claudio manela of the 1922 hartford senators

A check of the Hartford Courant confirms that the “C. Manela” who pitched briefly for the Hartford Senators of the Eastern League was the same C. Manela who pitched in Cuba in the fall of 1921 (and thus the same Manela who pitched for Tinti Molina’s Cincinnati Cuban Stars in the 1921 Negro National League).

Manela’s mentioned in several articles from March 29 to May 5, 1922.  He’s not given a first name, only the initial “C.”  There is, unsurprisingly, no mention of his work in the Negro National League the previous season.  He’s referred to as Cuban, not Filipino, and was nicknamed “Mike,” which may have been some kind of generic nickname for Cubans at the time.  Ramón Herrera, who entered the Eastern League at the same time, also came to be known as “Mike.”  I suppose it might have come from the catcher Miguel Angel González, who at this point would have been (with Adolfo Luque) the best-known Cuban player in white organized baseball in the U.S.

The Courant twice calls Manela a southpaw, making for a total of four references I’ve seen to his lefthandedness.  Several times he’s referred to as “the little Cuban hurler,” and on April 14 the Courant remarks that he is “about the size of ‘Dickie’ Kerr of the White Sox.”  Claudio Manela’s World War II draft card, filled out when he was 49 years old, lists him as 5’6”, 145 pounds.  Kerr is listed by baseball-reference.com as 5’7”, 155 pounds.

It turns out that there was a dispute over the rights to Manela between Hartford and Jersey City of the International League:

“Owner James H. Clarkin [of the Hartford Senators] yesterday was assured the services of the swarthy heaver when he was notified by Secretary Farrell that after weighing the evidence in the contest for the pitcher in which the Jerseys City Internationals disputed the property of the pitcher he ruled the Cuban belonged to the Senators.” (Courant 3/29/1922)

Claudio Manela, in fact, had arrived in New York from Havana on March 14.

Despite a small amount of hype in the Courant (which included reprinting a box score for a 3 to 1 victory by Manela, pitching for Almendares, over the Brooklyn Dodgers in Cuba the previous fall), Manela never got untracked in Connecticut.  On May 4, as the Senators prepared for a road trip to Albany, he was cut loose:

“Manager Jack Coffey handed ‘Mike’ Manela, the little Cuban pitcher, his outright release.  The weather has handicapped the Cubin [sic] in his efforts to get into shape and a result failed to show the stuff when assigned to the mound.” (Courant 5/4/1922)

Thanks to Dick Thompson for pointing me toward the Hartford Courant’s online search engine (which, btw, is not free).

Comments

[Gary Ashwill]

No, I'm afraid I haven't found an image of Manela. Anybody else know of one?

[nestor enriquez]

is there any photo of C Menela that I could find? thank you