PETER C. BJARKMAN is author of 40-plus books on sports history and is perhaps best known in recent years as the leading authority on post-revolution Cuban League baseball and is also the first American to write regular columns and analysis on two "official" Cuban League baseball websites. His 2007 book,
History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006 is universally recognized as the definitive work on Cuban baseball.
Bjarkman's earlier pictorial history of Cuban baseball entitled Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball (1999, Total Sports, with photographer Mark Rucker) is widely recognized as a landmark achievement in the field. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball (2005, Greenwood) won The Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award and was a finalist for Spitball magazine's CASEY AWARD as "Baseball Book of the Year." Bjarkman's 1994 study, Baseball with a Latin Beat: A History of the Latin American Game (McFarland), earned the Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award.
SABR is the Society for American Baseball Research, a group of over 6,000 enthusiasts about the game of baseball whose research interests range from the game's history to statistical analysis, records, cultural impact, and more. The BioProject is a SABR effort to research, write, and publish biographies of every player--and every person--ever connected with organized baseball. Anyone with a love of baseball can join SABR and become a part of these efforts.
