Averill “Ace” Smith crafts a fast-paced, action-packed narrative of the 1937 Dominican Baseball League championship season that is one of the most fascinating events in global baseball history. The book's title is misleading, since the work is more about the frenzied, tournament-like atmosphere of the season than Satchel Paige and Rafael Trujillo. Although a relatively short season, it played out as an unrelenting cascade of interconnected events linking the action on the field to each of the three ball clubs’ pursuit of some of the greatest baseball talents in the history of the game. The teams spent vast amounts of money on players, raising the expectations of their fanáticos and subjecting players who did not live up to their billing to scorn and ridicule. But the flow of money was not limited to the teams: wagering that began early in the morning and lasted throughout the day added a layer of intensity and tension in the stands and on the streets.
The season was also filled with intrigue as the games were played under the long shadow of the ruthless, megalomaniacal dictator Rafael Trujillo, who tied his presidential re-election campaign to the season by supporting the Dragones de Ciudad Trujillo, a team he was assured would be a dominant force. The team would cast a positive light on Trujillo by not merely defeating but crushing their opponents. The dictator was approached with this plan by José Enrique Aybar and his brother-in-law, Francisco Martínez Alba, and although he had little interest in baseball, he saw this as a smart political move given his nation's passion for the game. There was one small problem: when play began, the team was not winning and lacked the talent of its two main opponents—the Águilas and the Estrellas—who stocked their teams with talented native sons as well as players from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the US Negro Leagues.
Smith details the early struggles of the Dragones and the panic that set in among the team's organizers. Aybar began a frantic search for better players and set his sights on signing Negro League stars, in particular Leroy “Satchel” Paige. Within days, he met with Paige in New Orleans and offered him an unfathomable $30,000 to pitch for the Dragones. Paige was skeptical until the next day, when there was a $30,000 deposit in his account. Within days, he and his longtime catcher, Cy Perkins, arrived in the Dominican Republic. His arrival was hyped in the local papers, increasing both the excitement and expectations of the fans.
But Paige got off to a poor start, and news articles, most likely ghostwritten by an angry Aybar, described him as overrated and a disappointment. Paige and Perkins were blissfully unaware of the negative sentiment among the fanáticos as they spent most of their time frequenting bars and brothels. As the team continued to play sluggishly, Aybar seethed and set out to sign other Negro League stars, securing Negro League greats Cool Papa Bell, Leroy Matlock, and, most importantly, Josh Gibson. The Estrellas and the Águilas were not to be outdone and sent off scouts to import more Negro League talent. The loss of its star players would have devastating effects on the Negro League, and in response the owners instituted permanent bans on any player who left for the Caribbean. Gus Greeley, a gambling kingpin and owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, led the charge, but his threats only served to make the players more aware of the opportunities for better paydays in the Dominican Republic. Greeley's plan backfired, and within weeks Negro League rosters were devoid of their most celebrated talent.
Meanwhile, with new players on the roster, Aybar formed a committee of discipline and organization to ensure the Dragones would play at their best. The players were now under the watchful eye of Trujillo's notorious enforcer Miguel Paulino and his henchmen, putting an end to the carousing and late-night partying. While the presence of men with guns and rifles in the dugout certainly got the players’ attention, it was Gibson's hitting and Paige's return to his dominant form that got the Dragones on the winning track and led them to the championship game against the Águilas, featuring the legendary Cuban star Martín Dihigo.
Paige did not start in the championship game, and according to Smith was upset but relieved, given his increasing fears of the potential for violence if the team failed. Matlock started and pitched brilliantly but tired late in the game, and an anxious Paige replaced him, giving up three runs before securing the victory and the championship for the Dragones. After the game, the celebrations were spent praising the greatness of Trujillo and the importance of his re-election rather than on the championship. The players, glad the season was over, quickly left the island; many would later join Paige on a barnstorming tour in the United States in which they wore their Cuidad Trujillo uniforms—a rather odd sight leading more than one sportswriter to mistakenly believe that this was a Dominican team visiting the United States.
Even though the events just described would have served as an appropriate endpoint for the work, Smith writes an additional six chapters, plus an epilogue and an appendix on Paige's “magical pitching” that primarily serve to profile the careers and post-series lives of many of the players. The player profiles are short enough to have been easily integrated into the main narrative of the “unlikely season,” which would have made the overall work more cohesive. Setting the profiles apart not only distances the players from the games that they played, but also adds to the confusion on the focus and title of the book, because few of the chapters have much to do with either Paige or Trujillo. Among those final chapters, there is a piece on the downfall of Trujillo that begins with the massacre of thousands of Haitians and finishes with his assassination and the chaos that followed.
In the brief epilogue (although one could argue the last six chapters are somewhat of an extended epilogue) Smith opens by writing, “This is not a story about baseball. It's a story about power” (174). He then summarizes the powerlessness of the Negro League players who were controlled by a homicidal and narcissistic dictator. He then contrasts their experience in the segregated and oppressive world of Jim Crow in the United States to life in the Dominican Republic where they were free to enjoy all aspects of life. It is here that the shortcoming of the book become apparent.
The book is about power, as are most books on the history of professional baseball, and the centrality of power is especially evident in the 1937 series. But Smith falls short in illustrating how the abuse of power was the stage upon which the games were played. For example, the author could have addressed in greater detail the interventionist actions and policies of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although Smith does devote a chapter to the US military occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, which paved the way for Trujillo's ascent to power, there is little follow-up on the role of the United States and its Good Neighbor policy. Under that policy, the United States not only installed dictators in the region, but it also supported them as long as they proclaimed an anti-fascist and later anticommunist agenda and did not interfere with US international political and economic interests.
Trujillo was well aware of his dependence on the United States in maintaining his position. Smith makes this clear when Trujillo instructs his military not to use government-issued weapons during the slaughter of Haitians, so as to insulate himself from the atrocities that could compromise his position of power. However, as Smith documents, the magnitude of the genocide was too great. With ample evidence of military involvement, Trujillo shrewdly resigned the presidency and then selected a predecessor whom he could control. It was clear, however, that the United States was now increasingly concerned with Trujillo's behavior.
Although there is evidence that the United States planned to rid itself of Trujillo, Smith does not mention any such role in his assassination. Although the topic remains under debate, there is evidence to support the position that the CIA provided those who plotted Trujillo's murder with the guns used in the ambush. Smith details the democratic transition of power to the popularly elected Juan Bosch and notes that Vice President Lyndon Johnson attended the inauguration. But, there is only a modest sketch of the role of the United States in ousting Bosch, whose left-leaning political position and friendship with Castro it found unacceptable. Nor is there much on the US intervention during the Civil War that followed and the installation of Joaquín Balaguer, a Trujillo supporter and anticommunist whose time as president would lead to decades of repression, instability, and chaos on the island. Thus, while the book is about power, the elephant in the room is barely seen.
Finally, two other power dynamics are not well addressed in the book. First, Smith mentions the positive experiences of Negro League players in Latin America and compares them to the oppressive conditions of living in Jim Crow America. While Negro League players did find greater freedoms playing in Latin America, the narrative ignores the racism and racial hierarchies in the Caribbean and Latin America. Smith's details of Trujillo's marital infidelities were not just a reflection of the oppressive patriarchy on the island then supported by the Catholic Church, but also offer insights into the centrality of race in the pursuit of power. Each woman in Trujillo's chain of brides was white and came from a well-to-do family of acknowledged Spanish lineage. As in the United States, Euro-whiteness brought power and prestige, and the cases of Trujillo's womanizing could be seen as strategic, serving to reinforce his social and political position. This would also explain his preoccupation with avoiding the sun and powdering his face to attain the appearance of an alabaster complexion.
Second, the brutality of the attacks on the Haitians can be difficult to comprehend unless one recognizes that it rested on a racialized foundation of hate, comparable to that which allowed for the lynchings, burnings, and mutilations of blacks in the US South. In the Dominican Republic, a racial ideology created a racial binary with Haitians seen as black; meanwhile, Dominicans, with an array of skin hues, had one thing in common: one drop of white blood made them white. The text could have better engaged the complexity of power and control as they manifested themselves in many forms: including racism, sexism, elitism, and nationalism. Doing so would also have provided better context for the imposition of US self-interest on the lives of the players, the people, and the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America.
