Interesting project about a father, a son and a history making bat from one Roberto Clemente.

Check out the trailer below….

A Drive into the Gap is a true story about fathers and sons, baseball and memory, and the improbable journey of a bat from one of the most iconic moments in the history of the game to the bedroom of a 12-year-old boy.

For more info on the book, click here: Field Notes Brand Books: A Drive into the Gap by Kevin Guilfoile.

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We’re actually a day late on this, but the sentiment remains the same. Had he lived, he would have been 77 as of yesterday.

Below is video of his last Major League hit, his 3000th. He would die in a plane crash 3 months later.

Roberto Clemente, the greatest right fielder of all time, records his 3000th hit on September 30, 1972—it would be his last regular season hit. Sadly, three months later, Clemente died in a tragic crash of a cargo plane carrying relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on December 31, 1972.

I’ll let the listener decide.

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This past weekend, The New York Times took a look back on the humble beginnings of Manny Ramirez as a prodigious Dominican immigrant from Washington Heights. It’s a story told through words from his former George Washington High School teammates, coaches and friends, compiled by former Times reporter Sara Rimer. Definitely an interesting read, even for those who aren’t fans of baseball.

Check out an excerpt from the article below…

Hero. Cheat. Prodigy. Ingrate. Free spirit. Knucklehead. Hall of Famer. Pariah. Enigma. Manny Ramirez, one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation, who retired from baseball this month after once again testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, was many things to many people — fans and family and teammates from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to Cleveland to Boston. Sara Rimer, then a reporter for The New York Times, met Ramirez in 1991 at George Washington High School in Manhattan. Over two decades, she enjoyed a memorable and mystifying acquaintanceship with Ramirez.

Read the full article here: Manny Ramirez, the High School Legend – NYTimes.com.

American business men have been investing in Dominican baseball academies trying to sell players to MLB teams. The boys are from poor backgrounds and minimally educated. The focus for the academies is baseball and get the best out of the kids – education as mentioned in the video is a side note. Here’s the story on what’s going on there…

Today’s Times features a story on the past, present and future of Puerto Rican baseball, and the politics behind their recent decline.

Check out a excerpt from the story below…

…In 2009, only 3.5 percent of position players in Major League Baseball came from Puerto Rico, a 24-year low. Meanwhile, the percentage of Cuban and Venezuelan position players has nearly doubled in the last decade.

An average of 27 Puerto Ricans a year were drafted and signed during the past decade, down from 35 a year during the 1990s. Ten times as many amateurs were signed from the Dominican Republic.

Major League Baseball has tried to boost the popularity of the sport through the World Baseball Classic and by playing regular-season games in Puerto Rico, including this week’s series between the Mets and the Florida Marlins.

Yet the games will do only so much….

Check out the full article here: Puerto Rico’s Baseball Pipeline Runs Low – NYTimes.com.

WIth this blogging thing, sometimes you look for a story, and sometimes one finds you. This one found me.

Check out the story of Cuban baseball legend Luis Tiant, by way of the documentary The Lost Son Of Havana below…

The Havana sun casts a golden, late afternoon light, lending a brief glow to a narrow street. Decaying houses, with their half-crumbling facades, somehow cling to their faded glory. The camera pulls back and reveals the silhouette of a man, rounded by age and good living, puffing on a cigar. At the age of 67, Luis Tiant has come back to Cuba, the island he had left at age 20 for a trip he thought would last a month and became nearly a half-century. But is this still home? What is home for an exile that becomes a star in his new land, leaving former teammates to play for their government and country in isolation and povertis home for a man who never had a sister or brother and whose parents are dead? Where can he go to sort out the guilt and the glory? And is it too late?

I’ll (hopefully) have a full review of the film next week, so be on the lookout for that.

In the meantime, for more information check out the film’s official site: The Lost Son Of Havana Official Website.

We’ve talked about people bleaching their skin on the blog before, but recent events have brought the subject back to the forefront, with Sammy Sosa, of all people, looking like a totally different person at a recent event in Miami. His explanation? He’s been bleaching. Check out quote from Sammy below…

…Speaking publicly for the first time since photos of him from a recent musical award ceremony were published on the Internet, Sosa said that the skin lightening is the result of the use of a facial cosmetic cream.

“It’s a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin some,” said the former slugger during the “Primer Impacto” program at the Univision Spanish network.

“It’s a cream that I have, that I use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I’m not a racist, I live my life happily,” said a smiling Sosa during the interview….

My question is, what’s explanation for the light contacts? The slickbacked Jheri Curl? It’s all a bit much to take in, from my end, at least.

The racial dynamic in the Dominican Republic, Sosa’s home, is complicated, to say the least. There’s plenty of reading material out there on the subject, so I won’t try to get into it too much here, at very least because I’m far from an authority on the subject. I just wanted to float this story out to those who may not be aware of it, and get the conversation going.

Check out the full story, on ESPN.com, here: Sosa: Cream has bleached skin.

Feel free to add your comments on this one…

PBS did a special documentary on the iconic Puerto Rican baseball player, Roberto Clemente. Check out the documentary after the jump.

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I heard about this movie a few months back, and wanted to see it then. Now that it’s about to hit theaters this weekend, I finally have the chance. Sugar follows a Dominican pitcher as he’s brought to the US to pursue his dream, and the culture shock that follows thereafter. Check out the trailer below…

Played by the newcomer (and nonactor) Algenis Perez Soto, the talented Miguel Santos, nicknamed Sugar, survives the player mill of a Dominican baseball academy and is drafted by a professional team. As a result he’s sent to a minor-league team in Iowa, where the non-English-speaking Sugar is given a crash course in Middle American: the members of his host family are older, conservative baseball nuts; the granddaughter is born-again and tries to orchestrate Sugar’s religious conversion. The combination of a new world and a new level of competition disorients the once-grounded player.

For more info on the film, Check out the NYT write-up here: A Ballplayer, Seeks a Hit, a Hit Film.

Also, view a few clips from the film @ IMDB: Trailers and Videos for Sugar.