Description Last Seasons in Havana explores the intersection between Cuba and America\'s pastime from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
He is the author of Havana Hardball: Spring Training, Jackie Robinson, and the Cuban League ..
In his twenty-five years as a sports journalist, he has written for the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel .
About the author C sar Brioso is a digital producer and former Baseball editor for USA Today Sports .
Focusing on the final three Seasons of the Cuban League (1958-61) and the final two Seasons of the Havana Sugar Kings (1959-60), Last Seasons in Havana explores how Castro\'s rise to power forever altered Cuba and the course of a sport that had become ingrained in the island\'s culture over the course of almost a century.
American players stopped participating in the Cuban League, and Cuban teams moved to an amateur, state-sponsored model.
But Professional Baseball became one of the many victims of Castro\'s Communist revolution.
Confidence was high that Havana might one day have a Major League team of its own.
Cuban teams had come to dominate the annual Caribbean Series tournament, and Havana had joined the highest levels of Minor League Baseball, fielding the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, players from the Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, and Negro Leagues had come to Cuba to play in the country\'s wholly integrated winter Baseball league.
The Cuban League, which had been founded in 1878, just two years after the formation of the National League, was thriving under the auspices of organized baseball.
Baseball in pre-Castro Cuba was enjoying a golden age.
C sar Brioso takes the reader through the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 and its impact on Professional Baseball in the Seasons immediately following Castro\'s rise to power.
Description Last Seasons in Havana explores the intersection between Cuba and America\'s pastime from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista
