I’ve recently been in touch with Francisco Morán, poet, SMU professor, and editor of La Habana Elegante, a journal inspired by the modernist publication of the same name. As it happens, Professor Morán is a distant relative of none other than Carlos Morán— left-handed third baseman and OBP machine for Fe, Habana, and the Cuban Stars during the 1900s and 1910s, and one of my favorite early Cuban players (or favorite players, period).
There was no way of knowing about his extraordinary plate discipline until I started compiling Cuban League statistics from box scores. Although I don’t have his whole career done yet, it turns out that Morán walked 160 times in 200 Cuban League games from 1904/05 through 1912/13—a rate more than twice the league average over this time. Overall he hit .284/.427/.321 in leagues that hit .220/.303/.266.
As for his southpaw handling of third base, the famous umpire Billy Evans, who accompanied the Detroit Tigers on their 1910 tour, wrote in the New York Times (December 18, 1910) that Morán “is quite a ball player. He plays the third sack brilliantly, is an adept bunter as well as a hard hitter, and like all the other natives, is the possessor of a strong throwing arm and is unusually fast on his feet.”
Carlos was one of three ballplaying brothers, the others being Angel and Francisco. They were of mixed black and Chinese heritage. The importation of Chinese labor to Cuba took place mostly from the 1850s to 1870s, in large part motivated by the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1862. So it seems likely that the Morán brothers were second-generation Chinese-Cubans. They were from Matanzas, and their mother’s name was Nicolasa Benavides, though so far I’ve found their father named only as “E. Morán.” Angel was a marginal player, but Francisco enjoyed a fairly substantial career as an outfielder, spending at least two summers playing in the U.S. While he wasn’t the star Carlos was, Francisco shared some of his characteristics as a player, leading the Cuban League in walks himself two years in a row (1904/05 and 1905/06).
Professor Morán is not sure of his exact relationship with the ballplaying Morán brothers. Interestingly enough, though, his grandfather was named Francisco Morán Benavides—exactly the same as Carlos’s younger brother.
Francisco (left) and Carlos Morán, from Jorge Figueredo’s book Beisbol Cubano: A un Paso de las Grandes Ligas, 1878-1961.
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