Greetings:

I saw this film at the San Diego Latino Film Festival,
and was very impressed with its content. I'm sure you
will enjoy it as well.

best,
Anthony





>
> Emmy Award-Winning Pitt Sports Historian's
> Documentary Film to Be Featured
> at New York International Latino Film Festival July
> 27
>
>
> The Republic of Baseball: The Dominican Giants of
> the American Game, a
> feature- length film cowritten and coproduced by Rob
> Ruck and Daniel Manatt,
> will be screened at film festival
>
>
> PITTSBURGH-The Dominican Republic sends more
> "Peloteros" to major league
> baseball than any other Latin nation-comprising 10
> percent of all players in
> the major leagues. The Republic of Baseball: The
> Dominican Giants of the
> American Game, cowritten and coproduced by Rob Ruck,
> University of
> Pittsburgh faculty member and sports historian, and
> Daniel Manatt, son of
> Charles Manatt, former U.S. Ambassador to the
> Dominican Republic, will be
> featured at the New York International Latino Film
> Festival at 8 p.m. July
> 27 in Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St., New
> York.
>
> A Latino Public Broadcasting presentation, the event
> is presented by Chivas
> Regal and the Dominican American Professional
> Alliance. Invited guests
> include Omar Minaya, the Dominican American general
> manager of the New York
> Mets; Dominican President Leonel Fernandez; and
> members of the George
> Washington High School baseball team, who this year
> won the New York City
> baseball championship.
>
> The Republic of Baseball is the story of that first
> extraordinary generation
> of players from the Dominican Republic who overcame
> poverty, the brutalities
> of the Trujillo dictatorship, the upheaval resulting
> from the U.S. invasion
> of 1965, and racism in America.
>
> The film is based on Ruck's award-winning book, The
> Tropic of Baseball:
> Baseball in the Dominican Republic (Mecklermedia,
> 1991; Carroll & Graf,
> 1993; and University of Nebraska Press, 1999), and
> the autobiographies of
> Felipe Alou and Baseball Hall-of-Fame member Juan
> Marichal-Felipe Alou: My
> Life and Baseball (Word Books, 1967) and A Pitcher's
> Story (Doubleday,
> 1967)-two of the first major league players from the
> Dominican Republic.
>
> As well as Alou and Marichal, Republic of Baseball
> tells the stories of
> Manny Mota and Ozzie Virgil Sr., Dominicans who were
> among the first to
> enter the major leagues. Virgil debuted with the New
> York Giants 50 years
> ago and was the first Dominican to play in the major
> leagues. In the
> documentary, such baseball greats as Pedro Martinez,
> Alex Rodriquez, Alfonso
> Soriano, and hall-of-fame members Willie McCovey,
> Orlando Cepeda, and Willie
> Mays reflect on the careers of the baseball
> "pioneers."
>
> Republic of Baseball was produced by Sports for
> Development Foundation and
> Manatt Media LLC. In addition to Pitt's Ruck and
> Manatt, the film's
> producers are Jose Mota, broadcaster for the Los
> Angeles Angels of Anaheim
> and son of Manny Mota, and Christia Alou, daughter
> of Felipe Alou.
>
> Latino Public Broadcasting will release a 53-minute
> version of the film to
> PBS stations in September to coincide with the 50th
> anniversary of Virgil's
> debut with the New York Giants on Sept. 23, 1956.
>
> Ruck received the MacMillan-Society for American
> Baseball Research (SABR)
> Award in 1991 for The Tropic of Baseball. He also is
> the author of Sandlot
> Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (University of
> Illinois Press, 1993). He
> was project director, producer, and writer of Kings
> on the Hill: Baseball's
> Forgotten Men, a documentary about the Negro Leagues
> and the role of sports
> in the Black community, for which he received an
> Emmy Award for Outstanding
> Cultural Programming in 1994.
>
> In addition to his work on Republic of Baseball,
> Ruck is cowriting a
> biography of the late Art Rooney, Pittsburgh
> Steelers owner, and a history
> of Pittsburgh with Pitt history professor Edward
> Muller. He also served as
> guest historian for sports exhibitions at the
> Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh
> Regional History Center.
>
> ###
> 7/19/06/tmw
>
>
>
>


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