El Beisbol: Travels Through the Pan-American Pastime

Although baseball is the unifying theme of this well-written, instructive survey, it is more a travel book, presenting incisive pictures of Mexico, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, with less searching looks at Nicaragua and Venezuela. Krich ( Music in Every Room ) embarks on an odyssey to look at baseball in Latin America, beginning in Tijuana. He finds that the sport is dying in Mexico, is still haunted by the spirit of Roberto Clemente in Puerto Rico and offers an escape from appalling poverty in Santo Domingo. His chapter on baseball in San Pedro de Macoris, the Santo Domingo city which claims to have supplied the most major league players of any town in the world, is especially probing. Krich also analyzes the social structure and the politics of each country, elements outside the realm of the ``Pan-American pastime.'' (Apr.)