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Baseball on the Border : A Tale of Two Laredos / Alan M. Klein.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2016]Copyright date: 1997Description: 1 online resource (320 p.) : 19 halftones 1 mapContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781400884520
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 796.357/09764/462 21
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART ONE: ORIGINS -- One. A Brief History of the Two Laredos -- Two. Early Baseball on the Border -- Three. Nationalizing the Game -- PART TWO: BECOMING TECOS -- Four. The Players and the Team -- Five. Culture and Masculinity on the Tecos -- PART THREE: THE RIVER JOINS AND THE RIVER DIVIDES -- Six. 1993: The Best of Times -- Seven. 1994: The Worst of Times -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix A: Bibliographic Essay: Border and Nationalisms -- Appendix B: Methods and Perspective -- Notes -- Index
Summary: From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball), the "Tecos" had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities. Baseball on the Border is the story of the rise and unexpected demise of this surprising team. For Alan Klein, a cultural anthropologist specializing in sport, "the border" is almost a nation of its own. Having formed teams of players from both sides of the Rio Grande for almost a century, organizers and followers of the "Border Birds" often join forces but just as frequently squabble with each other in a chronic border tension. Throughout the book, Klein includes firsthand observations of the team and descriptions of its players. Readers will meet Dan Firova, the Tecos' beleaguered manager, a border-region native who nevertheless finds himself a target of the Mexican media. The "Ugly American," Willie Waite, is a young pitcher whose stunning success does nothing to diminish the disdain he has for his Mexican teammates. Ernesto Barraza, "The Trickster," once threw a no-hitter on only seventy-three pitches (on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough), but occasionally shows up at the park missing part of his uniform. And then there is Andres Mora, an aged slugger who, despite three seasons in major league baseball and a life of personal excesses, came within a few home runs of setting the all-time Mexican League record. This is just part of the roster of the Tecos and only a fraction of the lineup of Baseball on the Border. Anyone with an interest in baseball will be enlightened and entertained by this informative book.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400884520

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- PART ONE: ORIGINS -- One. A Brief History of the Two Laredos -- Two. Early Baseball on the Border -- Three. Nationalizing the Game -- PART TWO: BECOMING TECOS -- Four. The Players and the Team -- Five. Culture and Masculinity on the Tecos -- PART THREE: THE RIVER JOINS AND THE RIVER DIVIDES -- Six. 1993: The Best of Times -- Seven. 1994: The Worst of Times -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix A: Bibliographic Essay: Border and Nationalisms -- Appendix B: Methods and Perspective -- Notes -- Index

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From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball), the "Tecos" had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities. Baseball on the Border is the story of the rise and unexpected demise of this surprising team. For Alan Klein, a cultural anthropologist specializing in sport, "the border" is almost a nation of its own. Having formed teams of players from both sides of the Rio Grande for almost a century, organizers and followers of the "Border Birds" often join forces but just as frequently squabble with each other in a chronic border tension. Throughout the book, Klein includes firsthand observations of the team and descriptions of its players. Readers will meet Dan Firova, the Tecos' beleaguered manager, a border-region native who nevertheless finds himself a target of the Mexican media. The "Ugly American," Willie Waite, is a young pitcher whose stunning success does nothing to diminish the disdain he has for his Mexican teammates. Ernesto Barraza, "The Trickster," once threw a no-hitter on only seventy-three pitches (on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough), but occasionally shows up at the park missing part of his uniform. And then there is Andres Mora, an aged slugger who, despite three seasons in major league baseball and a life of personal excesses, came within a few home runs of setting the all-time Mexican League record. This is just part of the roster of the Tecos and only a fraction of the lineup of Baseball on the Border. Anyone with an interest in baseball will be enlightened and entertained by this informative book.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)