I should mention that the latest issue of Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, which includes my article on the minor league career of Luis Padrón, has been out for a while now. Be sure to check out the rest of the issue, including Robert Schaefer on lively ball controversies through the years, Rob Edelman’s fascinating account of the advent of electric scoreboards, the late Gene Carney on Eddie Cicotte, and (how can I leave this one out) Peter Morris on “The Scandalous Elopement of Abraham Lincoln’s Granddaughter and Minor League Pitcher Warren Beckwith.”
My article concentrates on Padrón in the United States, specifically his career in organized baseball. There’s still plenty of research to be done on him in Cuba (not to mention Mexico and Puerto Rico, where he also played ball); many biographical details remain to be tracked down.
Since the article went to press, I have run across one significant detail about Padrón’s tryout with the Chicago White Sox on July 22, 1909. In U.S. newspapers I had previously seen only brief notices of the tryout and a few statements that the White Sox had signed him, which I had assumed to be mistaken, since no further mention was made anywhere of the matter and he certainly never appeared in a game for the Sox.
But I have recently found two items in the Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina by a correspondent based in Chicago who wrote under the pseudonym “Bancroft” (presumably in honor of Frank Bancroft, the man who brought the Worcester club to Cuba in 1879 and spent much of the next thirty years as one of the most important baseball ambassadors between Cuba and the U.S.). “Bancroft” claims that Charles Comiskey actually purchased Luis Padrón’s contract from Tinti Molina’s Cuban Stars for $1000, with Padrón slated to report to the White Sox in mid-September. These two items are so far the only sources for this claim, so I’m somewhat skeptical. But if true, it would mean that Padrón was at least twice the actual property of a major league club without being called up (the other time being with the Boston Braves in 1913).
My article concentrates on Padrón in the United States, specifically his career in organized baseball. There’s still plenty of research to be done on him in Cuba (not to mention Mexico and Puerto Rico, where he also played ball); many biographical details remain to be tracked down.
Since the article went to press, I have run across one significant detail about Padrón’s tryout with the Chicago White Sox on July 22, 1909. In U.S. newspapers I had previously seen only brief notices of the tryout and a few statements that the White Sox had signed him, which I had assumed to be mistaken, since no further mention was made anywhere of the matter and he certainly never appeared in a game for the Sox.
But I have recently found two items in the Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina by a correspondent based in Chicago who wrote under the pseudonym “Bancroft” (presumably in honor of Frank Bancroft, the man who brought the Worcester club to Cuba in 1879 and spent much of the next thirty years as one of the most important baseball ambassadors between Cuba and the U.S.). “Bancroft” claims that Charles Comiskey actually purchased Luis Padrón’s contract from Tinti Molina’s Cuban Stars for $1000, with Padrón slated to report to the White Sox in mid-September. These two items are so far the only sources for this claim, so I’m somewhat skeptical. But if true, it would mean that Padrón was at least twice the actual property of a major league club without being called up (the other time being with the Boston Braves in 1913).
Posted by Gary Ashwill
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