Film Review: Sugar. (2008). [film] Directed by A. Boden and R. Fleck.

Sugar. (2008). [film] Directed by A. Boden and R. Fleck. US: HBO Films.

Sugar can sometimes be found in lists of baseball movies, but it is more a story about personal discovery, of learning how to manage life, than it is about baseball.

Anyone wishing to explore the background to Sugar would do well to look into the work of anthropologist Alan Klein, who has published widely on the socio-political-economic aspects of Dominican baseball. With an island-wide network of academies in which young boys are housed and trained for eventual export to the United States, the DR has become a regular and consistent source of inexpensive labor for Major League Baseball.  But for every Sammy Sosa or David Ortiz who signs a multimillion dollar big league contract, thousands of aspirants never make it past the minor leagues.  A touching montage of these now grown men closes out the film, which includes Sugar, our protagonist, a young man whose story highlights the trajectory of many Dominicans brought to the United States to play baseball.

Film Review: Pelotero. (2011).

Pelotero (2011). [film] Directed by R. Finkel and T. Martin. USA: Makuhari Media.

The great thing about Pelotero is the immediacy.  The camera seems to be there for many of the most important scenes and gives the film a sense of presence, as if the viewer were there to witness these tangled and frustrating negotiations.  MLB was reportedly not happy with the film.  Then commissioner Bud Selig is said to have called the producers, which included then Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, to complain about unfair treatment.  Valentine is reported as replying to the effect that the camera simply documented what transpired and if as a result the MLB looks bad, that’s MLB’s fault.

The object of the camera’s focus is a pair of 16-year old Dominican baseball players, pelotero in Spanish, as they perform in tryouts for MLB scouts and prepare to negotiate contracts they hope will launch their families out of poverty.  Dominica has been an attractive source of labor for MLB for the past two decades because, as more than one person remarks in the documentary, it can take advantage of the country’s political and economic weakness to recruit cheap labor. The fly in the MLB’s ointment is the buscone, Dominican coaches who groom talent and act as player agents in contract negotiations, resulting often in million-dollar signing bonuses.

Book review: Mitchell, L. (2016). Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball.

Mitchell, L. (2016). Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

If you ever wondered what political consultants get paid for, Will Big League Baseball Survive? might prove enlightening, not so much for what it says about baseball, but for how the author applies his research and analytical skills to sport.  Mitchell Lincoln is an American consultant and political analyst with a PhD from Columbia University.  He has been published widely in US mainstream media and has written three books on politics and democracy in the former Soviet Union and East Bloc countries.

His baseball book is something like a SWOT analysis, an acronym business students will recognize as a commonly used interpretive device: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  SWOT offers a business a snapshot of current operations in terms of what it already does well, where it is failing, how it might improve, and who or what it needs to worry about. Mitchell doesn’t structure his book in quite this way, but the concept (or something like it) is implicit in the discussion.

Film Review: Los Pequenos Gigantes. (1960).

Los Pequenos Gigantes. (1960). [film] Directed by H. Butler. Mexico: Classa Films Mundial.

Los Pequenos Gigantes (The Little Giants) tells the story of the 1957 Little League World Series champions, a team from Monterrey, Mexico, the first from outside the United States to take home that trophy.  Filmed in Mexico and the US two years after the events it depicts, the movie is unusual for featuring the children and coach as actors playing themselves.  While poor performances might be expected, in fact the only cringe-worthy turn comes from the team’s American-expat “manager,” who speaks in tin-eared English-accented Spanish. The boys do a fine job representing themselves, as does the coach, the drama’s central character, whose background and motivations unfold slowly and provide a drama within the larger drama.

The film is unusual in a couple of other ways.  The director and co-author of the screenplay, Hugo Butler, was an academy-award nominated screenwriter who served in the US military in World War II before falling victim to America's post-war Communist witch-hunt.  Blacklisted in Hollywood, he moved to Mexico and worked on a number of projects such as this, as well as teaming-up with another expatriate filmmaker, one of the world’s great auteurs, Luis Buñuel. In putting this film together, Butler was able to take liberal advantage of stock footage featuring his actors, such as clips from real games, a meeting at the White House with President Dwight Eisenhower, the homecoming airport reception and parade in Monterey, and a meeting with Mexican President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines.

Butler avoids sentimentality and jingoism and in his presentation of themes of purpose, resolve, resilience, camaraderie, and national pride is deliberately understated. This stands in contrast to the excessively melodramatic English-language Disney remake (The Perfect Game, 2008), featuring a cast of children seemingly wise beyond their years.  For a more sensitive and genuine presentation of this story, seek out Los Pequenos Gigantes.

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