The Veracruz Blues: 9

by Mark Winegardner

Book Overview

Based on actual events during the turbulent, postwar baseball days of 1946, this captivating, darkly comic novel tells of a group of American players who, frustrated by their treatment at the hands of the major league owners, begin defecting to a Mexican baseball league.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670866369
• ISBN13: 9780670866366
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

best baseball novel ever written

This is more than a baseball book, but ... that's, sadly, how people will read it. Even given that, this rich, historically detailed book makes even the best other good baseball novells -- The Natural, D. Hays's The Dixie Association, The Southpaw, DeLillo's Pafko at the Wall (which is the 2nd-best baseball novel) -- look slight in comparison. A great novel about race and American imperialism and sex. That a book this good could go out of print is a scandal, but maybe Winegardner's new fame (he's the author of the upcoming sequel to The Godfather) will propel this masterpiece back into print and help it garner the audience it deserves. The New York Times Book Review, The Nation and USA Today have both called this book the best baseball book ever written. It's actually one of the best American novels of the past 50 years.

A truly entertaining and revealing book

This book transports the reader into the era of pre-Robinson, Mexican baseball and beautifully portrays baseball legends, writers, and dreamers.

not just about baseball

At the risk of being overly enthusiatic, this book should be considered a classic. Its many characters, many of whom serve as narrators, all assist in telling many truly American stories. For theorists, the story can be interpreted from a racist, marxist point of view. The magic of this novel is almost matched by the short lived utopia that the players in the summer of 1946 shared, playing in a world where color didn't matter, and the players had fun. Like any utopia, the Mexican league was only a mirage, but the humor and wisdom of the novel is not

great baseball book and more

This guy can flat-out write. the first 100 pages or so are wonderful. After that,it flattens out to good. He is very adept at weaving real historical figures(Babe Ruth, Ernest Hemingway,etc.) into a fictional setting. A fun read

Fictional account of Mexican Baseball and the people in it.

Winegardner recreates the 1946 Mexican Baseball League season, a season in which white American major leaguers were brought in to play. It is a story of integration in the year before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers. While nominally about baseball,the book is about much more. Literary figures abound, as do politicians and entertainers. The most fascinating device in the book is Winegardner's use of multiple narrators. Each narrator has his or her own distinctive, and believable, speech pattern and point of view