Bob Mayer has in his collection a presentation or trophy baseball, silver-plated and engraved as follows:
B B C
Cuba
1901
There wasn’t, as far as we know, a Cuban team touring the U.S. in 1901, but there are, as Bob says, two other possibilities: 1) It could be from a club playing in Cuba; or 2) It could be one of the several towns in the U.S. called Cuba. I thought I’d post photos of the baseball, and see if anyone has any ideas.
There was in fact a club called “Cuba” in the 1899 Cuban League. Roberto González Echevarría tells a complicated story about the Cuba club’s role in the controversy over the league’s racial integration in 1900. Essentially, the team’s owner Severino T. Solloso, “made a present of it to Agustín (Tinti) Molina and José Poyo rather than allow it to play, under his direction, in a championship that included blacks.” Molina, of course, later ran the Cuban Stars team that toured the U.S. for many years; Poyo was the son of José Martí’s secretary. The new owners took the old uniforms and added “no” to the “Cuba” name, calling their team, which would include several black players, Cubano. González Echevarría explains that “[w]ritten this way it means, ‘This is not the team Cuba.’ But they obviously meant to say also that the white Cuba Solloso envisioned was no Cuba at all” (The Pride of Havana, p. 119).
Could the trophy baseball above be associated with Molina and Poyo’s Cubano club, or with Solloso’s original Cuba club (perhaps continued with all white players, outside the Cuban League, in 1901)? Or is it Cuban at all? If I get any updates from Bob I’ll pass them along.
UPDATE 12/4/2007 Just wanted to point out that “B B C” probably stands for “Base Ball Club.” It was a common abbreviation at the time, and it was used in Cuba (as in “Almendares B.B.C.”, for example).
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