1. “What attracted me to Garciaparra was, is that he wasn’t the typical, prototypical Boston athlete” 8:23
In this quote, Julio Ricardo Virella, the digital director of the website Latino USA speaks about Mexican-American baseball player Nomar Garciaparra. This part is important since it shows how the baseball that Virella watched began to integrate more Latino players, thus changing how the typical Boston athlete appeared. The usual baseball players that were being idolized were just an assortment of white men, but this began to change as Latino players gained popularity. Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Rodriguez are mentioned as sweeping the nation, and becoming fan favorites amongst these white men.
2. “Showing up in Fenway Park, I saw all these Dominican flags" 9:15
This is especially important since it shows the huge transformation that happened and the impact that the integration of Dominican baseball players had. Pedro Martinez drew in so much attention that typical Dominican music began to play at stadiums in areas that were predominantly white. There was now an outpour of Dominican pride, and even other Latino pride, because of the presence of Pedro Martinez. This is significant since the Spanish music being played
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This stood out to me since not all Latinos look the same, they would be split up according to the skin tone. Two Latino players could come from the same country and end up being segregated, with the darker skin one ending up the “Negro League”. The most interesting part was that often, Black players would leave the country to be able to play in integrated teams. Black players that would stay in the U.S would speak gibberish in order to pretend to be Latino, since the segregated system would try and be avoided by saying the players were Latino and not black. I found this to be ironic, since being Latino does not change the color of your