Here are statistics for the 1908 Premio de Verano, which was played along similar lines to the summer championships of 1904, 1905, and 1906: three teams, each representing one of the three winter league clubs (Azul = Almendares, Carmelita = Fe, Rojo = Habana), each playing a few regulars mixed in with marginal players and rookies. Several promising young players made their first professional appearances here: Pastor Pareda, Pelayo Chacón, Eusebio González, and Octavio González.
Download 1908_cuban_summer_league_1.0.xls
I’ve found box scores for 14 of 16 known games; again, since no standings were published, it’s hard to know for sure whether I have all the games. Azul had the best record in known games (6-3-1), just edging Carmelita (7-4-0).
Interest was definitely waning in the summer league by this time, largely because most of the best Cuban players were now spending their summers in the United States. The previous year, 1907, was an exception to this trend, as no All-Cubans team toured the U.S.*, resulting in summer competitions that approached the winter league in quality. But 1908 was nothing like that. And the 1909 summer league would become an amateur circuit, with only a few young prospects mixed in.
UPDATE 10/20/2007 *-Not true: there was a Cuban team touring the U.S. in 1907, though the team, or at least a number of its players—Rafael Almeida, Luis González, Francisco Morán, and Inocencio Pérez —returned in time to participate extensively in the summer series, which were mostly held from mid-August to early October. Plus Luis Padrón returned from Jacksonville in mid-September, in time to play in two of the series; and a larger number of the good players than usual never left.
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