Two years ago this month we published the Third Edition of Samuel O. Regalado’s book Viva Baseball! Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger, which chronicles the struggles of Latin American professional baseball players in the United States from the late 1800s to the present.

Kevin Horrigan from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quotes a passage from Viva Baseball! in his recent column advocating Major League Baseball’s spring withdrawal from Arizona.

Horrigan:
“The first Hispanic superstar, and the first Hispanic player in the Hall of Fame, was Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican. He also was one of the first big stars of Afro-Hispanic descent and was acutely sensitive about the treatment he got. He would die in plane crash on an earthquake relief mission to Nicaragua in 1972; he has since gotten some of the same ex post facto honors from baseball that Robinson received.

It’s nice to think of what Roberto Clemente would do if he were strolling down the street in Maricopa County, Ariz., and was stopped as ‘reasonably suspicious’ by one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies. He sure as hell wouldn’t keep quiet about it.”