Show Notes:

Mentioned:

Eastern Stars by Mark Kurlansky

Essentially, a history of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, using the Dominican Winter League team, the Eastern Stars (in English) as the catalyst for the story. San Pedro de Macoris is known also as the cradle of shortstops. Highly recommended reading.

Sammy Sosa's transformation: A bleaching cream? Who knows...

Baltimore Sun article on Sosa's transformation.

A tweet showing Sammy then and now.

 

Neymar, the Brazilian soccer player who appears to have done the Sosa/Michael Jackson treatment.

The top transformation in soccer history? A tweet from 2014.

 

Steve Sailer from 2014 on Michael Jackson, Sammy Sosa, and Neymar.

I don't know what to make of these transitions...Reading a lot more on Latin American history may help. I can only shoot it through the prism of the study I have done on Revolutionary Cuba in college and through reading about baseball in the Dominican Republic, of which Eastern Stars by Mark Kurlansky is a very good resource. I have limited knowledge or interest in soccer and I have limited knowledge but a keen interest in Brazil. I know next to nothing about Michael Jackson except what has been widely available in the pop culture during my lifetime. I am at a loss to come up with any semblance of a coherent theory about what all these guys have done. ~BO'L