Overview

In parks and cafes, homes and stadium stands, Cubans talk baseball. Thomas F. Carter contends that when they are analyzing and debating plays, games, teams, and athletes, Cubans are exchanging ideas not just about baseball but also about Cuba and cubanidad, or what it means to be Cuban. The Quality of Home Runs is Carter’s lively ethnographic exploration of the interconnections between baseball and Cuban identity. Suggesting that baseball is in many ways an apt metaphor for cubanidad, Carter points out aspects of the sport that resonate with Cuban social and political life: the perpetual tension between risk and security, the interplay between individual style and collective regulation, and the risky journeys undertaken with the intention, but not the guarantee, of returning home. As an avid baseball fan, Carter draws on his experiences listening to and participating in discussions of baseball in Cuba (particularly in Havana) and among Cubans living abroad to describe how baseball provides the ground for negotiations of national, masculine, and class identities wherever Cubans gather. He considers the elaborate spectacle of Cuban baseball as well as the relationship between the socialist state and the enormously popular sport. Carter provides a detailed history of baseball in Cuba, analyzing players, policies, rivalries, and fans, and he describes how the sport has forged connections (or reinforced divisions) between Cuba and other nations. Drawing on insights from cultural studies, political theory, and anthropology, he maintains that sport and other forms of play should be taken seriously as crucibles of social and cultural experience.

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Reviews

The Quality of Home Runs offers engaging and provocative perspectives on socialism, nationalism, masculinity, and the embodiment and poetics of sport in Cuba, all seen from the vantage point of the stadium stands and the streets of Havana. Thomas F. Carter's emphasis on themes such as spectacle, social drama, struggle, and discipline--of both players and fans, on and off the field--builds a persuasive analysis of changing notions of what it means to be Cuban. --Thomas M. Wilson, Binghamton University Thomas Carter reveals in this fascinating examination of the relationship between baseball and Cuban identity that it is not clear when the lionised Che first swapped his rifle for a baseball bat, with some accounts implausibly even suggesting he learned how to play the game in the Sierra Maestra in between fighting the Batista regime... The Quality of Home Runs explores the unique relationship between Cuba and baseball, tracing the history of the game on the island and such key themes as the role of the state in its evolution. The author, an anthropologist, teases out narrative practices found within baseball to provide insights into how the game both at home and abroad informs what it means to be Cuban. A labour of love written, it would appear, despite the political sensitivity of the game on the island and its own inner politics, The Quality of Home Runs uses baseball as a tool with which to provide an engaging and interesting perspective on Cuban identity. - The Latin American Review of Books, March 09 [D]espite the seriousness of many of his themes, Carter has a sharp anthropologist's eye for the colourful detail of baseball fandom...Carter's work proves just how illuminating it can be when sport's pleasures - and its inevitable links with politics and real life - are taken as seriously as they deserve to be. -Mathew Reisz, Times Higher Education, 30th April 2009

The Quality of Home Runs offers engaging and provocative perspectives on socialism, nationalism, masculinity, and the embodiment and poetics of sport in Cuba, all seen from the vantage point of the stadium stands and the streets of Havana. Thomas F. Carter's emphasis on themes such as spectacle, social drama, struggle, and discipline of both players and fans, on and off the field, builds a persuasive analysis of changing notions of what it means to be Cuban. -Thomas M. Wilson, Binghamton University

Author Information

Thomas F. Carter, an anthropologist, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, Chelsea School.

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