When Ace Smith was a boy he dreamed, like many, of growing up to be a Major League Baseball player. As he grew older, though, he came to understand, like most boys, he wasn’t talented enough to realize his dream. So in between helping elect Kamala Harris to the U.S. Senate and Jerry Brown as California governor and Gavin Newsom as lieutenant governor, he returned to his first love, chronicling a strange and obscure slice of baseball history. In 1937, a group of standouts from the Negro baseball league, as it was known, was lured to the Dominican Republic for a barnstorming tournament against the country’s home-grown talent. Trujillo, who plastered his name on mountains and cities and all manner of self-referential adornments, was not one for subtlety.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 26, 2018 11:03 UTC