Kill the mpaya! The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction

This book will be published in early April to coincide with the opening of 2017 baseball season. The importance of Caribbean, Mexican, Central American and South American baseball players to the major leagues is undeniable. In recent All-Star games and World Series, almost 25% of the players were from these countries. The recent history of the major leagues is replete with names such as Adolfo Luque, Minnie Miñoso, Louis Aparicio, Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, Tony Perez, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Dave Concepcion and many others. This book provides us with an acute undertanding of the culture out of which their passion for baseball has grown and flowered. The editor/translator, Dick Cluster, is a fine speaker and is well connected in the sports media world. We are lining up endorsements from current and former players, managers and from sports media notables. We'll place ads in the SABR baseball blog and magazine, Baseball Digest Magazine, Baseball America, ESPN, and Beckett Baseball magazine. We will contact the major baseball halls of fame including the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame, the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame,the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame, The National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Fame, the Salon de la Fama (Mexico)and the Salon de la Fama (Venezuela) to set up book events. We are exploring links with major baseball blogs such as mlbtraderumors.com, Joeblog (Joe Posnanski in Cleveland), Rays Radio, The Brewer Nation, Fenway Frames, Cards in the Community, Curveball Sports, The Sports Mouth, Left Field Lines, Subwaybaseball.com, The Wayniac Nation, Cardinal Insider, Dodger Insider, TribeVibe, Cait Cover the Bases, From the Corner of Edgar and Dave, The Halo Way, Brandon and Brandon, Inside the White Sox, Friar Wire, thatbaseballplayermlb, Like of a Baseball Snagger, Cait Covers the Bases, and other new sites. Ads will be placed in Library Journal, MLA, CHOICE, Spitball Magazine, Publishers Weekly

This is the first English language anthology of translations of baseball stories by major Latin American and Caribbean writers."If baseball is really a metaphor for life, then Kill the Ampaya -- Dick Cluster's wonderful collection of Latin American baseball stories -- is an astonishing record of its beauty and coarseness, redemption and tragedy. You don't have to be a baseball fan to appreciate these stories, each one hinged on baseball directly or indirectly, and delight in this reading."-Achy Obejas, author of The Tower of Antilles and Other Stories "These are stories we have lived...Some are funny, some cruel or violent, but in the end they are part of our culture that makes us act the way we do. They make me think of the millions of stories that got lost behind us." -Omar Vizquel, from Venezuela, one of baseball's all-time best fielding shortstops who played for the Seattle Mariners, Cleveland Indians, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, Chicago White Sox, and Toronto Blue Jays. "Baseball is in the soul of millions in Puerto Rico and the other countries that play the game with a Latino flair. These stories are portraits of its place in our lives." -Benjie Molina, former Texas Rangers catcher and first base coach. A rich variety of baseball fiction exists south of the Florida Straits and the Rio Grande, but almost none available in English. This collection translates for the first time stories ranging from the highly literary to the vernacular. These inventive and entertaining stories reveal the place of baseball in Latin America. Mixing fan and fandom, baseball and politics, rural and urban life, sexism and poverty, Kill the Ampaya! reveals how baseball shapes the social fabric of everyday Latin American life. The collection includes well known writers such as Leonardo Padura from Cuba (The Man Who Loved Dogs), Sergio Ramirez from Nicaragua (Divine Punishment, A Thousand Deaths Plus One). Others are well known writers in their home countries such as Arturo Arango and Eduardo del Llano in Cuba, Alexis Gomez Rosa and Jose Bobadilla in the Dominican Republic, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro in Puerto Rico, Vicente Lenero in Mexico as well as emerging literary figures such as Salvador Flejan and Rodrigo Blanco Calderon in Venezuela, Sandra Tavarez and Daniel Reyes German in the D.R., Carmen Hernandez Pena in Cuba.