Renown American Baseball Historian dies in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 3 (acn) American laureate writer and baseball historian Peter Bjarkman suddenly died in Havana city after touring stadiums on the Caribbean island to enjoy his passion, Cuban baseball.

Bjarkman, who died aged 77, published more than 40 books on baseball, including the International Baseball Encyclopedia, as well as numerous articles, essays, biographies, extensive interviews, some of them on Cuba´s national pastime.
For his works, he earned 14 prizes, the two most recent being the Bob Davids distinction and the prestigious 2017 Henry Chadwick Award, granted by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
After visiting the Caribbean island for the first time 21 years ago and falling in love with the domestic pastime which he called "pristine baseball", he wrote, along with photographer Mark Rucker, the illustrated work "Smoke - The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball ".
From that moment on, he became a prolific researcher and writer on Cuban baseball.
Other of his titles include "Cuban Baseball Legends," "A History of Cuban Baseball 1864-2006," and "Cuba's Baseball Defectors: The Inside Story," a critique on how Major League Baseball began in the late 1990s and early 2000s to put their hands in the sordid world of human trafficking and illegal immigration, which sparked quite a few scandals.
He arrived in Cuba this time with the news that he would present next January his most recent work: "Baseball and Fidel Castro - The Untold Story", in which he tells about Castro´s passion of baseball and how he contributed to the development of this sport in Cuba.
He also wrote biographies of Cuban baseball stars such as Adolfo Luque, Martin Dihigo and Conrado Marrero and numerous articles about this sport.
When dying, Bjarkman was writing a Book on his memoirs about the grounds, stadiums, trips with Cuban teams and his multiple meetings with players and it had as tentative title: "The Yankee in Cuba's Dugout: Travels Inside Fidel Castro Baseball Empire".
Peter Bjarkman was a university professor of English and Linguistics at the Illinois State University, in Chicago, before devoting himself to his great passion, baseball.