agate type

pop watkins, part three

The two articles I’ve posted about Pop Watkins really disagree only on his birth place and early life.  The Watertown Daily Times says Watkins was born on “a plantation near Durham, N. C.,” while the Baltimore Afro-American says Augusta, Georgia.  According to the Afro-American, Watkins moved to Brooklyn “as a youngster,” whereas the Daily Times has him starting his baseball career at age 17 with a South Carolina team.  On the other hand, they agree that he was 66 and that he played 25 years with the Cuban Giants as a catcher and first baseman.  Otherwise, though, they just cover completely different aspects of his life and career. 

I wanted to discuss three issues they raise: 1) Watkins’s Manhattan College connection; 2) his career with the Cuban Giants; and 3) his age.

On Manhattan College: the Jaspers have a great baseball tradition and an excellent team dating back until at least the 1870s.  While not quite 13 in one year, it is true that from 1902 to 1907 fully ten former Jaspers (Rod Nelson originally sent me this link), including the Colombian-born Luis Castro, debuted in the majors.  Watkins was certainly not Manhattan College’s head baseball coach, but he could well have had something to do with the program, and it’s quite possible we might be able to establish that.

On his career with the Cuban Giants: As James E. Brunson points out in the comments to the last post, the Cuban Giants as we know them did not exist in 1882, when the Daily Times claims he joined them.  They were founded in 1885.

As far as I can tell, looking through the writings of Sol White, Jerry Malloy, and Michael E. Lomax on the Cuban Giants along with all the standard reference books and what little nineteenth-century material I have, Pop Watkins enters Negro League history in 1899 with the Genuine (or Original) Cuban Giants.  This was the name by which John M. Bright’s team became known after Edward B. Lamar founded the Cuban X Giants in 1896 and enticed away most of Bright’s players.   

James Riley has Watkins with these teams:

Cuban Giants 1899-1904
Genuine Cuban Giants 1905-1906
Brooklyn Royal Giants 1907-1909
Pop Watkins Stars 1908

The Negro Leagues Book (edited by Dick Clark and Larry Lester) shows F. [sic] “Pop” Watkins with these teams:

Genuine Cuban Giants 1899-1900
Famous Cuban Giants 1905-1906
Pop Watkins Stars 1908

(Clark/Lester has no Watkins on the Royal Giants’ rosters for 1907-1909. A spot check of a few 1908 box scores from the Brooklyn Eagle shows Watkins appearing occasionally at first base for his own team [incidentally called “Watkins’ Colored Giants” rather than the “Pop Watkins Stars”], but not for the Royal Giants.)

If the 1857 birth date for Watkins is accurate, he would have started playing in big time African American baseball at the age of 42—and continued at least until he was all of 51.

I was able to find a Brooklyn family in the 1910 census that matched the detailed information from the Afro-American article.  It was headed by one John Watkins, 52, born in Georgia and a salesman of sporting goods (the last column on the right gives the state in which the person was born):

(click to enlarge)

Four sons (not three), one named Raymond, and one daughter.  The less common name Raymond Watkins (along with John’s employment in sporting goods) helps to seal the deal.  There are all of four black men named Raymond Watkins in the 1910 census.  It seems rather more than a coincidence that one of these four lives in Brooklyn with a family that resembles in every particular the one that appears in the Afro-American article.

Walking it backward, I was able to find the same family in 1900, again in Brooklyn.  Only here John Watkins, listed as 52 in 1910, is now listed as 30, having been born in March 1870.

(click to enlarge)

The 1870 and 1880 censuses yielded nothing certain, since it’s no longer possible to rely on the names of his wife and children.  And if he really were born in the 1850s, he was almost certainly born into slavery, and slaves did not appear by name either in the census proper or in the slave schedules.

Finally, there is Pop Watkins’s death certificate:

(click to enlarge)

Clearly, no one present was able to provide any details about Watkins other than the fact that he had been born in Georgia.  Tellingly the attending physician guessed his age to be…40. 

None of this constitutes definitive proof that Pop Watkins was not as old as he represented himself (and I certainly don’t think he was only 40 in 1924), but I do think there’s something to the idea.  Questions about baseball ages usually involve players claiming to be younger than they are, for obvious reasons; the notion that an athlete might claim the opposite sounds almost crazy to us now. But it might make a lot of sense for a guy nicknamed “Pop.”

Age exaggeration was a fairly common marketing tool, used by both players and sportswriters in the early part of the twentieth century.  Satchel Paige was only following a long-established tradition.  I have, for example, seen articles in the late 1910s and 1920s that added 10 or 15 years to the ages of Cyclone Joe Williams and John Henry Lloyd (not coincidentally, another “Pop”).  The habit persisted for decades, sometimes popping up whether the player in question encouraged it or not.  Bus Clarkson shaved three years off his age in an attempt to gain late entry to the major leagues, only to see the Chicago Defender insinuate that he was even older than he actually was.

baseball ages: armando marsans

The official baseball birth date for Armando Marsans is October 3, 1887.  This would have made him 17 when he played his first Cuban League game on April 3, 1905.

The same Washington Post article (February 4, 1912) I cited in the post about Almeida says this about Marsans: “He was born in Matanzas, 55 miles from Havana, in 1885, being the same age as Almeida.”  And Peter T. Toot writes in his biography of Marsans that he “was born in Matanzas, Cuba….on October 3, 1885” (p. 8), although on the same page he says Marsans was 18 when he debuted for Almendares in 1905 (consistent with a birth date of October 3, 1886).

Here are some ages and implied birth dates from passenger lists (assuming his birthday of October 3 is correct):

--Arriving in New York on May 20, 1905: listed as 21, thus born October 3, 1883
--April 17, 1908: 23, thus October 3, 1884
--December 15, 1908: 23, thus October 3, 1885
--April 21, 1911: 25, thus October 3, 1885
--June 25, 1911: 25, thus October 3, 1885
--March 17, 1913: 26…October 3, 1885
--July 24, 1914: 27…October 3, 1886
--April 7, 1915: 28…October 3, 1886
--March 25, 1916: 29…October 3, 1886
--February 5, 1917: 30…October 3, 1886
--July 11, 1923: 36…October 3, 1886
--March 5, 1924: 35…October 3, 1888

Also: according to the Post, both Marsans and Almeida had come to U.S. as children with their privileged families, temporarily fleeing the turmoil of the Cuban Revolution in the 1890s.  As it happens, I was able to find an Armando Marsans arriving in New York from Havana on February 5, 1897, traveling with his mother and two brothers, Raúl and Mario.  Armando is listed here as 10 years old (again, consistent with a birth date of October 3, 1886).

Image of Marsans from this site, again.

baseball ages: rafael almeida

Another example of an early Cuban player in the U.S. who may have adjusted his age for professional purposes is Rafael Almeida, one of the pair of Cincinnati Reds (the other being Armando Marsans) who on July 4, 1911, became the first Cuban League products to play in the major leagues.

Almeida’s official baseball birth date is July 30, 1887.  This would have made him 16 when he made his first Cuban League appearance in the 1903/04 season (actually played in early 1904), and still 16 when he first traveled to the United States with the All-Cubans in April.  When Almeida was purchased by the Reds in 1911 at the supposed age of 23 (almost 24), he had already been playing professionally in the U.S., off and on, for seven years.

These are the ages recorded for Almeida on passenger lists I’ve found, with the birth date they imply (assuming the birthday July 30 is correct):

Arriving in the United States April 26, 1904: 22, thus July 30, 1881
November 17, 1904: 22, thus July 30, 1882
May 20, 1905: 23, thus July 30, 1881
April 19, 1907: 23…July 30, 1883
June 10, 1908: 23…July 30, 1883
December 15, 1908: 25…July 30, 1883
May 1, 1909: 24…July 30, 1884
July 15, 1910: 25…July 30, 1884
June 25, 1911: 26…July 30, 1884
April 4, 1912: 27…July 30, 1884
March 17, 1913: 27….July 30, 1885
May 17, 1915: 29…July 30, 1885
May 14, 1916: 29…July 30, 1886
March 19, 1920: 35…July 30, 1884

An article about Almeida and Marsans in the Washington Post (February 4, 1912) says that Almeida “was born in Havana in 1885.”

The upshot is that, so far, every age I’ve found reported for Almeida during his playing career shows him older than his official age.

UPDATE 1:02 p.m.  Image of Almeida added from this site.

baseball ages: ramón herrera

Adjusting one’s age is nothing new in baseball.  Consider the case of Ramón Herrera (known as “Mike” or “Paito”), a Cuban infielder for both the Boston Red Sox (in 1925 and 1926) and the Cuban Stars of the Negro National League (in 1920 and 1921).  Herrera is supposed to have been born on December 19, 1897.  This would have made him 27 and 28 during his time with the Sox.

Herrera’s first professional appearance (as far as I know) was at third base for Almendares against the Brooklyn Dodgers on November 8, 1913—when Herrera would supposedly have been only 15.   He played his first Cuban League game on December 11, 1913, still eight days before his sixteenth birthday, and then went on to be Almendares’s regular second baseman as the club won the 1913/14 pennant.

Fast-forwarding to the other end of his career: Herrera’s last appearance as a professional (again, as far as I know) was in the 1929/30 Cuban League.  He would have turned 32 about two-thirds of the way through the season.

But check out the ages given on passenger manifests for Herrera’s travels to the United States.  Assuming that his birthday—December 19—is accurate, even if the year isn’t, here are the years of birth implied by each entry:

Herrera’s arrival in the U.S. on 14 September 1913:  he’s listed as 23 years old, thus born December 19, 1889

7 June 1914: 21 years old; thus born December 19, 1892
7 March 1915: 22; thus December 19, 1892
2 June 1915: 22, thus December 19, 1892
5 April 1916: 23, thus December 19, 1892

(Herrera played for the Cuban Stars in 1920 and 1921, but I haven’t yet found him on any passenger lists for those years.)

10 April 1923: 30, thus December 19, 1892
5 April 1924: 30, thus December 19, 1893
11 April 1924: 30, thus December 19, 1893
7 April 1925: 32, thus December 19, 1892
28 February 1926: 33, thus December 19, 1892
14 March 1927: 34, thus December 19, 1892
23 April 1928: 33, thus December 19, 1894
19 March 1929: 34, thus December 19, 1894

It should be emphasized that I’m not offering absolute proof that Herrera’s official age is wrong, just a strong suspicion based on both his career shape and the passenger lists.  It’s hard to know how to interpret ages on passenger lists, because we don’t always know what the source of the information is.  I tend to assume that most of the time it is the passenger himself, simply being asked how old he is.  But this information, as you can see, varies from year to year for the same person.  On any given list, the age could represent a guess, or could have been supplied by a club or customs official or somebody else who may or may not have known how old the person in question was.  Although it should be pointed out that one piece of evidence that the ages generally come from the passengers themselves is that (surprise surprise) as the years go on, ballplayers tend to shave years off.

In Herrera’s case, it seems significant that every single age given on the passenger lists is considerably older than his official baseball age.  Even the ages reported in 1928 and 1929 are still three years older than what we thought before.  It’s hard to think of any explanation other than the obvious one: his baseball age was wrong.  Herrera (or perhaps somebody else) slashed five years or so off his age.

If we take the most common implied birthdate here—December 19, 1892, which appears on 8 of 13 passenger lists—then Herrera was already 30 (rather than 25) when he joined organized baseball in the U.S. (with Springfield of the Eastern League in 1923), and 32 (rather than 27) when he finally made the Red Sox in 1925.  It isn’t exactly a mystery why it would have helped his career to lie about his age.  In fact, it probably made his career possible in the first place.  In addition, such an adjustment obviously alters any evaluation of Herrera as a player, since he was almost certainly in decline by the time he reached the majors, rather than at his peak.

Using this revised birthdate would also have made Herrera eight days shy of 19 21 when he played his first game in the Cuban League, and 36/37 during his final season there. This age progression just makes a lot more sense to me than one where he started his career at 15 and ended it at 32.  In the end, of course, it would probably take research in Cuban sources to establish whether I’m right or not.

You can make similar cases for a couple of other early Cuban players, which I’ll get to in the next few days.