I've read some of Kurlansky's other books over the years and thought that he should be able to create a somewhat engaging story about the Dominican Republic's baseball stars, specifically for the town of San Pedro de Macoris. I felt that the author may have been rushing to meet a deadline as the book seemed to lack the focus on the town that it should have and seemed to lack the organization that a less-rushed effort would have yielded. While Kurlansky does provide a bit of a history of baseball in the Dominican and attributes the first Dominican players in the United States to the problems with Cuba in the early 1960s, he really fails to deliver on the promise of describing how the town itself was changed. The appendix provides a list of persons associated with the Dominican Republic who have played Major League Baseball. In the end, that may be the most useful part of the book. ( )

I've read & enjoyed Mark Kurlansky's "The Big Oyster" so I decided to give a go at his newest book, which was advertised as an investigation into why San Pedro de Macoris has provided a disproportionately large number of major league short stops. It may have been a poor move on the part of his publisher's marketing division, because the book would have worked much better at addressing the question of "why the Dominican Republic" than "why San Pedro" and left out short stops all together. It's a highly disjointed book that offers some periods of brilliance, but stumbles on providing a coherency that is needed in constructing a well-timed argument. Currently major league baseball has an abundance of players from the Caribbean and Kurlansky does a good job at explaining the reasons behind it, but he falters at providing a solid explanation for his narrower thesis. ( )

A dry, fact-filled report of the town of San Pedro de Marcoris in the Dominican Republic. The author takes us back almost to Columbus, and marches forward through every 'owner/exploiter' of the town. On peripherially do we get to Baseball in the later 1/3 of the book, and then the story concerns more the history of baseball and stories of individuals and their struggles with baseball teams, terms, contracts, etc. Very little is actually said about how much impact baseball had on the town. I was particularly disappointed not to find any mention of players from the DR, other than those who specifically came thru this town, although the author never stated that he intended otherwise. A good solid book for someone doing research on socio-economic developement in the Dominican Republic, or someone who is a die-hard baseball trivia fan. As general reading, it falls short. ( )