It turns out that after Claudio Manela of the 1921 Cincinnati Cuban Stars, at least one more player from the Philippines performed for a Negro League team. Rube Foster tried out a Filipino pitcher named “Tombo” in a 1922 non-league contest against the House of David:
(Chicago Defender, 17 June 1922)
I’ve only found one other mention of “Tombo,” in the Palatine Enterprise (July 23 20, 1920 1923). Evidently there was a team of “Fillipino and Hawaiian Stars” that played pretty extensively around the Chicago area (getting virtually no newspaper coverage), and he was their pitcher.
Note the echoes of William Taft’s patronizing “little brown brothers” language to describe the Filipino/Hawaiian players:
A number of people named “Tomboe” appear in official records around this time, particularly a family from the Philippines that lived in Hawaii. I can’t link the Chicago pitcher specifically to anyone, though if I had to bet it would be on a guy named Pedro Tomboe, who was listed as 17 in the 1920 census.
Yes indeed--sorry about the typo.
Posted by: Gary Ashwill | September 18, 2008 at 03:34 PM
The date on the Palatine newspaper piece should be 7-20-1923, not 7-23-1920. So he was pitching in the suburbs a year after his try-out with the CAG.
Posted by: Scott Simkus | September 18, 2008 at 01:03 PM