The Rise of the Latin American Baseball Leagues, 1947-1961

Written by Lou Hernandez and published in 2011, The Rise of the Latin American Baseball Leagues, 1947-1961 chronicles the seven countries that had leagues recognized as part of Organized Baseball in that era. Each gets a chapter that chronicles its year-by-year results, letting readers track the ebb and flow of pennant races, as well as major events and personalities.

The book overlaps almost entirely with the run of the first Caribbean Series. Covered are the Mexican League, Dominican League, Cuban Winter League, Venezuelan League, Panamanian League, Nicaraguan League and Puerto Rican League. The book does not list end-of-year statistics much, occasionally mentioning league-leading numbers. Given its country-by-country focus, to find the full results of a given Caribbean Series, you have to read pieces of several relevant chapters, which makes it a bit unwieldy. Hernandez relied heavily on The Sporting News archive in his work, showing the depth with which that publication covered Latin American baseball during the period; it obviously entailed a lot of work despite not utilizing other sources much.