skilled labor. In the interviewing years, Klein published several papers on Dominican baseball, as well as a book length project on baseball in a Mexican border town, in addition to research into the North American body-building subculture, and sport among Native American communities.
New pride, Old prejudice is something of an update rather than a full-blown ethnography, an analysis of the economic and political developments between the MLB and Dominican baseball. While there are many irritants in the relationship, Klein concludes that the biggest problem appears to be the inability to agree on what constitutes a problem. The MLB, for example, sees the buscones as a nuisance, one to be reined in to create a more rational (and less expensive) labor supply. Dominicans, on the other hand, are likely to see the buscones, in the absence of a strong government, as the actors most likely and most able to protect Dominican interests and procure appropriate levels of financial compensation for Dominican ball players. It’s not clear how these issues will be resolved, but Klein feels that the fortunes of the Dominicans and the MLB are now tied so closely to each other that the two will sink or swim together.
For a lengthier look at this book, please see Dain TePoel’s review at Sport in American History: https://ussporthistory.com/2014/10/06/review-of-alan-kleins-dominican-baseball-new-pride-old-prejudice/
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