Shea Serrano’s book headlines great year for Latino sports books

When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy this weekend with another Latino finalist watching, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football’s top prize, and only the third Latino to do so. He also subtly offered a sweeping statement: Latinos not only have a place in this country, they are essential.

At a time when questions are swirling around this country’s largest minority group and casting us in a demeaning and symbolic light – how are so many of us able to vote for Trump in 2024? Why don’t we assimilate faster? Why does Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh think it’s OK for immigration agents to racially profile us? — the fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Latino quarterbacks didn’t make headlines like they would have a generation ago. Indeed, we now live in a time where Latinos are part of the sporting fabric of the United States like never before.

This is the unpublished thesis of four great books that I read this year. Each is rooted in Latino pride, but treats its subjects not only as curious people and pioneers of sports, but also as great athletes who were and are fundamental not only to their profession and community, but to society at large.

Shea Serrano writes about anything, it’s like a really good big burrito – you know it’s going to be great and it exceeds your expectations when you finally bite into it, you swear you’re not going to gorge yourself in one sitting but have no regrets when you inevitably do. He could write about concrete and it would be true, but his latest New York Times bestseller (four in total, making him probably the only Mexican-American author to have that distinction) is fortunately more about his favorite sport.

“Expensive Basketball” finds Serrano at his best, a mix of humility, ramblings and hilarity (longtime San Antonio Spurs fan Rasheed Wallace wrote that the star forward would “collect technical fouls with the same enthusiasm and determination with which little children collect Pokémon cards.”) The proud Tejano’s mix of styles – direct essays, lists, phrases or words repeated like incantations, footnotes plentiful – ensures that it always keeps the drive. guess.

But his genius is to notice things that no one else can. Who else would have crowned power forward Gordon Hayward the punchline in Kobe Bryant’s final game, the one where he scored 60 points and led the Lakers to a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback? Linked a Carlos Williams poem that a friend accidentally texted him to WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird? Reminded us that the hapless Charlotte Hornets — who haven’t made the playoffs in nearly a decade — were once considered so cool that two of their stars were featured in the original “Space Jam”? “Essential Basketball” is so good, you’ll swear you’ll only read a few Serrano essays and won’t regret the afternoon passing as quickly as a Nikola Jokic assist.

“Mexican-American Baseball in the South Bay”

(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)

I recommended “Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” in my regular program. column three years ago, so why am I plugging its second edition? On the one hand, the audacity of its existence – how on earth can anyone justify turning a 450-page book about a little-known part of Southern California into an 800-page book? But in a time when telling your story because no one else will or will do a terrible job is more important than ever, the contributors to this tome prove just how true that is.

“Mexican American Baseball in the South Bay” is part of a long-running series on the history of Mexican American baseball in the Latino communities of Southern California. What’s so brilliant about this one is that it boldly asserts the history and stories of a community that are too often overlooked in Southern California Latino literature in favor of the region’s Eastsides and Santa Anas.

As series editor Richard A. Santillan noted, the reaction to the original South Bay book was so overwhelmingly positive that he and other members of the Latino History Baseball Project decided to expand it. Well-written essays introduce each chapter; Long captions for family and team photos function like phonebook entries. Particularly valuable are the newspaper clippings from La Opinión which showed the dynamism of Southern Californians and which were never published in the pages of the English-speaking press.

Perhaps only people with ties to the South Bay will read this book cover to cover, and that’s understandable. But it’s also a challenge for every other Latino community: If people from Wilmington to Hermosa Beach to Compton can cover their sports history so thoroughly, why can’t the rest of us?

(University of Colorado Press)

One of the most surprising books I read this year was “The Sanchez Family: Mexican American High School and College Wrestlers of Cheyenne, Wyoming,” by Jorge Iber, a short read that addresses two rarely discussed topics: Mexican American freestyle wrestlers and Mexican Americans in the Equality State. Despite its novelty, it is the most flawed of my four recommendations. Since this is ostensibly an academic book, Iber loads the pages with quotes and references to other scholars to the point that it sometimes reads like a bibliography and one wonders why the author doesn’t focus more on his own work. And in one chapter, Iber refers to his own work in the first person: teacheryou’re cool but you’re not Rickey Henderson.

“The Sanchez Family” overcomes these limitations through the strength of its subject, whose protagonists descend from ancestors born in Guanajuato who arrived in Wyoming a century ago and who founded a multigenerational wrestling dynasty worthy of the much more famous Guerrero clan. Iber documents how the success of several Sanchez men on the wrestling mat led to success in civic life and urges other researchers to examine how prep sports have long served as a springboard for Latinos to enter mainstream society — because nothing creates acceptance like winning.

“In our family we have educators, engineers and other professions,” quotes Iber Gil Sanchez Sr., a member of the first generation of grapplers. “All because a 15 year old boy [him]…decided to become a wrestler.

Have you heard that boxing is a dying sport? The editors of “Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion” will not accept it. Rudy Mondragón, Gaye Theresa Johnson, and David J. Leonard not only refuse to accept this idea, but call these critiques “rooted in racist and classist mythology.”

(University of Illinois Press)

They then offer an electric and eclectic collection of essays on the sweet science that presents the sport as a metaphor for the struggles and triumphs of those who have played it for more than 150 years in the United States. Unsurprisingly, California Latinos get the starring role. Jose M. Alamillo, a Cal State Channel Islands professor, digs up the case of two Mexican boxers who were denied entry into the United States in the 1930s, due to the racism of the era, and unearths a letter to the Department of Labor that reads like a diatribe from Stephen Miller: “California currently has a surplus of cheap boxers from Mexico, and something should be done to prevent the entry of others. »

Roberto José Andrade Franco recounts the saga of Oscar De La Hoya against Julio Cesar Chávez, placing himself less on the side of the former than by emphasizing the assimilationist facade of the Golden Boy. Mondragón discusses the political activism of Central Valley light welterweight José Carlos Ramírez both inside and outside the ring. Despite the verve and love that each “Rings of Dissent” contributor has in their essays, they do not romanticize it. No one is more lucid about its beauty and sadness than Mondragón’s classmates, Loyola Marymount Latino, who study teacherPriscilla Leiva. She examines the role of boxing gyms in Los Angeles, focusing on three: Broadway Boxing Gym and City of Angels Boxing in South Los Angeles, and the since-closed Barrio Boxing in El Sereno.

“Efforts to envision a different future for oneself, one’s community, and the city do not guarantee unequivocal success,” she writes. “Rather, like the sport of boxing, dissent requires struggle.”

If those aren’t the wisest words Latinos should embrace for the coming year, I’m not sure what is.