We did this before the Dollop!!

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is a special bonus week documenting the intersection of Rafael Trujillo’s rise to power in the Dominican Republic and the legendary career of baseball legend Satchel Paige. Trujillo rules the Dominican for north of thirty years, both officially as President and an unelected military warlord. Trujillo rises up the ranks of the Dominican military swiftly, despite an extensive criminal reputation and finds himself elected President in 1930. Trujillo oversaw one of the bloodiest political regimes in global history, aided by a cult of personality promoted by the leader. As part of that effort, Trujillo looked towards baseball as a means to reinforce his appeal. By 1937, Satchel Paige is a legend of the Negro Leagues, a rubber-armed fire-baller firmly established as one of, if not the greatest of baseball’s blacklisted by segregation in the major leagues. Trujillo recruits Paige and a handful of some of the great black ballplayers in history, most notably “Cool” Papa Bell and Josh Gibson to play for Los Dragones, a team operated by the dictator himself. The circus of that season, in which the Dragones dominate en route to a league championship observed by a military firing squad patrolling Paige and his teammates, is detailed as the story’s climax. It is as direct an intersection of sports and politics as can be told: brutal Caribbean dictator enlists services of natively segregated star ballplayers as a means of enhancing his public image. And that story is here on the Bill Bradley Collective.