agate type

pete hill’s historical marker, annotated

As you may have heard, the state of Virginia is placing a marker commemorating Pete Hill on the grounds of the Cedar Grove Baptist Church in Buena, Culpeper County, Virginia.  It joins a batch of new markers at various sites related to African American history, women’s suffrage, and the War of 1812—the most notable, perhaps, being a marker for Henrietta Lacks.

I worked with some folks at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to develop the text of the marker.  Here’s the final version:

PETE HILL (1882-1951)

John Preston “Pete” Hill, Negro League baseball player and manager, was born nearby, on 12 Oct., probably 1882, and likely to formerly enslaved parents. Banned from whites-only major leagues, Hill became a star outfielder for African American teams, notably the Philadelphia Giants and Chicago American Giants.  A Cuban League 1910/11 winter-season batting champion (with a .365 average), Hill hit 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 (when Babe Ruth hit 29 in more games), marking Hill as among black baseball’s earliest power hitters. Hill died on 19 Dec. 1951 and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

I wrote a first draft, then we edited and compressed it down to 101 words so it would fit on the sign.  It’s not perfect, but it does the job, I think.

I thought I would go ahead and provide an annotated version of the marker text, so you can see the sources and the reasoning behind some of the choices we made.

John Preston “Pete” Hill, Negro League baseball player and manager, was born nearby, on 12 Oct., probably 1882, and likely to formerly enslaved parents.

A vast constellation of documents confirms John Preston Hill’s identity as the ballplayer Pete Hill, and Hill’s place and date of birth.  Most important are his World War I draft card (which gives October 12, 1882, but no place of birth), his death certificate (October 12, 1882, Virginia), the 1900 U.S. census (October 1882, Virginia), the 1920 U.S. census (ca. 1884, Virginia), and his Form SS-5, Hill’s application for a Social Security number (October 12, 1884, Rapidan, Virginia).  (Another Social Security document lists his birth date as October 12, 1883.)  A 1916 passenger list gives his birthplace as “Buena Vista, Va.,” which might be a mistaken reference to Buena, a small community just north of Rapidan in Culpeper County.  Hill’s family in Pittsburgh was pretty well-known, and coverage in the Pittsburgh Courier, along with census records, confirmed their origins in Culpeper County and neighboring Orange County.

We don’t have specific documentation of his parents’ slave status before the end of the Civil War, but they were both apparently born in Virginia in the 1850s, so it seems highly likely that they were enslaved.

Banned from whites-only major leagues, Hill became a star outfielder for African American teams, notably the Philadelphia Giants and Chicago American Giants.  A Cuban League 1910/11 winter-season batting champion (with a .365 average), Hill hit 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 (when Babe Ruth hit 29 in more games), marking him as among black baseball’s earliest power hitters.

My own compilation of Cuban League box scores from the 1910/11 season (unpublished as of yet, but hopefully soon to be posted at Baseball-Reference.com) indicates a .391 average for Hill (36 for 92), but .365 (35 for 96) is the official figure cited in Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961).   The Cuban League at that time was notorious for “adjusting” statistics after the season, particularly those pertaining to the prestigious batting title, so I tend to think that the statistics I compile straight from the box scores are more reliable than official numbers.  Nevertheless I decided that an historical marker required official sourcing whenever possible. 

Early drafts included the oft-cited factoid that in 1911 Hill hit safely in 115 of 116 games, but I could find only secondary sources for that, and decided to go with his remarkable home run total in 1919 instead. It’s a new piece of information, one that doesn’t appear in any of the standard reference books, statistical compilations, or Negro league histories.  As such it stands in for the new wave of Negro league research, one that obviously works a lot better for a general audience than trying to explain in a pithy phrase or two that he walked a lot or had a high on-base percentage or played a bunch of his career in an offense-killing home park, which are the other major results of recent research.  For whatever reason, until very recently nobody had done extensive research on the Detroit Stars’ 1919 season (or at least nobody had published it), so Hill’s home run production that year had been entirely forgotten.

It was, however, known at the time. Hill’s home run count was continually publicized by the Detroit Stars as the 1919 season progressed.  Hill himself touted it in a press release printed in the Chicago Defender (January 10, 1920):

(For the whole story of Hill’s 1919 season, see my article, “1919: A Tale of Two Sluggers,” in the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, June  8, 2010, as well as the two-part series, “The Year Before the Negro National League,” also in the OBB, September 1 & September 8, 2010.)

By the way, this is the original sentence I wrote: “His total of 28 home runs for the Detroit Stars in 1919 marked the end of the deadball era in black baseball.”  But the people at the Department of Historic Resources thought that the reference to the “deadball era” would confuse those who weren’t baseball history buffs.  In explaining what I meant, I mentioned Babe Ruth’s 29 home runs the same year, and we ended up deciding that Ruth’s was a name everyone recognized, and that comparing Hill’s season to his would help the uninitiated grasp the significance of Hill’s accomplishments.

I did have some reservations about the comparison: Pete Hill was really nothing like Babe Ruth, in kind or degree, and of course I dislike the old habit of talking about Negro leaguers as the black version of some white star or other.  But, just as Spottswood Poles was called the “black Ty Cobb” by his manager Ed Bolden, it was Pete Hill who compared himself to Ruth.  As the comparison was made in contemporary sources and by the subject himself, it seemed legitimate.

Hill died on 19 Dec. 1951 and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

His death date has been confirmed by his death certificate and by a Fay Young column in the Chicago Defender (December 29, 1951), in which Young notes the death of “Pete Hill, the grand old man of baseball,” on “Wednesday of last week [December 19] in Buffalo, N. Y., where in recent years he had made his home.”  So far this is the only contemporary newspaper mention of  Hill’s death I’ve been able to find.

bjarkman on cuban baseball

I’ve recently been reading Peter Bjarkman’s History of Cuban Baseball, 1984-2006.  My favorite chapters are the ones on Castro-era baseball and what Bjarkman calls “the world’s best unknown ballplayers,” including: the all-time home run king, Orestes Kindelán, and the all-time hits leader, Antonio Pacheco; the all-time leader in wins, southpaw Jorge Luis Valdés, and the man he surpassed, Braudilio Vinent; 1970s slugger Antonio Muñoz, reputedly a left-handed version of Tony Pérez; legendary shortstop Germán Mesa, often compared to Ozzie Smith; and the greatest of them all, third baseman Omar Linares.

Great stuff, all of it.  I wonder if there’s any possibility in the near future of a full statistical encyclopedia of Cuban baseball since 1962?

the first spaniards to play professional baseball

I got this email from Tito Rondon the other day:

Thanks to you, I have found the first Spaniards who played baseball at the professional level.  Following one of your links, I read the book El Base Ball en Cuba y América, by Ramón de Mendoza, Manuel Calcines and José María Herrero.  On pages 21 and 28 the players who founded Almendares are mentioned. Then on p. 42, bingo: Antonio Alzola and Leonardo Ovies “were two Peninsulars [my note: Spaniards] who were the catcher and the firstbaseman of Club Almendares.”  Elsewhere it states that they were pretty good.  It shows also the universal appeal of baseball.

Historians and sociologists insist that baseball replaced bullfighting as the national sport in Cuba as a symbol of independence and getting closer to the new ideals in the United States. Which is all very nice, except that nobody in Cuba thought of bullfighting as a sport (you will never find it in the Sports section in Spanish newspapers, plus it is usually described as a “fiesta brava,” somewhat like a celebration or dance showing bravery). So it could not be replaced by one, except as an avocation or hobby.

[…]

And, by the way, it has never been established that supposed Spanish big leaguer Alfredo “Pájaro” Cabrera was born in the Canary Islands; it is theorized that 1) he was trying to avoid being thought of as a mulato (half Black) from Cuba, or 2) that he was really born in Spain and he was brought to Cuba as a baby.  I suppose all this means I have to investigate Gregorio Solis (first Spanish minor leaguer circa 1957?), Alberto Pardo, and recent minor leaguers Gaby Valarezo and Xavier Civit.  And hurry; like the other European countries they are “nationalizing” Argentinians, Cubans, and Americans in order to compete against pros...

Tito

claudio manela & the true meaning of the “8” and the “36”

Thanks to Tito Rondon, who has provided an explanation for an obscure remark (found in the Diario de la Marina article excerpted in this post) concerning the Filipino pitcher Claudio Manela: “Todavía no sabe el verdadero significado del 8 y del 36” (“He still doesn’t know the true meaning of the ‘8’ and the ‘36’”).

ABOUT 8 AND 36 (MANELA)
No doubt you have played charades, complete with three fingers up meaning “three words” or “syllables.”  A Cuban version of the game (I have learned) used hints based on numbers; each number meant something.  For instance, “one” was a “horse.”  The Cubans also had a public lottery game called “bolita” (numbers racket in the U.S.). And so, dreams became associated with numbers.  If you dreamed of a cat, for instance, you had to bet combinations that had a four in it (I think bolita had three or four numbers, it was run daily).  Everybody played it, so if you arrived in Cuba and stayed a few months, in time you learned the significance of the numbers. Manela did not stay long enough to learn that 8 is “muerto” (dead man) or that 36 is “cachimba” (pipe used to smoke).

cuban national series on the web

Just got this email from David Skinner:

I had one good game to watch today, thanks to Pete Bjarkman’s tip. The mind boggles. With all the Cuban games I've seen, I hadn't ever watched the Serie Nacional final series until now. The live Cubavision telecasts are free on Windows Media, if you have broadband, I guess it’s what they call streaming video. It’s perfect audio, Spanish of course, good video quality with occasional freezes. Industriales, the Yankees of Cuba, won tonight to cut Santiago de Cuba’s lead to 2 games to 1. Estadio Latinamericano looked so good, with 50,000+ screaming crazies, and the play, especially flamboyant fielding, reminded me of my first trip to Cuba and the feeling that this league is the true heir of the  Negro Leagues. If you’re interested, the website is baseballdecuba.com, just click on window in middle marked PLAY. Game 4 is Sunday at 2PM Eastern.
Best,
David

campos

In both the Negro Leagues Book and Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia, we find “Tatica Campos,” a multi-position player for various Cuban Stars teams of the 1910s and 1920s, up to his final U.S. season in 1930.

Checking up on Tatica from the Cuban side of things, however, we find three players named Campos during this time.  Jorge Figueredo’s Cuban Baseball lists: 1) José “Tatica” Campos, a pitcher/infielder/outfielder who played in the Cuban League from 1913/14 through 1920/21; 2) B. Campos, who appeared briefly (only four at bats in seven games) for Almendares in 1914/15, the same team as Tatica; and 3) Roberto Campos, whose hometown is identified in the index as Manzanillo, an infielder/outfielder (but not pitcher) in the 1923/24 and 1926/27 Cuban League seasons, plus the rival “Triangular” league of 1926/27.

Patrick Rock, using passenger lists for ships from Cuba to the United States (just a fantastic resource), has found records of the Cuban Stars teams of the 1900s through 1920s.  Patrick discovered that the Campos who traveled with the Cuban Stars in 1915-1917, and again in 1930, was named Francisco Campos.  He was born in 1892 in Havana.  On the 1923 Cuban Stars, however, it’s Roberto Campos, born about 1902 in Manzanillo.

So it seems clear that Roberto’s tenure with the ’23 Cuban Stars was mistakenly conflated with the career of the 1910s Campos.  But what about Francisco Campos, as opposed to José?  Was the Cuban Stars’ Campos in 1915-17 the same as the well-known Cuban Leaguer, Tatica Campos?  It seems highly likely, considering that the Cuban Stars at the time were mostly drawn from Almendares, Tatica’s club.  But could the Cuban Stars’ player have been the other Campos with Almendares at this time, the little-used outfielder B. Campos?  Either way, the name Francisco, which appears repeatedly in the records, causes problems.

I checked the Cuban League box scores for the 1910s, focusing on 1914/15, the year that two players named Campos appeared with Almendares.  It turns out that there were definitely two men with the name.  One always appeared as “T. Campos” when first initials were given in box scores, and was often called “Tatica” in the game stories and play-by-plays.  The other appeared both as “F. Campos” and as “S. Campos,” and is referred to three or four times (with both initials) as “el mejicano.”  They appeared together in the lineup twice—both times as “T. Campos” and “S. Campos.”  Here’s one of them, played on February 22 (La Lucha, February 23, 1915):

And here are the seventh and eighth innings of the play-by-play account.  S. Campos, “el mejicano,” ends the seventh with a fly to center (he’s batting in the number three position, having taken Hidalgo’s place in center field).  T. Campos, “Tatica,” pops to the pitcher for the second out of the eighth:

“B. Campos,” by the way, never crops up in 1914/15, at least in La Lucha—it could be that a blurry “S.” on microfilm was mistaken by someone for a “B.”

During both 1913/14 and 1915/16, there is clearly only one Campos on the Almendares roster, and he’s always called “T. Campos” and “Tatica Campos.”  In 1917, however (the strange year when the games were played at Oriental Park, the racetrack, and the teams all took new names), Tatica Campos appeared in box scores as both “T. Campos” and “F. Campos.”

The second Campos of 1914/15 still muddies the waters a bit, but two things lead me to think that Tatica Campos of the Cuban League was the same as Francisco Campos of the Cuban Stars: 1) the second Campos of ‘14/15 was called “el mejicano,” which doesn’t have to refer to his national origin, but probably does—while the passenger records establish Francisco as a Cuban native; and 2) the 1917 instances of Tatica being called “F. Campos.”

We do still have the problem of the name “José” from Figueredo, though.  I can say that I have never seen a “J. Campos” in a Cuban box score from this era.  Perhaps his name was “José Francisco,” but he preferred to go by “Francisco.”  Whatever the case, it seems clear that here we’ve managed to shed light in both directions, on Cuban and American baseball history.

el base ball en cuba y américa

Jerry Kuntz, who has written on baseball promoter and aviation pioneer Alfred W. Lawson, tipped me off that Google has digitized one of the most important early works of Cuban baseball history, El Base Ball en Cuba y América, by Ramón S. de Mendoza, José María Herrero, and Manual F. Calcines, three sportswriters from the Diaro de la Marina newspaper.  There’s a lot of great material here (almost all in Spanish, of course) about early Cuban League seasons and players, the growth of baseball in various provincial towns, and the summer league, among other subjects. 

Google scanned a copy from Harvard that had originally belonged to one José Augusto Escoto of Matanzas, who is probably the José Escoto who played second base for the Eminencia club in the 1905 Premio de Verano and for Rojo in the 1906 Premio de Verano (but never appeared in the Cuban winter league).

19th-century béisbol cubano, part iii

My recent posts (here and here) on 19th-century Cuban baseball and the ten-man game provoked some fascinating discussion on SABR’s 19th-Century Baseball list (which can be found at Yahoo! Groups).  The list is open to SABR members; non-members can join for three months.

Some of the stuff the baseball historians there came up with is just too fascinating not to mention here:

1)    The ten-man rule was proposed by Chadwick in 1874, apparently as a solution to the problem of the fair-foul hit (the favored weapon of Ross Barnes, Dickey Pearce, and others, made illegal in 1877).  Robert Schaefer’s article in The National Pastime (number 20, 2000), “The Lost Art of Fair-Foul Hitting”—which I have not yet read, but plan to—should contain much more on this.  An interesting question then arises: did Cuban players practice the fair-foul hit?  If so, for how long?  (This last point was first raised by Rod Nelson on the 19cBB list.)

2)    The supposed “first organized baseball game” in Cuba, played in December, 1874, may have used the nine-man rule; but the first game in Cuban League history, on December 29, 1878, used ten players a side.  So it had been adopted by 1878 (at the latest) and lasted until (at least) 1882.  (This is from César González.)

3)    By the 1890s, Cubans had exported their version of the ten-man game to Yucatán, where the tenth man came to be known as “El Rey Xiol” (“King Xiol”)—which is really a transliteration of “right short.”  (Also from César González.)

franqui

Here is a disquieting item about how a minor Cuban player evidently came to a bad end (La Lucha, March 21, 1910):

It’s possible I have Augusto Franqui’s entire professional baseball career documented: he played all of two games in the Cuban League proper (for Habana in 1905); I’ve also got him as a pitcher/outfielder in the 1904, 1905, and 1906 summer leagues.  He didn’t appear in the 1907 summer league (unpublished).

In the winter league he hit 0 for 4 as a right fielder in two games.  In the summer league, he went 5-12 as a pitcher with 42 walks and 61 strikeouts in 146 innings, and hit .100 (8 for 80), with no extra base hits and more walks (11) than hits.

I don’t have any other news about what became of Franqui’s apparent victim, Florencio Rodríguez, or the ultimate fate of Franqui himself.  I didn’t find Spanish-language coverage of the incident (though I can’t say, when I copied this, that I was looking specifically for it).

19th-century béisbol cubano, cont’d

Two additional notes on nineteenth-century Cuban baseball.

1)  The first recorded baseball game in Cuban history, played between Habana and Matanzas on December 27, 1874, apparently featured nine men per side. 

2)  The Clipper printed two more Cuban box scores in the following issue (April 1, 1882), both showing ten-man teams (in the second game, Fe is mistakenly listed with two “right-shorts” and no right fielder):

I think it’s fairly clear that the “Championship” competition between Habana and Fe is what we now know as the 1882 Cuban League.  The second game here, between Fe and Habana, took place on March 12, which Jorge Figueredo lists as the final day of the 1882 season.  The championship series, moreover, started on January 22, which he gives as the season’s first  day; and Fe won three games to Habana’s one, just as in the 1882 standings in Figueredo.