The Other Field of Dreams: Latino Baseball Project with Dr. Jose Alamillo Zoom Lecture

Park City Museum will host a Zoom lecture titled The Other Field of Dreams: Latino Baseball Project with Dr. Jose Alamillo on Tuesday, November 8th from 5-6 p.m. (MST). The lecture is part of the programming events for ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas, a Smithsonian bilingual exhibition that will be on display at the Park City Museum from October 29 through December 18, 2022. To register for the lecture, please visit www.parkcityhistory.org/events.

Most everyone knows about the Negro Leagues and Jackie Robinson, but few people know about the long history of Latinos and Latinas in baseball beyond the Majors during the 20th century. Since 2004, the Latino Baseball History Project (LBHP) has also documented the role of baseball and softball in Mexican American communities of southern California and in states where Mexican American teams proliferated. Through a collaboration between librarians, curators, university professors, students, and players and their families, the LBHP has produced a permanent archive at the John Pfau Library at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), museum exhibitions, photo and oral history collections, book publications, player reunions and many related activities. LBHP’s research was also part of the ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues/En los barrios y las grandes ligas Smithsonian exhibition.

Dr. Jose Alamillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and raised in Ventura County, California. His family worked in the year-round lemon industry which allowed him to attend local public schools uninterrupted. At middle school age, he took part in University of California, Santa Barbara’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and earned B.A. degrees in Sociology and Communication at UCSB. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Cultures at University of California, Irvine. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California, Los Angeles’ Chicano Studies Research Center, he taught courses in Chicano/a Studies, Ethnic Studies, Immigration and Labor for nine years in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University.

Dr. Alamillo’s research focuses on the ways Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans have used culture, leisure, and sports to build community and social networks to advance politically and economically in the United States. His family’s experiences in the lemon industry inspired his first book, “Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Mexican American Labor and Leisure in a California Town, 1900-1960” (University of Illinois Press, 2006) He co-authored the first textbook on Latinos in Sport titled “Latinos in U.S Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance” (Human Kinetics, 2011). He recently published, “Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora” (Rutgers University Press, 2020). He has also worked closely with students and community groups in oral history projects and museum exhibitions and seeks to build bridges between CSUCI and surrounding Latino/a communities. He worked with with ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas, a bilingual exhibition at Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History which opened in Washington D.C. on October 9, 2020.

¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues / En los barrios y las grandes ligas is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the National Museum of American History. This exhibition received generous support from the Cordoba Corporation and Linda Alvarado, and federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.

Register for this lecture