Adventures in Baseball Archeology: the Negro Leagues, Latin American baseball, J-ball, the minors, the 19th century, and other hidden, overlooked, or unknown corners of baseball history...with occasional forays into other sports.
James Tate sent me this photo a while back (almost two years ago, actually). I was able to confirm for him that the Almendares player on the right was definitely the father of Omara Portuondo. But the guy on the left (probably an Habana player), trying to crack him up? I had no idea.
Now I see that this Telemundo photo gallery has identified the jokester as Bienvenido Jiménez. Can’t say I’ve ever heard much about “Hooks” Jiménez as a person, so this gives us a welcome glimpse of an early player as something other than a blurry face or a name in a box score.
Courtesy of Larry Lester, here’s something to file under “Things I Should Have Known But Didn’t”: Omara Portuondo, one of Cuba’s most famous singers, is the daughter of BartoloPortuondo, Cuban League and Negro league infielder in the 1910s and 1920s. He captured stolen base crowns in the 1919/20 Cuban League (with Almendares) and the 1920 Negro National League (with the Kansas City Monarchs).
“Omara Portuondo was born in Cayo Hueso (Havana) in 1930. Omara’s mother came from a rich Spanish family and was expected to marry into another society family. Instead she ran off with the man she loved, a tall, handsome baseball player from the Cuban national team. Moreover he was black and in those days mixed race marriages were still frowned upon in Cuba. “My mother always hid the fact that she had married a black man. If they bumped into each other in the street they had to ignore each other. But at home they recreated what society denied them - a haven of peace and harmony. They loved each other very much,” Omara recalls.
“They had three daughters and as in any Cuban household there was music. There wasn’t a gramophone - they didn’t have the money. Even as a small child, Omara showed a natural aptitude for singing, picking up both melody and harmony lines from listening to her parents singing together. Her father was a good aficionado singer--he had gone to school with the songwriter Eliseo Grenet, and they remained friends, so that music was a constant in Omara's childhood home. Omara remembers her parent’s favorite music, which included songs by Ernesto Grenet and Sindo Garay’s ‘La Bayamesa’. They were her first informal singing lessons and the songs remain in her repertoire to this day.”
Pete Hill Baseball Card Set My collaboration with the great baseball artist Gary Cieradkowski (Infinite Baseball Cards) on a card set depicting the life and career of Negro league great Pete Hill.
Rediscovering Pete Hill How the Hall of Fame outfielder was finally identified and his family found.
rescued from the dustbin of history A cautionary tale about microfilm: two Cuban Stars box scores preserved only in bound volumes of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
sprudel park The western hemisphere's largest free-standing dome, famed mineral springs, and a combination velodrome/ballpark - the home of C. I. Taylor's West Baden Sprudels.
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