Agate Type

Negro Leaguers in Puerto Rico

Edwin Torres-Romero, an expert on Puerto Rican baseball, has kindly provided some amazing photographs of Negro leaguers in Puerto Rico. First is a fantastic picture of George Scales and Chino Smith, probably in the winter of 1925/26:

Here (courtesy of Caleb Hardwick) is an item in the New York Age describing the team of Negro leaguers Scales and Smith played with in Puerto Rico. Made up of players from several teams, they were called the Royal Giants and were led by Dick Redding, player-manager of the Brooklyn Royal Giants:

(New York Age, November 7, 1925, p. 6)

A few years ago I noted that Scales and Smith could be found on a passenger list arriving in Puerto Rico with the rest of the Royal Giants on December 1, 1925.

Aside from the Negro leaguers, most of whom are pretty familiar, the Royal Giants’ contingent also included Francisco “Frank” López, the team’s organizer/business manager; José Santana, a Puerto Rican player for the Philadelphia Giants; Alexander “Jock” Waters, a trainer, coach, and sometime manager for the Brooklyn Royal Giants; and a couple of others who may be Puerto Rican players, Mario Capestani and Manuel P. Rivas—perhaps (though I have no idea) they are the Allentown Dukes players the New York Age refers to as “Gresco and Appino.”

Then Scales and Smith returned to New York on March 8, 1926:

Edwin also supplied this wonderful shot of a scoreboard for a game between the 1925/26 Royal Giants and an All-Borinquen (All-Puerto Rico) team:

The Royal Giants’ names are all easily legible; on the All-Borinquen squad I think I can see “Net” (Manuel Net, who played in the continental U.S.) and “Brown,” who might be Country Brown playing for the Puerto Rican rather than the Negro league team.

The following winter another team of Negro leaguers traveled to the island commonwealth, this time under the name Lincoln Giants, captained by Scales himself.
 

(New York Age, September 4, 1926, p. 6)

Here they are on a passenger list for the S.S. San Juan, arriving in Puerto Rico on October 18, 1926:

And again from Edwin, here is a photo of the team (the Lincoln Giants from the 1926/27 Puerto Rican winter season):

I can only identify a few of the players here. Standing at far left is, I think, Connie Rector:

Kneeling at far left is the team’s captain, George Scales:

Kneeling next to Scales is Paul “Jake” Stephens:

Standing at the far right in business attire is, presumably, Frank López:

Standing second from left is, I believe, Jesse Hubbard:

Hubbard did not travel with the team in October, and I haven’t yet found him on any passenger lists that show him arriving in Puerto Rico in the fall of 1926; but he can be found returning to New York from Puerto Rico aboard the S.S. Coamo on February 14, 1927:

 

There’s another possible match (and this is definitely only a possibility): kneeling next to Stephens, third from left, might (and let me emphasize might) be Namon Washington:

The problem with the Lincoln Giants’ photo is that I lack corroborating photos, at least usable, good-quality ones, for most of the players presumably pictured, including Tom Finley, Burdell (or Budell) Young, Johnson Hill, Charlie Mason, Arthur “Rube” Chambers, and John Cason. It’s too bad that so many of these cases are concentrated in a single photograph, meaning we can’t use a process of elimination to identify anybody.

I also have images of two Lincoln Giants’ players whom I can’t with confidence find in Edwin’s picture, Ramón Concepción and Wayne Carr:

Thanks to Edwin for providing these photographs from his collection. If anybody has any ideas about all this, or some images of the players listed above, let me know in the comments.

This Cuban Stars Broadside Does Not Date from 1920

The above broadside advertising a June 11 game between the Cuban Stars and Marshall University dates, according to Getty Images, to 1920. Okay, to be clear they say “ca. 1920.” But it should be immediately obvious to anyone reading the text that it couldn’t be from anywhere near 1920. And it’s fairly easy to establish exactly what year it’s from.

The text, which might be a little small to read, goes like this:

“This team, composed of native Cubans, defeated the World’s Champion Athletics nine out of twelve games. Mendez, considered by many experts as the best pitcher in the world, will probably pitch. Pedrosa, the hitless wonder, is also with them.”

First of all,  the reference to Eustaquio “Bombín” Pedroso as the “hitless wonder” refers to his 11-inning no-hit win over the Detroit Tigers in Havana in the fall of 1909, so we know it happened after 1909. The broadside also refers to the Philadelphia Athletics’ fall 1910 visit to Havana after beating the Giants in the World Series. They didn’t actually play the “Cuban Stars” then, but rather the Almendares and Habana teams, and they didn’t lose 9 out of 12 games either (dropping 6 out of 10 instead). So the earliest it could be dated would be June 1911.

Now let’s come at it from the other direction. In 1920 José Méndez was pitching for, and managing, the Kansas City Monarchs, and in June of that year he can firmly be placed with the Monarchs and not either of the Cuban Stars teams.

In fact, at that point Méndez hadn’t played for the Cuban Stars in the United States for eight years. He played for them in 1908, 1909, 1911, and 1912, along with a brief appearance late in the season in 1910, after the Stars of Cuba had folded. Pedroso was his teammate only in 1912, again excepting only brief, late-season appearances side by side in 1910 and 1911.

In other words, Pedroso and Méndez played together on the Cuban Stars in the United States in the month of June only in the year 1912.

And as it happens, the Cuban Stars were in West Virginia and vicinity at that time. I couldn’t find a box score or reference to the June 11 game, but on June 8 Méndez himself took the mound to defeat Daddy Clay’s Giants in Pittsburgh, two home runs by Rafael Figarola featuring the game:

(Pittsburgh Press, June 9, 1912, p. 22)

And on June 14 the Cuban Stars beat the University of West Virginia 12 to 1 in Morgantown. Méndez didn’t appear, but Pedroso did, playing right field, getting a couple of singles, and later coming in to pitch.

 

(Pittsburgh Daily Post, June 15, 1912, p. 14)

Another way to look at it is that the broadside says the game was to take place on Tuesday, June 11. In 1920 June 11 fell on a Friday.  During José Méndez’s whole career in the U.S., which stretched from 1908 to 1926, June 11 fell on a Tuesday exactly twice—in 1918, at which time he was playing for the Los Angeles White Sox, and in…1912.

So I think we can say with some certainty that the broadside was advertising a game that was scheduled to be played on June 11, 1912.

...oh, and here is a picture of me working on this post last night:

 

UPDATE 1/30/2017: Courtesy of Bill Mullins, here is a report of a June 11, 1912, game played in Huntington, West Virginia, though this report has the Cuban Stars facing the Huntington team rather than Marshall University:

Hopefully for Méndez’s sake, he didn’t pitch the entire 19 innings...

UPDATE 7/21/2021 In response to Claudio Naranjo and Scott Simkus in the comments to this post, here are two box scores for a Cuban Stars game against West Virginia University, played on May 11, 1909:

(Pittsburgh Daily Post, May 12, 1909, p. 11)

 

(Pittsburgh Gazette Times, May 12, 1909, p. 10)

 

Philadelphia Giants, 1902

When identifying people in old photographs, few resources are more helpful than finding the photograph printed in a newspaper with all the people in it identified.   

This photo, from Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide (1907), is the earliest known image of White’s own Philadelphia Giants, dating from their first season in 1902:

In his book White didn’t identify anybody in the picture, though White himself and several others are readily recognizable. Luckily the photo was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 5, 1902, with a full caption telling us who’s who:

The photo shows two Hall of Famers (White and Frank Grant), as well as several other fairly well-known players, plus the team’s co-organizers, H. Walter Schlichter and Harry A. Smith. Schlichter was a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Item, editor of Sol White’s guide, and a boxing referee (he appears in a Thomas Eakins painting called “Taking the Count”).  Harry Smith was also a sportswriter, for the Philadelphia Tribune (more about him in a minute).

There are many photos of Sol White, but only a handful of Frank Grant, so this picture is important in that regard.

But three of the players are especially obscure, thus especially interesting.

First, there’s “Smith,” the Giants’ center fielder, sitting on the far left next to Frank Grant. In box scores and game stories he appears as “H. Smith” and (at least once) Harry Smith. This is a little confusing, since the team’s co-organizer, who appears in the photo in a suit (seated in the middle row, second from right), was also named Harry Smith. While it’s possible that the player was getting confused with the sportswriter, I’d say the simplest explanation is that there were two Harry Smiths associated with the team.

There are other possibilities, of course. For one thing, I can’t reliably track Harry Smith the player after his time with the Philadelphia Giants. Maybe he was really some other, known player named Smith? William T. “Big Bill” Smith, an outfielder/catcher/first baseman, was around at this time, but he was (as far as I can tell) playing for the Cuban X Giants in 1902. Moreover, I don’t think photos of Big Bill match the one of Smith here:

According to a profile of Big Bill Smith published in the Indianapolis Ledger in 1915, “In 1902 Smith weighed 230 pounds and could hit according to his weight.” The guy in the 1902 photo does not look like he weighed 230 pounds.

There was also an outfielder named William Smith who captained the Chicago Unions in the late 1890s. He could also be Big Bill or Harry, but again, I need to do a lot more research to figure out if this is a possibility.

Second, there’s William Edgar Farrell (standing in the back, on the far left), usually known as Edgar Farrell. His time with the 1902 Philadelphia Giants was his sole appearance with what you might call a “top flight” black professional club, but he continued to play baseball in the Philadelphia area for another 15 years or so. More than a decade later he served as captain of the Blue Ribbon Base Ball Club of Germantown in Philadelphia (the same district where Roy Campanella was born).

(Philadelphia Tribune, February 21, 1914, p. 7)

Third, and last, there’s the player identified as “Day,” in front on the left. I originally thought him to be Eddie Day, a Reading, Pa., native who also played for the Cuban Giants…but the guy with the ’02 Philly Giants clearly doesn’t match the Eddie Day who appears in 1902 and 1903 Cuban Giants photos.

For the moment I don’t know anything else about Day of the Philadelphia Giants (no first name, nothing), just that he’s apparently not Eddie Day.