We’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to Muñoz of the 1914 and 1916 Newark/Long Branch Cubans (you can get caught up here, here, and here). A brief item in La Lucha (April 10, 1914) lists “Paco Muñoz” among the players going to New Jersey to play for the Atlantic League club. Paco, like the other players listed, was a well-known participant in the previous two Cuban League seasons. He was listed in box scores as “F. Muñoz,” always referred to in articles as “Paco,” and generally seems to have been regarded as a promising young pitcher. He was described as “la estrella oriental” (the eastern star, as he came from Oriente province) and “el rubio del oriente” (the eastern blond); the paper’s English page referred to him as “blond and lanky.” There’s actually a photo of him in the January 26, 1914, issue of La Lucha, though the microfilm is bad (and my copy too murky to scan); anyway, the point is that he would have fit in with the Long Branch Cubans’ mostly white roster. Severo Nieto was likely misremembering Muñoz’s first name, as “Paco” is a diminutive of Francisco.
David Skinner writes:
It is interesting that I remembered Nieto calling him Paco, and that only the tape convinced me he said Fausto. There’s a lesson there about trusting memory vs. electronic devices.
Strikingly, while the tape recorder captured Nieto’s precise words, Nieto was probably wrong (about Muñoz’s exact first name), while David’s later memory of the conversation, colored by knowledge of Cuban baseball from other sources, proved to be correct.
David goes on: “Now the question is, whatever became of this promising youngster?” Paco never returned to the Cuban League after 1914, having spent only two seasons there. Here’s a quick look at his known statistics:
Fall 1912 for Habana vs. Lincoln Giants: 1-1, 1 save, 2.74 TRA, 20 hits, 8 walks, and 5 strikeouts in 4 appearances, 23 innings (batting 0 for 6);
1913 Habana, Cuban League: 1-6 in 12 appearances (from Figueredo);
1914 Fe, Cuban League: 3-3 in 10 appearances (from Figueredo).
1914 Newark Cubans, Atlantic League (Class D): 10-6, 3.81 TRA, 111 hits, 50 walks and 84 strikeouts in 19 appearances, 137 innings (batting 6 for 42, .143, with one double; stats courtesy of David Skinner).
1916 Long Branch Cubans, independent vs. Negro League teams: 2-2, 1 save, 3.86 TRA, 42 hits, 16 walks, and 27 strikeouts in 5 appearances, 42 innings (batting 3 for 12 with 5 walks). Still listed here as José; I need to fix that.
That’s 7-12 against Cuban and Negro League competition, 10-6 versus the Class D Atlantic League. Paco Muñoz did not appear in the American Series in Cuba against the Philadelphia A’s in 1912, against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1913, the Lincoln Stars in 1914, or the Indianapolis ABCs in 1915. There’s no record of a Muñoz in the International League, American Association, Southern Association, or Texas League.
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