Book review: Klein, Alan M. Baseball On The Border. 1997.

Klein, Alan M. Baseball On The Border. 1st ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Though published twenty years ago, this study remains intriguing and perhaps instructive in how to operate sport franchises across cultural and national divides.  It tells the story of Los Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos), a Mexican baseball team that from the mid-1980s to early 1990s represented bordering cities in Mexico and the United States.  The team split its home schedule between a Mexican and American stadium, and as is typical of Mexican league teams, featured a number of American players on its roster.  Shortly after completing research for this book, the binational project collapsed.  Writer/researcher Alan Klein explains this failure largely in terms of structure.  Owners and managers were entirely Mexican and employed a largely conservative philosophy:  field a good team and attendance and finances would take care of themselves.  No one on the Mexican side seemed to understand the Tecolotes as a cultural phenomenon that could be sold to audiences far beyond the Laredos, “a binational phenomenon more as ideology than as fact, and it was in the distinction between the two that the relationship failed.”

Klein is an anthropologist now near the end of his career who had published two book-length studies prior to his work on the Tecolotes, one on baseball in the Dominican Republic (Sugarball, 1991).  Klein clearly writes for a general audience interested in sport and society and the average baseball fan will have no trouble reading Baseball On The Border.  Though containing narrative elements, the text is set out as a description and analysis of a sociological phenomenon.  The description takes in the history of the cities in which the team was located, the history of Mexican baseball, the Tecolotes’ key players (on and off the field), and the events of the 1993 and 1994 seasons.  The analysis looks into how nationalism is expressed through sport in the bordering cities of Laredo (US) and Nuevo Laredo (Mexico).

I found the description interesting and well written, the analysis less engaging.  The former accounts for the majority of the book, the latter a small portion that feels more like a requirement for publishing as an academic text.   What follows is more extensive summary of the book’s content.

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Following his Dominican research, Klein was casting about for another baseball research subject.  Having read Joseph’s study on the Yucatan, he imagined doing research in Meridia on the Leones, and arranged to attend a couple of their games during a northern Mexico road trip.  To his surprise, Klein found the Tecolotes a far more intriguing research subject.  The team represented both an American and Mexican town -- Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas -- and therein represented a unique instance of  cross-border nationalism.  Klein followed the team for two seasons and had the opportunity to witness the Tecos at their best, when they nearly won the championship in 1993, and as they struggled vainly to make the post-season in 1994.

Klein’s agenda is understanding nationalism at the perimeter.  Noting that borderlands are places where identities are regularly tested and thus never clear cut, Klein attempts to isolate what he sees as three distinct types of nationalism evident on the Mexican-US border.  Autonationalism is what one typically associates with nationalism:  collective identity with the state among those living within demarcated borders and in opposition to those inhabiting similarly demarcated neighboring states.  Binationalism arises from shared interests, such as the management of natural resources crossing political borders, where transnationalism is characterized as a blend or fusion arising from the regular contact of  autonationalisms, the creation of a distinctive third identity.  Klein sees all three reflected in the world of baseball, and believes that study of sport with an eye toward how these forms are manifested is an enlightening method for the study of politics and international relations.

Klein begins his account of baseball at the border with a historical review of the founding and growth of the Laredos.  The area that became the city was in the far reaches of Spain’s Mexican colony and largely ignored until French settlements began moving westward from the Mississippi valley.  To stake out Spanish claims, a string of settlements was erected along the Rio Grande, with most towns sited where geography made river-crossing easy.  Named after a town in Spain, Laredo grew up straddling the river and its residents spent much of the 18th and 19th centuries fighting off Comanche and Apache raiders.  Agriculture was difficult, but herding was possible, and so the town grew into a center for ranching.  Some historians, in fact, trace US cowboy culture back to Laredo, and in this Klein sees an example of transnationalism, of Mexican ranchero culture being fused with new American technologies and then diffused across the western territories of the United States.

Because Laredo was so distant from both Mexican and American centers of power, the people of Laredo developed a sense of independence born out of geographical isolation, to see themselves as Laredoans rather than Mexicans or Americans.  The complicated politics of Mexican and Texan independence left them feeling betrayed by both and many rallied to the cause of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande. Laredoans remained largely neutral during the Mexican War, the end of which resulted in the permanent division of their city by a new international boundary  -- the Rio Grande.  The American side remained Laredo, while the Mexican side became Nuevo Laredo.  Both formed part of a free trade zone from 1855-1909 that cemented its identity as a city apart. While national governments envisioned the river as an impenetrable border, in fact it has remained extremely porous.  Families, friends, and businessmen have regularly moved back and forth across the river at will.  “In a real sense, despite differing levels of economic development and belonging to different and sometimes antagonistic nations, the two Laredos have paid the border very little heed.”

By the late 19th century the arrival of railroads linked the Laredos to their respective nations,  opening opportunities for the movement of people and the diffusion of culture, including to the interests of this study the game of baseball.  While the origins of the game in Mexico are still opaque, Klein surmises from circumstantial evidence that the game probably arrived in Laredo via the railroad.  Two lines were completed in 1881 and 1883.  The first documentary evidence of a baseball game is an 1884 report in The Laredo Times.  Klein suggests that as this report is rather routine, there must have been previous games that went unreported.  The earliest newspaper reports contain names of Anglo players, but by 1888 Spanish names begin to appear.  By 1915 there is mention in Laredo of an all-Mexican team.  Klein proposes the relevance of Beezley’s theory on the diffusion of sport from elite to common classes in explaining the gap between the first reports of baseball in Laredo and the first reported appearance of an all-Mexicano team.  Evidence suggests that while the two Laredos fielded teams to compete against one another in cross border rivalries, they often joined forces to compete against teams from other towns and cities.

In the period up until the 1930s, baseball in Mexico was becoming more organized, with a professional league centered on the capital, Mexico City.  The Laredos were still largely isolated geographically and baseball there was still a sporadic local event.  The American side was dominant until 1934, when La Junta, a team formed two years earlier in Nuevo Laredo, rose first to local, then to regional and international attention.  La Junta’s initial success was notable for attracting media attention and paying audiences from both sides of the border, as well as for playing their home games on the American side (even though they were a Mexican team).  During a barnstorming tour of Mexico, La Junta faced off against the barnstorming House of David, one of the most well-known and powerful travelling American baseball teams of the period (or perhaps of any period).  La Junta’s management saw the possibility of a Mexican team doing much the same and took advantage of contact with House of David to learn from its manager how to organize such a tour.  In 1935 the team was on the road for three months, during which it played eighty-three games in ten states, compiling an impressive record of 62-18-3.  Along the way, they competed in the Dakotas against Satchel Paige (who would later pitch in Mexico), and one of their members was recruited to the Philadelphia Phillies.  The season ended in Laredo with a victory over the travelling American League All-Star Team, establishing the ability of Mexicans to play baseball on par, or even better than, their American cousins.

Klein follows with an extensive chapter outlining the 1940s, focusing most specifically on 1946.  This was to be the US’ first post-WWII season, one in which teams were to be fully-stocked with first-rate Anglo-Americans, many of whom had been temporarily replaced by minor-leaguers and light-skinned Latins during the war years.   In Mexico the decade was a period in which team owners attempted to rationalize baseball, to turn it into a reliable commodity with a fixed league, regular schedules, and better facilities.  1946 turned out to be a season fraught with political intrigue involving government agencies on both sides of the border when the Mexican brothers Pasquel came shopping in the US baseball labor market with offers far in excess of US salaries for players to join a newly established Mexican league.  This was not the first time Mexican teams had recruited from abroad.  The 1930s La Junta team featured a number of Cubans, and many American Negro League players worked in Mexico, where they found more respect and better working conditions than at home.  But it was certainly the first time Mexicans succeeding in luring talent from some of America’s best known teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers and St Louis Cardinals.

Klein is particularly interested in the 1946 “baseball war” as an example of the intersection of sport and nationalism.  Certainly a ball game has no national interests, but as this incident suggests, profit-making agents are not above using patriotic sentiments to project and protect their commercial interests.  Klein believes the Pasquels’ efforts to build a Mexican league using US talent had as much to do with building a commercially viable product as it was a chance for the Mexicans to tweak the nose of their northern neighbor by asserting the right of Mexicans to engage in the same predatory monopoly practices as the Americans.  What was surprising for American baseball officials was the level of support Pasquel was able to garner among the American press, ball players, and even government officials.  American baseball business practices, it seems, were generally not well regarded among Americans.  1946 also saw another effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to unionize North American players.  Eventually the Pasquels’ cash and energy ran out and by 1948 the eight-team league was down to four, all playing in Mexico City and none with any North Americans.  The Pasquels finally left baseball in 1949 with their league having been awarded AA standing as a minor league affiliate.

And what of the Laredos during the 40s?  Being the northernmost point of Mexico and the southernmost of the US in a world that still relied heavily on ground transport, most all those associated with the baseball-war passed through the Laredos.  The Pasquels owned a mansion in Nuevo Laredo and built a warehouse across the river for storing goods for importation into Mexico.  After having disappeared for three seasons, La Junta returned in 1944 as the Tecolotes, The Owls, so named because they were one of the first teams to play night games.  They left the league again for the 1947-48 seasons, but were around for the brouhaha of 1946, bagging three North American players for a team that finished at .500.  Across the river, Laredo tried but failed to launch its own team, but was never successful until 1949, when the Laredo Apaches became charter members of the Rio Grande League.  Unfortunately, this lasted only two years, leaving the Tecolotes the sole representatives of the Laredos.

By the 1950s the team was under new ownership, one that spent liberally and produced three championship teams in a decade.  In 1960 the team was bought and subsequently moved to three different cities before returning to Nuevo Laredo for the 1976 season.  By 1977 the Tecolotes were back to their winning ways, defeating Mexico City for the championship.  The team changed ownership again in 1981 and thereafter stayed in contention for most every season until Klein undertook his mid-90s study.  Klein sees two important developments during the 80s.  The first was the Tecolotes’ transformation into the world’s first binational professional sports team. The Mexican owners noted continuing cross-border interest, saw the financial potential of exploiting the US market, and initiated contact with well-placed American fans, including Laredo’s assistant city manager. The second development was the acquisition of a core group of players who would stay with the team for over a decade, allowing management to build a team into a community.

The second section of Klein’s book opens with an overview of the structure of the Mexican league and biographical sketches of the 1990s Tecolotes key personnel, including the owner, general manager, and several of the players, both Mexican and American.  This chapter is a bit frustrating as it alludes to events Klein will not reveal in full until later chapters about the two seasons during which he was resident with the team.  What seems obvious from his presentation is that this unique sports franchise could not have happened without three key players:  the bicultural general manager, who served in the US Marines, lived in Laredo, and maintained dual citizenship; the director of the Laredo Civic Center, a baseball fan and well-placed politician from one of Laredo’s oldest families, who despite not working for the Tecolotes was essential in negotiating agreements on the US side; and the Mexican team owner who was financially committed to a successful franchise.

Klein deploys the metaphor of a city to describe the social organization of the Tecos.  A group of veteran players is like the old section of town, around which has grown a suburb of a newer cadre of players, as well as a ghetto for the foreigners.  The older players assume a mantle of leadership, but the newer arrivals find them somewhat presumptive and rude, are more politicized than the veteran cohort and more likely to confront management over what they consider abuse.  The foreigners reside across the border in Laredo, rarely learn Spanish, and often take out their frustration on their hosts for their situation, which they liken to banishment from US baseball.  Relations are dictated largely by the league and owners, who maintain monopoly rights to their players and typically seek exorbitant fees to sell or lease talent to US leagues  (accounting for the small number of Mexicans north of the border).  Owners also have substantial leverage over the press and are therefore used to generally favorable, or at least non-threatening, coverage.

Previous to this study on the Tecos, Klein investigated bodybuilding communities in southern California.  His interest in ideas and expressions of masculinity is explored here in a chapter comparing Mexican and Anglo machismo  as he encountered it in two seasons with the Tecos.  Though a well-known concept, Klein warns of the difficulty in fixing precise definitions to a phenomenon that under observation may vary in expression depending on the individual, class, ethnicity, age, and context.  Klein argues for a more nuanced view of machismo as a cluster of behaviors that exist on a scale from gentle machismo to more typically aggressive extremes, with individuals exhibiting both, or forms somewhere in between.  Macho, then, “emerges as a cultural complex rather than as a single trait or two.”  It may also manifest as part of the character of the group, as with the Tecos, known to be a power-hitting team averse to small-ball tactics such as bunting and base-stealing.  Machismo among Mexican players is expressed in language most often through sexually-loaded double entendres.  Through contact with wives of Mexican Tecos, Klein found a clear gender hierarchy in male-female relationships, with only one wife working and only one attending college.  The male was clearly seen as the provider of financial resources, the woman as manager of the home.  Wives expected their husbands to engage in infidelities while on the road, and as a result were generally insecure about their relationships.  On the other hand, Klein found players able to express feelings of vulnerability to each other, engage in forms of physical affection with teammates, and respond intimately to the needs and attentions of fans.  Of the American players, Klein found them using humor or sarcasm to mask expressions of hurt or vulnerability, and rarely engaging in physical contact with teammates apart from the socially sanctioned high-fives, butt slaps, and chest thumps.

The last section of the book ought to be the highlight, a narrative account of the ‘93 and ‘94 seasons, but after all that has come before it feels more like an epilogue.  We find that the event alluded to earlier -- referred to here as The Mexico City Incident -- was the desertion of the team by the importados.  Miffed at what they considered their poor treatment by management, the foreign players flew back to Laredo in the midst of a road trip.  The Tecolotes subsequently played poorly, the Mexican players felt betrayed, and management tried to deflect league attention by claiming the Americans had been given permission to leave, further inflaming the resentment of Mexican players.  Had the league investigated, the importados may have been suspended for the rest of the season, tanking any chance for post-season play for the Telcolotes.  As it was they made it to the championship, only to be squashed in five games by the Tabasco Olmecs.

The ‘94 season opened with the stunning news that two veteran players had been sold and the franchise was desperately short of cash.  Fans were stunned at the sale and many thereafter soured on the owners, staying away in large numbers and thereby further straining franchise finances.  Team members felt demoralized and leaderless and by midseason there were rumors the franchise might be sold.  For the first time in twelve years, the Tecolotes failed to make the playoffs;  player, press, and fan anger was squarely directed at management.  In September it was announced that while the Laredos would still have a team, most of the players and management were moving to Mexico City.  New owners managed to piece together a team for the ‘95 season, but Laredo felt maligned and shifted its support to a team for a new Texas-Louisiana League.  The Tecolotes of the Laredos became the Nuevo Laredo Tecolotes; the binational experiment was over.

As a postscript to Klein’s book, it may be noted that the binational Tecolote experiment was revived under new leadership from 1996 to 2003.  The team was subsequently moved to Tijuana for the 2004 season.

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