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negro leagues DB update: 1920-21 cuban league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

The latest addition to the Seamheads Negro Leagues DB covers the 1920/21 winter league season in Cuba. Heading the bill that off-season was none other than the biggest name in baseball at the time, one George Herman Ruth, fronting the New York Giants.

The Babe was a little late, showing up only for the last half of the Giants' schedule against Habana and Almendares (see his passport application here). Most famously, this series saw Ruth get upstaged by Cuban slugger Cristóbal Torriente, who smashed three home runs in one game (albeit these were off George Kelly, not normally a pitcher) while Ruth went hitless. Torriente also added a double off Ruth himself, driving in six runs as Almendares beat the Giants 11 to 4. It wasn't until Ruth's seventh game that he finally provided the Cuban fans with a home run. The Babe ended up hitting well for the series anyway (.345/.525/.828), and the Giants won 9, lost 4, and tied 4, despite only outscoring their opponents 69 to 62.

The Giants left Havana in mid-November, and their place was taken by the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants of the Negro leagues. The team's trip was organized by its secretary, Edward B. Lamar, for many years a well-known promoter in black baseball circles and founder of the Cuban X-Giants. Lamar was actually the instigator of the first trips to Cuba by black American teams in the 20th century, sending his X-Giants to Havana several times in the 1900s. For this trip the Bacharachs brought the core of their regular team, captain and ace pitcher Dick Redding, shortstop Dick Lundy, pitcher Red Ryan, and catcher Julio Rojo, and added superstar Oscar Charleston and infielder Morten "Specs" Clark from the Indianapolis ABCs, slugger Charlie Blackwell and infielder Joe Hewitt from the St. Louis Giants, and a trio of stars from the Hilldale Club, catcher Louis Santop, spitballer Phil Cockrell, and fancy-fielding first baseman Toussaint Allen. Oliver Marcell, the Bacharachs' star third baseman, also applied for a passport, but for some reason did not make the trip.

Guided by Cuban Stars manager Tinti Molina, the Bacharachs played a (pretty unsuccessful) six-game series with Habana and Almendares, then it was decided to enter them as the third club in the regular Cuban League season.  The league used a split-season format. On December 26 Almendares player-manager Dolf Luque argued with the umpire during a game with Habana and pulled his team off the field, and then Almendares refused to show up for a game the next day against the Bacharachs. Luque was suspended and Almendares forfeited both games, but the Blues, led by Cheo Hernández (4-1, 1.62), shortstop Pelayo Chacón (.321/.418/.410), and left fielder Merito Acosta (.281/.410/.406), managed to overcome these problems to win the first half. In addition to his three-homer game against the Giants, center fielder Torriente (.306/.398/.482) set a Cuban League record by legging out three triples in one game on January 12.

The Bacharachs couldn't really get untracked, and lagged well behind in last place, despite the efforts of Charleston (.471/.514/.500), Blackwell (.367/.472/.433), Clark (.350), and Santop  (.343). They finished the first half with a 5-11 record (including the forfeit win over Almendares). After losing the opening game of the second half, the Bacharachs dropped out of the league. Inspired by second baseman Bienvenido "Hooks" Jiménez (.310/.412/.425), infielder/outfielder Manuel Cueto (.283/.383/.359), and pitchers Oscar Tuero (5-3, 1.81) and José Acosta (5-2, 1.94), Habana won six out of the eight remaining games to take the second half title and set up a best-of-three championship series.

In the playoffs, the Reds spotted Almendares one win (a three-hit shutout by Luque), then won the last two to take the pennant.

1920 passport photos for Dick Lundy, Babe Ruth, and Oscar Charleston.

negro leagues DB update: 1923-24 cuban league

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

Possibly for the first time anywhere (and certainly for the first time in recent history) the Seamheads DB is presenting (nearly) complete statistics for both the 1923/24 Cuban League season as well as the 1924 Gran Premio that followed it. (We're missing only a single box score.)

The 1923/24 Santa Clara club is the most legendary team in Cuban history, the island's equivalent of the 1927 Yankees. Tinti Molina had taken the 1922/23 Santa Clara team, which might have been best in the league but had walked out after a mid-season dispute over a disallowed win, and added Dobie Moore, Reuben Curry, and Heavy Johnson of the NNL champion Kansas City Monarchs. The '23/'24 Leopardos featured its own Murderers' Row consisting of Moore, Oscar Charleston, Alejandro Oms, and Oliver Marcell, along with guest appearances by Johnson (for the first part of the season) and Esteban Montalvo (the team's fourth outfielder). Their pitching was solid, led by the Negro league trio of Curry, Dave Brown, and Bill Holland, along with Pedro Dibut (who would appear for the Cincinnati Reds in 1924). By mid-January the Leopardos were 36-11 and 11 ½ games ahead of second-place Habana, and the league called it quits.

The last-place Marianao Elefantes disbanded and the team's players were redistributed among the other three teams, and started a new competition, the Grand Winter Championship (Gran Premio Invernal), to be played in a split-season format, with the winners of the two halves facing off in a championship series at the end. Santa Clara won the first half. Not until the second half of this second season did the Leopardos falter, with Almendares taking the second-half title of the Gran Premio. By this time, however, it was March, and all three teams were starting to lose players to spring training in the U.S.---so the playoff between Almendares and Santa Clara was cancelled. When the won/lost records for the two halves of the Gran Premio were added up, Santa Clara came out on top again---barely.

Also, with the help of historian Todd Peterson, we've added a number of new games and teams for the years 1903 to 1913. In coming weeks we'll be adding the 1935 and 1936 Negro National League, the East-West All-Star Games, the Mexican League, the 1926 Eastern Colored League, and more Cuban League seasons.

The 1923/24 Santa Clara Leopardos.

negro leagues DB update: 1927-28 cuban league

Imagine a last-place team with no fewer than three future Hall of Famers on its roster, all in their prime.  That's the story of the Cuba Baseball Club of the 1927/28 Cuban Winter League, which we've added to the DB.  Despite the efforts of Oscar Charleston (.350/.481/.567, a league-leading 32 walks in 34 games), Willie Foster (6-8, 3.17), and Judy Johnson (.333/.375/.439), the Cuba team finished deep in the cellar with a 12-21-1 record.

Almendares (17-15-1) put up more of a fight. Player-manager Adolfo Luque (6-4, a league-best 2.64 ERA) led an otherwise ordinary staff, but los Azules were able to send some decent hitters to the plate, including Dick Lundy (.346/.365/.496), Oliver Marcell (.339/.398/.424), and Chaney White (.367/.398/.422), all from the two-time Eastern Colored League champion Bacharach Giants.

Still, they couldn't quite match the champion Habana Leones (20-13), led by MVP Martín Dihigo, who pitched (4-2, 3.10) and played outfield and first base while hitting .389/.453/.588 with a league-leading 14 doubles.   Left fielder Jud Wilson (.431/.535/.724) was far and away the league's best hitter.  And Dihigo, along with Oscar Levis (7-2, 3.14) and Cliff Bell (6-2, 3.14), gave los Rojos a solid trio of pitchers.

In the works for the DB: the 1935 & 1936 Negro leagues,  the 1926 Eastern Colored League, the 1923/24 Cuban League, the Mexican League, the East-West All-Star Games, and more.

An unlucky trio: Willie Foster, Oscar Charleston, and Judy Johnson, the first two in their Cuba Baseball Club uniforms.

(Cross-posted at Seamheads.com)

santa clara’s 1922-23 record

As I said yesterday, in the Seamheads DB we’ve got the 1922-23 Santa Clara team in the Cuban League going 15-12-1 in actually played games, as opposed to 14-13, as other sources have it.  Here’s a more detailed explanation.

As of January 12, 1923, Santa Clara stood in second place with a 14-12 record, behind Almendares at 14-11, with Marianao trailing at 11-12.   The “G” (“ganados”) column down gives wins, the “P” (“perdidos”) row across gives you losses.

(El Mundo, January 12, 1923, p. 9)

The following day, Marianao protested the first game of a doubleheader they had played in Santa Clara the previous Sunday, on the grounds that it hadn’t originally been scheduled as a doubleheader.  The teams had split the two games, Santa Clara taking the morning game, Marianao winning in the afternoon. 

The league voted to throw out the morning game, taking a win from Santa Clara and a loss from Marianao.  This reduced Santa Clara’s record to 13-12, and improved Marianao’s to 11-11.  That day (January 13) Marianao beat Almendares and Santa Clara beat Habana, making Marianao 12-11, and returning Santa Clara to 14-12, tied for first with Almendares. But in games actually played to this point, Santa Clara was 15-12 and Marianao 12-12.

(El Mundo, January 14, 1923, p. 14)

 

On January 14, Santa Clara announced they were leaving the league.  That day Marianao again beat Almendares, and Santa Clara refused to play against Habana, thus forfeiting that game.  This made Marianao 13-11, Almendares 14-13, and Santa Clara 14-13, the 13 losses already including one forfeit.

(El Mundo, January 15, 1923, p. 11)

 

When it became clear that Santa Clara’s decision was permanent, the league then forfeited their entire remaining schedule, giving wins to the other three teams, and saddling Santa Clara with a horrendous 14-40 official record.

(El Mundo, January 18, 1923, p. 10)

negro leagues DB update: 1922-23 cuban league

We're making a small but important addition to the DB today—the 1922/23 Cuban winter league, plus a few additional games for 1916, 1919, and 1922.

After a few seasons of turbulence in the Cuban game, the 1922/23 season marked a new beginning.  The league added two new teams, Santa Clara and Marianao, to the Habana-Almendares duopoly.  Santa Clara was run by Tinti Molina, who put together the most famous outfield in Cuban baseball history: Alejandro Oms (.411) in left, Oscar Charleston (.418) in center, and Pablo Mesa (.286) in right.  Molina also added lefty Dave Brown (5-4, 2.47) and a few other stateside stars, and the Leopardos sprinted to the league lead---but after a victory over Marianao was thrown out by league authorities, Santa Clara angrily withdrew.  They would be vindicated the following winter, when the 1923-24 Santa Clara Leopardos emerged as the most legendary team in Cuban history, the island's equivalent of the 1927 Yankees.

Of the three remaining teams, Almendares could boast of outfielders  Bernardo Baró (.403/.452/.544) and Valentín Dreke (.324), manager-shortstop Joseíto Rodríguez (.316), and minor league southpaw Eddie LePard (7-5, 2.17), but Habana would probably have been considered the favorite.  Los Leones featured both the best everyday player in Cuban baseball at the time, Cristóbal Torriente (.344/.435/.515) and the best Cuban pitcher (and perhaps the best pitcher in baseball, period), Dolf Luque.  In 1923, Luque would go 27-8 with a 1.93 ERA for the Cincinnati Reds.  In the 1922/23 Cuban League, he went 11-7, 1.53.

Yet both of these traditional powers fell short in the end.  It was the brand new Marianao club, led by player-manager Merito Acosta, that claimed a surprise championship.  Acosta himself contributed a .282 average and a league-leading 32 walks.  Right-hander Lucas Boada was acclaimed as "el nuevo diamante negro" ("the new black diamond"; that is, the new José Méndez) as he tied Luque with 11 victories.  Veterans José María Fernández  (.304), Manuel Cueto (.288), and Pelayo Chacón (.307) also played important roles in what was a true team effort for Marianao.

The Marianao club, champions of the 1922-23 Cuban League.

A couple of important notes:

1) We are still missing box scores for six games, all of them Santa Clara home games.  Since the Leopardos won four of those six games, the Santa Clara players are probably slightly disadvantaged in the stats we're able to present.

2) You may notice that other sources have Santa Clara going 14-13, rather than 15-12, as we've got it here.  We've checked this very carefully, and 15-12 is the correct W/L record for games actually played.  I'll write this up in more detail in the next couple of days.

In the works for the DB: 1925 & 1934 Negro leagues, East-West All-Star Games, Mexican League 1937-1954, Cuban League 1918-19, 1919-20, 1920-21, and 1927-28, and much more.

(Crossposted at Seamheads.com)

negro league statistics: online at last

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apologies for my absence the past few weeks, but big things have been brewing.  The Baseball Gauge at Mike Lynch’s great Seamheads.com website has released my stats for the Negro leagues, 1916 to 1922, and the Cuban League, 1904/05 through 1912/13, along with the basic biographical information I’ve compiled for the players.  It’s the first attempt at an online Negro league statistical encyclopedia.

This was really Kevin (KJOK) Johnson’s idea.  He approached Scott Simkus and me at the end of July about it—and here we are, just a few weeks later, and it’s done!  The Baseball Gauge is Dan Hirsch’s brainchild, and he and Kevin have done an amazing job getting all this material organized and presented. 

So check it out.  It’s got not only complete statistics (batting, pitching, and fielding), but also advanced metrics (win shares, WAR, etc.).  One thing Dan and Kevin are working on, but haven’t quite finished, are park adjustments for the advanced stats, as well as adjustments for wildly uneven schedules and other fun characteristics of blackball circa 1920.  I suspect this will have a pretty major impact, so I’m eager to see what the results are.

Coming fairly soon will be statistics for the American Series in Cuba, the exhibition series that featured both Negro league and major league teams, from about 1904 through 1915.  We’ll also have a substantial number of additional Negro league seasons in the near future, beginning with 1908 through 1915.  The database will grow very quickly, so keep checking back.

NOTE: This post will stay at the top for a while -- check below for new posts.

1909/10 cuban league

Here are statistics for the 1909/10 Cuban League season (which was actually played from February 6 through April 3, 1910):

[NOTE: Stats for the 1909/10 Cuban League have been deleted, but will reappear in a different venue in the near future.  Stay tuned!]

These are complete, and based as always on box scores from La Lucha and Diario de la Marina.  You’ll notice a few minor differences between the box scores and the official statistics as recorded in Jorge Figueredo’s Cuban Baseball; for instance, the box scores show Julián Castillo with a batting record of 20 for 53 (.377) in 13 games , but Figueredo has him at 20 for 49 (.408) in 12.  It’s unclear exactly why this is; at first it seems that Figueredo’s statistics don’t count one game, but in fact there wasn’t a game in which Castillo went 0 for 4 (he hit in 12 of his 13 games, the one hitless game being an 0 for 2 performance).  He wins the batting title either way.

The season’s start was delayed because Almendares, which had narrowly lost the 1908/09 pennant to an Habana club featuring several African-Americans, demanded that the league ban foreign players.  Habana objected, and the start of the season was delayed indefinitely.  

John Henry Lloyd, Pete Hill, and Bruce Petway, who toiled for Habana in the American Series that fall against the Detroit Tigers and a major league all-star team, stayed in Cuba while the dispute dragged on.  Finally by early January the Americans gave up and left.  Here is some commentary from La Lucha (January 3, 1910):

(The next-to-last paragraph is rather interesting—I have no idea which Cuban player they’re talking about.)

Almendares finally lifted its demands and the league got underway in early February.  By then it was too late to recall Lloyd and company, but Habana made an effort to secure American players, getting Jesse Bragg and William Mathew Land, longtime journeymen on various East Coast black teams in the late 1900s and 1910s.  Land, as it happens, appears in the 1910 census (enumerated in April) rooming in Newark, New Jersey, with Clarence Williams, the old Cuban Giants’ catcher who had traveled to Cuba with a number of black teams in the 1900s.

Unfortunately it didn’t go well for Land and Bragg.  They first appeared in a February 21 game against Almendares.    La Lucha commented that

Havana sprung two foreign players on the public yesterday, but their work lacked much of being of that grade displayed by the much mourned Lloyd, Johnson, Hill and Petway.  In fact, there are local players who could have made so much better showing, that it is a problem now what will be the result.  The two new men had few opportunities, but their batting strength has not been displayed. (February 22, 1910)

That would be Bragg’s first and last game in the Cuban League.  Land played once more, on February 24 against Fe.  Together they went 0 for 12.  By March 1, they were bound for the U.S. again aboard the S.S. Mexico.  Almendares went on to win the truncated season with a 13-3-1 record.

1908/09 cuban league

Here are statistics for the 1908/09 Cuban League.  I was able to find box scores for 63 of 73 known games (86 percent); of the missing ten, nine were the games played in Matanzas, and one was a 2-0 Almendares victory over Habana, José Méndez tossing the shutout.

[NOTE: Stats for the 1908/09 Cuban League have been deleted, but will reappear in a different venue in the near future.  Stay tuned!]

This was the second straight year in which the league experimented with a fourth club from Matanzas.  Rafael Conte, the Matanzas manager, tried to compete by importing several Negro Leaguers and, for the first time in Cuban League history, major league players: the Phillies’ George McQuillan (who had pitched for Habana in 1906/07, before he debuted in the majors), the Athletics’ Biff Schlitzer, and the Cardinals’ infielder Chappy Charles.  Schlitzer had introduced the spitball to Cuba on a previous visit with the “All-Leaguers,” a mixed team of major and minor leaguers, in the fall of 1907; his nickname in Cuba was “El Salivito.”  Matanzas also added first baseman Mert Whitney of the International League’s Toronto Maple Leafs, and a couple of white minor leaguers, “W. Chech” (or Schick) and “A. Cuthbert,” whom I haven’t been able to identify. 

As described here, the Matanzas experiment did not work out; McQuillan and Schlitzer clashed with Conte over pay and workload issues, and left the island in a huff.  “Los melancólicos,” as La Lucha called the Matanzas club (January 11, 1909), withdrew from the league soon after.  The Cuban League would remain a three-club, Havana-only circuit until the 1922/23 season.

The season ended in a dispute over the championship, though in truth there was not actually much of a controversy.  Here’s what the English page of La Lucha had to say (April 20, 1909):

The tie game between Habana and Almendares (4 to 4) was played way back on December 28.  The final standings as I have them are:

Habana 28-13-1
Almendares 28-14-1
Fe 12-30-0
Matanzas 4-15-0

Which matches what La Lucha says; a victory in a replay for Almendares would make them 29-14, leaving Habana at 28-14. 

Jorge Figueredo, by the way, has slightly different final standings, which appear to include an extra victory for Habana over Fe:

Habana 29-13
Almendares 28-14
Fe 12-31
Matanzas 4-15

I scoured the newspapers and could not find this extra game.  However, these standings don’t match the description of the state of affairs given above by La Lucha, that another win by Almendares over Habana would hand them the pennant, as that eventuality would leave the two teams tied at 29-14.  So at this point the standings I constructed seem to fit the evidence a little better.

UPDATE 8:45 p.m.  No big deal, but I just realized that there are a few small issues with the stats file: I forgot to include a listing of positions played on the batting tab, and mistakenly left pinch-hitting appearances in the fielding tab (the position “0” denotes pinch-hitter).  A new file will be up sometime this weekend.

UPDATE 11/3/2007 OK, I put up a new file, with cosmetic issues fixed (fielding games on batting tab, pinch-hitting removed from fielding tab).  I also realized that I had Esteban Santa Cruz of Matanzas listed twice; now his stats are combined.  Slightly more importantly, I’ve decided that the “Buckner” who caught for Habana on March 8 was more probably James “Pete” Booker (who appears in one other box score and also on a passenger manifest leaving Cuba in early Cuba along with other Negro Leaguers) than the Harry Buckner who pitched for Fe.

UPDATE 11/4/2007 The file is updated one last time, with “Buckner” and “Booker” combined in Habana catching stats, and a note about batters’ strikeouts (incomplete for individuals).

1908 cuban summer league

Here are statistics for the 1908 Premio de Verano, which was played along similar lines to the summer championships of 1904, 1905, and 1906: three teams, each representing one of the three winter league clubs (Azul = Almendares, Carmelita = Fe, Rojo = Habana), each playing a few regulars mixed in with marginal players and rookies.  Several promising young players made their first professional appearances here: Pastor Pareda, Pelayo Chacón, Eusebio González, and Octavio González.

Download 1908_cuban_summer_league_1.0.xls

I’ve found box scores for 14 of 16 known games; again, since no standings were published, it’s hard to know for sure whether I have all the games.  Azul had the best record in known games (6-3-1), just edging Carmelita (7-4-0).

Interest was definitely waning in the summer league by this time, largely because most of the best Cuban players were now spending their summers in the United States.  The previous year, 1907, was an exception to this trend, as no All-Cubans team toured the U.S.*, resulting in summer competitions that approached the winter league in quality.  But 1908 was nothing like that.  And the 1909 summer league would become an amateur circuit, with only a few young prospects mixed in.

UPDATE 10/20/2007 *-Not true: there was a Cuban team touring the U.S. in 1907, though the team, or at least a number of its players—Rafael Almeida, Luis González, Francisco Morán, and Inocencio Pérez —returned in time to participate extensively in the summer series, which were mostly held from mid-August to early October.  Plus Luis Padrón returned from Jacksonville in mid-September, in time to play in two of the series; and a larger number of the good players than usual never left.

1907 cuban summer league

Here are statistics for the 1907 Premio de Verano (Cuban Summer League), played from July through early October. 

Download 1907_cuban_summer_league.xls

This version of the summer competition featured more stars than usual, including some of the top pitchers (notably Luis González and Andrés Ortega, both regulars during the previous winter season, plus Carlos Royer).  It was, however, not as tightly organized as usual, consisting of three separate competitions.  First, a three-team league featuring “Almendarista,” “Habanista,” and Columbia (a new team organized by Alberto Azoy) ended prematurely when Columbia fell apart.  Habanista ended with the best record (3-1). 

Azoy then reorganized the old San Francisco club and played a twelve-game series with Almendarista, the two teams splitting 6 to 6.  This was followed by an Azul/Rojo series, Azul winning five games to two, with one tie.

The three series totaled 25 games; I have been able to find box scores for 24 (the exception being an 11-8 win by Rojo over Azul on October 4).  After the standings tab, the next three tabs give batting, fielding, and pitching totals for each individual player (their totals for all three series); then three more tabs divide up the stats by series and team, if you want that kind of detail.

If you haven’t seen them, I’ve also compiled statistics for the 1904, 1905, and 1906 Cuban summer championships.

UPDATE 11:20 p.m.  One small correction: Simón Valdés played 20 games at second base and none at third base.