Agate Type

York Colored Monarchs

 

In 1889 the Cuban Giants and the Colored Gorhams, the two most famous professional black baseball teams in the United States, joined the otherwise all-white Middle States League. The Cuban Giants competed for the pennant, which they barely lost to Harrisburg after some very questionable decisions by the league at season’s end. The following year a white promoter named James Monroe Kreiter signed most of the Cuban Giants away for a new team representing York. Kreiter’s club was called the Colored Monarchs, and it played in the Eastern Interstate League, a new circuit that replaced the Middle States League.

The team that had won the Middle States pennant in 1889, the Harrisburg Ponies, signed two of the Cuban Giants for 1890, Frank Grant and Clarence Williams. The Monarchs, however, still had future Hall of Famer Sol White as well as George Williams, Arthur Thomas, and William Selden. Each of these four finished in the top eight in batting average, Williams and Thomas finished 1-2 in slugging percentage, and the team proceeded to run away with the pennant. The Ponies were their only viable challenger. In July, however, Harrisburg jumped the league to join the Atlantic Association. The remainder of the Interstate League, with the York Monarchs way in front, voted to disband—a move, many have suspected, that was intended to prevent a black team from winning the championship.

There is but one well-known image of the York Colored Monarchs (above): drawings of ten players plus Kreiter, which ran in newspapers at the time, and has been reproduced in various places in recent decades.

Well, as it turns out, these drawings were based on a team photograph of the Monarchs. Kevin Pope has sent me images of the photograph, which currently resides in a private collection (not Kevin’s). This is one of the most amazing images I’ve seen in a long time. It may be that it is already known to some of you out there, but when I first saw it I was dumbfounded.

(Kevin photographed the image under less-than-ideal circumstances, resulting in a reflection obscuring the face of William Selden. But he provided another image that shows Selden—see below.)

Standing, L to R: Abe Harrison, William Malone, George Williams, Sol White, Arthur Thomas
Seated, middle: J. Monroe Kreiter
Seated, front row, L to R: William Whyte, Ben Boyd, Jack Frye, William Jackson, William Selden

 

Here are details of the various players, including Selden:

 

 ABE HARRISON

Abe Harrison (1867-1932) played for the Philadelphia Orions and the Argyle Hotel team before joining the Cuban Giants, for whom he played into the late 1890s. A talented infielder and on-field comedian, he was known as the “minstrel man short stop” (Trenton Evening Times, October 13, 1897, p. 8). He batted .255 with 25 stolen bases for York in 1890. I believe this is the first photograph of Harrison I’ve ever seen.

 

WILLIAM MALONE

William H. Malone (1868-1917) first played professionally for the Philadelphia Pythians of the National Colored League in 1887 before joining the Cuban Giants in 1888 and 1889, the York Monarchs in 1890, the Big Gorhams in 1891, and the Page Fence Giants in 1895. For the Monarchs he went 13-5 with a 2.74 ERA.

 

GEORGE WILLIAMS

George L. Williams (1864-1918) played for the Washington Manhattans and Philadelphia Orions before joining the Cuban Giants in 1885. The following year he became their captain. Before the 1887 season he was approached by both the Minneapolis Millers of the Northwestern League and the Oswego Starchboxes of the International League, but turned them down to remain with the Cuban Giants through the 1889 season (“Base Ball Gossip,” Trenton Evening Times, February 1, 1887, 1). Like many of his teammates he moved to the York Monarchs in 1890, where he captained the team, won the batting title with a .386 average, and led the league with a .582 slugging percentage. He spent 1891 with the Big Gorhams, then in 1892 joined the Philadelphia police department. He left briefly in 1905 and 1906 to organize the Wilmington Giants, but quickly returned to the force, becoming its first black detective in 1909. He was “noted for his daring,” and also for his generosity: every Christmas he organized food and gift drives for poor black families. In 1918 he was shot and killed in the line of duty (“Detective Slain Battling Thugs—George L. Williams, Former Cuban Giants Baseball Player, Is Shot,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 10, 1918, 6).

 

SOL WHITE

Sol White probably needs no introduction to readers of this blog. His career as a professional ballplayer, manager, and coach, in black leagues, white minor leagues, for black independent teams, and in Cuba, has been very well-chronicled. He was the co-founder and manager of two of the most famous teams in black baseball history, the Philadelphia Giants and the New York Lincoln Giants, and wrote the first (and for many years only) book about African American professional baseball. For York in 1890 he hit .350 (third in the league), slugged .457, stole 21 bases, and finished second in the league with 74 runs scored. In 2006 he was very deservedly elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

ARTHUR THOMAS

Arthur Thomas (1864-1895) first caught for the Manhattan Base Ball Club of Washington, D. C., at the age of 15 in 1880. He joined the West End club of Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1881 and 1882, and in 1883 rejoined the Manhattans under S. K. Govern before moving with Govern to the Cuban Giants in 1885. He was described as “a good general player, a good batsman, fair base runner, and excellent throw to the bases” (“Good Game Promised,” Trenton Evening Times, May 9, 1886, p. 8). Sol White later said of Thomas:

He was 6 feet 4 inches in height; his arms almost reached his knees; he was sorta [sic] sway-backed and gangled-legged [sic]; he had a moaning voice and actually would cry when his team lost a game. His facial expressions were paradoxical; when he laughed you would have to look twice to see whether he was crying. An extremely hard worker, he ruled the roost including the captain. Thomas was a great receiver behind the bat. With his long arms he would reach out and grab wild pitches and when the ball left his hand for second base it looked like a long snake. (“Sol White Recalls,” New York Age, December 27, 1930, 6)

With the York Monarchs in 1890, Thomas hit .333 and led the league with 26 doubles and 11 triples, and finished second to his teammate George Williams in slugging percentage with .567. After leaving big-time baseball Thomas settled in Trenton, New Jersey, where he caught for and captained both black and white semipro teams. He died in Trenton of consumption (tuberculosis) at the age of 30 on August 8, 1895 (“Died,” Trenton Evening Times, August 11, 1895, 5; “Observations from the Grandstand,” Trenton Evening Times, August 9, 1896, 3).

 

J. MONROE KREITER

A member of a prominent Harrisburg family, James Monroe Kreiter, Jr. (1856-1911) was a ballplayer in his youth. He later managed Harrisburg’s Eastern League entry before founding the York Monarchs in 1890. His real job was as a printer for the Harrisburg Patriot newspaper, and he became active in the typographical union as well as local politics. He eventually secured a position as the U.S. government’s chief printer in Panama.

 

WILLIAM WHYTE

William T. Whyte (1860-1936) served as pitcher and outfielder for the St. Louis Black Stockings and Boston Resolutes before joining the Cuban Giants in 1885. He stayed with them through 1893, except for his year with the York Monarchs, where he went 11-5 with a 3.02 ERA, batted .302, and slugged .453. He retired to Trenton, New Jersey.

 

BEN BOYD

Benjamin F. Boyd (1858-?) was a veteran of the original Cuban Giants. He was born in Maryland in 1858, and started his baseball career in Washington, D. C., in 1874. “A good general player” and versatile infielder, he joined S. K. Govern’s Manhattan Base Ball Club in 1883, and played for the Cuban Giants (1885-1889), the York Monarchs (1890), and Big Gorhams (1891). He batted just .267 for the Monarchs, with a lone double as his only extra base hit.

 

JACK FRYE

John H. Frye (1864-1904) was the fifth known African American to play in organized baseball in the United States, appearing briefly for the Reading Actives of the Interstate Association late in the 1883 season. He came to the Actives from the Renovo, Pennsylvania, club, where he had caught for Patrick Friel, the team’s star pitcher. Friel moved to the Reading club, and a few weeks later Frye was brought in to catch for him (“McCafferty Struck,” Reading Eagle, September 15, 1883, 1). Of the 20 other players on the Reading roster that year, 17 would eventually play in the major leagues, including Friel, who would make it as a veteran outfielder in 1890 and 1891. Frye also played for another white team, Lewiston of the 1886 Pennsylvania State Association, before joining the Cuban Giants, where he would spend most of his career. With York in 1890 he batted .303 with a .438 slugging percentage. He retired from baseball after the 1896 season and moved to Culpeper County, Virginia, where he died on June 10, 1904 (“Bits for the Fans,” Harrisburg Telegraph, June 11, 1904, 8).

 

WILL JACKSON

A left-handed catcher, Will Jackson was in his first season as a professional. In 46 games he batted .251 and stole 18 bases. In 1894, Jackson and George Stovey formed a “left-handed battery” for the Cuban Giants. By the late 1890s, when Jackson had graduated to captaining the Giants, he was more of an outfielder. So far, given the commonness of his name, I haven’t been able to track down any specific information about him.
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WILLIAM SELDEN

Pitching for the Boston Resolutes of the National Colored League in 1887, William H. “Billy” Selden (1866-1926) won their only league game in Louisville, whereupon the team immediately went broke. Stranded, the players had to make their own way back to Boston. Selden, however, was signed by the Cuban Giants, and went on to a long career as a pitcher for black professional teams, including the Cuban Giants, Gorhams, and Cuban X-Giants. By the late 1890s he was spending the offseasons as a vaudeville performer. For York in 1890 he went 15-6, 2.63, with a league-second 100 strikeouts, and batted .330 with a .429 slugging percentage and 19 steals. Box score research shows him (so far) undefeated (11-0) against black professional teams in the 19th century. This is the first photograph I’ve seen of Selden.

 

 

 

outsider baseball

Odds are, any regular reader of this blog has already done this, but if you haven’t, you should immediately drop everything and make arrangements to obtain a copy of Outsider Baseball: The Weird World of Hardball on the Fringe, 1876-1950, by Scott Simkus. Get it for your e-reader, or order it through your favorite online retailer, or (the best option) go to a bookstore and buy it off the shelf.

Clearly, as co-founder with Scott of the (late, lamented) Outsider Baseball Bulletin, I’m biased here. But who cares: this is baseball history written for the twenty-first century.

The phrase (and the book of course) is wholly Scott’s, but I think it’s fair to say that we developed the idea of “outsider baseball” together. It’s based on a simple set of observations. First: baseball was segregated until 1947 (and in truth it was still de facto segregated for a number of years after this). Most players of color were excluded from the major leagues. Second: the farther back you go in history, the freer the minor leagues were from interference by the majors. In other words, talent was less and less concentrated, and the better the minors were in relation to the majors. Third: before television and other mass entertainments and media took hold, a market niche existed for semiprofessional (or in some cases, fully professional) baseball at a local level—the city leagues, town teams, industrial leagues, and barnstorming curiosities like the House of David. Some of these teams were very good, as good as the top minor leagues, and featured many future or former major leaguers.

Put it all together, and you have a baseball world, prior to 1950, in which the major leagues contained much, much less of the available talent than they do now. If you buy Scott’s analysis, at various points before 1950 there was enough star power outside the National and American leagues to fully staff a third major league.

This is the backdrop, the theoretical basis, of Outsider Baseball. So how does Scott follow through? With an entertaining mix of storytelling, serious research, and some (fairly light) sabermetric analysis, a lot of it based on his vast collection of box scores involving outsider baseball teams. It’s a fun read, an introduction to the world outside the majors for the kind of people who read Bill James and Rob Neyer.

Scott looks at the truth behind legends. Did Cool Papa Bell really run the bases in 12 seconds flat? How many home runs did Josh Gibson really hit in his career? How good were those bearded House of David teams anyway? Could the Pittsburgh Crawfords have competed in the National League of the 1930s? Unless I missed it, there aren’t any impassioned arguments to put anybody in the Hall of Fame—but you’re introduced to plenty of people you’ve probably never heard of, and who are worth knowing about, people like Jimmy Clinton, Buck Lai, Eddie Gerner.  

The book also digs up historical curiosities like the old “Field Day” events in which players competed in distance-throwing, base-running, and other track and field contests, and calculates how fast pre-radar gun pitchers might have been, based on how far they could throw.

It’s an engrossing treasure house of a book, one of those rare books you read and then think, “Well, that was too short.” It doesn’t exhaust its (many) subjects, not by a long shot. But if you want to know the direction in which baseball research is headed (at least the kind I do), there isn’t a better guide.

a note from cesar sostre

Cesar Sostre has written a couple of notes to me in response to my post about his father, Francisco Sostre, the 1940s pitcher:

“Thank you for writing that wonderful article on my father. I never saw my father pitch in his heyday since I was born in 1949, but I did see him pitch in the army when he was old and out of shape. He still had amazing ability and an imposing fork ball (split finger fastball in modern terminology). I inherited some of his baseball genes, having a brief baseball career in the San Francisco Giants organization in the late sixties. I was also a pitcher. The street named Francisco Sostre in Yabucoa was named after his father (my great grandfather), who was mayor of Yabucoa. Thanks again for the article.”

*******

“I was amazed at the accuracy of your article—congratulations. By the way, you were correct in surmising that my father was white. In those days, Hispanics and Blacks were all considered black. My father played with many black players in the Puerto Rican winter league such as Josh Gibson and Willard Brown. The first Puerto Rican signed to a major league contract was Hiram Bithorn and ironically, my father considered him a minor talent. Everything is timing and it seems my father was born a little too early!”

—Cesar Francisco Sostre

 

francisco sostre

On July 6, 1947, a brief Associated Press item in the Portland Oregonian reported that “Another Negro” had joined organized baseball:

(Oregonian, July 6, 1947, p. 33)

The Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star (and a number of other newspapers) printed a slightly longer version of the story, which left out the explicit identification of Sostre as “Negro” (though it still noted he had played in the Negro National League).  The Chicago Defender, one of the major African American papers, reprinted the story in its July 19 issue; the Defender’s interest tends to imply a belief that Sostre was black.  

The AP article also pointed out that he had been signed by the Los Angeles Angels, a Chicago Cubs farm club, the previous year, 1946—the same year the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first organization to sign (openly) black players in the modern era.  In fact, looking back at 1946, you’d have to wonder why Sostre joining the Cubs organization was not a bigger story. His signing was announced in February, 1946. This would have made Francisco Sostre (unless I’m missing somebody) the third black player signed by a major league organization in the modern era, after Jackie Robinson (October 1945) and John Wright (November 1945).

Sostre joined the Angels on March 1, 1946, and first appeared in an intrasquad game on March 2. His minor league career was rocky from the start. I’m not sure if he ever played in a game for the Angels—he doesn’t appear in the official statistics, so if he did pitch for them it wasn’t much.  On April 24 a ball hit him in the face during batting practice before a doubleheader with Oakland and broke his nose.  Then apparently he failed to show up for a game when he was scheduled to pitch, and the Angels immediately farmed him out to the Tacoma Tigers of the Class B Western International League.  In his first start he pitched a three-hit shutout, but cooled off after that, winding up with a 7-9 record and a 4.88 ERA.

After spending the off-season in his native Puerto Rican Winter League (where he had been pitching since 1943/44), Sostre was sent by the Cubs organization to Fayetteville of the Class B Tri-State League. Again I’m not sure if he ever pitched for the team, or if he did he pitched very little, as he doesn’t appear in the statistics.  On May 28, 1947, the Sporting News reported that he had been placed on the inactive list per his own request; he said he had “a sore arm as a result of pitching all winter.” 

The next time he appears in the news (that I’ve found) is the July 6 announcement of his signing with the Stamford Bombers of the Colonial League (another Class B circuit).  According to the AP article posted above, he had been with the New York Cubans of the Negro National League.  I haven’t found any other evidence that he played for the Cubans.

The Bombers picked that July to begin dipping heavily into the newly opened market for African American talent.  First they signed a young unknown, Johnny “Schoolboy” Haith, a 19-year-old from Albany, New York, who apparently had little or no professional experience.  After he walked nine batters in a 10 to 1 loss, he was let go; and lefthander Roy Lee, Jr., of the Durham (N.C.) Eagles was signed.  In August they brought in Black Yankees right hander Al Preston and three former Atlanta Black Crackers: pitchers Freddie Shepard (or Shepherd) and Andrés Pulliza, and infielder Carlos Santiago.  The last two were black Puerto Ricans.

The team’s catcher that year, Jim McGreal, would later pen an article for the SABR Baseball Research Journal about the 1947 Stamford Bombers. Interestingly, he counted Haith, Lee, Preston, Shepherd, Pulliza, and Santiago as the Bombers’ six black players. Here’s the important thing: he mentions Sostre, but doesn’t seem to have regarded him as black.

Going back to 1946, neither did anyone else.  When he was first signed by the Angels, the Los Angeles Times (February 3, 1946, A5) described him only as “a Puerto Rican who was taken on, sight unseen, on the recommendation of Hi Bithorn, Cub twirler.” Checking census records from Puerto Rico, Sostre and his family are always listed as “blanco,” or white. If it’s true that he played (however briefly) for the New York Cubans in 1947, that would be interesting, but hardly proof of racial identity. Sure, in the 1940s it would have been unusual for a white player to show up with the Cubans, but in the 1920s several white Latin American (Cuban) players appeared in both the Negro leagues and organized baseball.

So in the end, Sostre wasn’t a forgotten pioneer (except in the sense of being one of the earliest Puerto Ricans in organized baseball); the 1947 reports that he was black were almost certainly in error, a conclusion wrongly drawn from his association with the Negro National League.

The SABR Minor League Database, available at Baseball-Reference.com, has almost no biographical information on Sostre, only a putative birth year of 1922.  This profile at the Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, Sports Hall of Fame fills in quite a few details, many of which I’ve been able to confirm in census and Social Security records.  Francisco Sostre Morales was born in Yabucoa on March 9, 1918, and he died there on December 15, 1984.  Yabucoa also boasts a Calle Francisco Sostre, though I can’t be certain it’s actually named after him (he wasn’t the only Francisco Sostre ever to live there).

(Thanks to Dwayne Isgrig for reminding me about Sostre recently.)

pittsburgh crawfords & homestead grays vs. minor leaguers

Scott Simkus has posted another great piece of research on the record of Negro league teams versus lower-lower minor league teams.  This one examines the performances of the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords against the Middle Atlantic League and Pennsylvania State Association, both Class C, from 1927 to 1937.

I think you can’t overestimate the importance of this and earlier studies by Scott, especially this one, which shows the relative success of major league and Negro league teams against teams of various minor league levels (in addition to semipro clubs).  Such games are commonly dismissed as “meaningless” exhibitions, yet when you put together large numbers of them, unmistakable patterns begin to emerge.  This argues for the ultimate usefulness of all games in studying Negro league and semipro players and relating them to their counterparts in organized baseball.

We haven’t come close to collecting and processing the full range of available data still hidden in hundreds of pre-war newspapers.  But Scott’s work points the way and shows that the labor will definitely one day be worth it.

the henriquez brothers

Louis Castro was not the only early twentieth-century baseball figure with Colombian origins.  The Long Branch Cubans, who played in minor leagues and independently from 1913 to 1916, were owned by a New York physician named Carlos Louis Henriquez, and managed by his brother, Richard Anthony Henriquez (pictured right), also the team’s first baseman in 1913 and 1914.  

Aside from Long Branch, the Cubans also based themselves at various times in Newark, Jersey City, Poughkeepsie, Harlem, and Newton, New Jersey.  Especially when they were in Long Branch, a seaside resort town, they played a large number of exhibitions against major league teams, according to David Skinner compiling a record of 10-24 in these games.  Most significantly, they helped funnel a number of players, including Adolfo Luque and Mike González, from the Cuban League to U.S. organized baseball.

Although the Henriquez brothers were usually assumed to be Cuban themselves, a number of records show a Colombian connection.  In June 1886, about ten months after “Master Louis Castro” and his father Néstor arrived in New York, another family arrived on board the S.S. Niagara from Colombia (via Mexico and Cuba):

The family remained in the United States, appearing in the 1900 census, where the father, Louis N. Henriquez, and children are all born in the “U.S. of Columbia”; the children’s mother, who had passed away by now (Louis is widowed) is shown as born in Cuba.

In the 1910 census the brothers, both married now, are living together on W. 88th Street, the same address later given on some passenger lists by Long Branch Cubans players.  Both give Colombia as their birthplace.

They filled out draft cards in 1918, only two years removed from the demise of the Long Branch Cubans.  Unfortunately their cards did not ask for birth place.  Both checked the space under “Citizen by Father’s Naturalization before Registrant’s Majority,” although Richard seems to have also written, below that, that he is a citizen of Colombia.

Both appeared in the 1920 census, Carlos as “Dr. Carl Henriquez,” listed for the first time as born in Cuba (his parents in South America).  Richard’s census entry, on the other hand, is consistent with earlier records, showing born in South America, his father in South America and mother in Cuba).  Both of Richard’s sons, one ten years old, the other “6 2/12” (to my eyes; Ancestry.com has recorded his age as 2 9/12), are listed as born in New Jersey.

The last sign of either brother I’ve found so far is Carlos in the 1930 census, living with in Yonkers, listing his employment as “none,” and supposedly born in New York.  The names of his wife (“Jeannette”), son (“Carlo” or “Carlos”) and his mother-in-law, Cora Long, establish this as Carlos Henriquez. His name, however, is oddly given as “Henry Carlos Henriquez,” a strong indication that the information here is probably not entirely trustworthy.

The image of Richard Henriquez above is courtesy of David Skinner, but don’t blame him for the poor quality; I lifted it from a photocopied handout for his presentation on the L.B. Cubans.

louis castro

You have probably heard of Louis Castro, the Philadelphia Athletics’ second baseman and graduate of Manhattan College who briefly replaced Nap Lajoie in 1902 when Lajoie was moved to Cleveland as part of the war with the National League.  Recently a debate has raged about whether Castro was born in Colombia (which would make him the first native of a Latin American country to appear in the major leagues since Esteban Bellán in 1873) or in New York City.  

Castro, it turns out, led an interesting life quite apart from the question of his place of birth.  Personable and eloquent, he eventually became known as something of a baseball comedian. He was nicknamed at first “Judge” (which mutated into “Jud” at some point); as a minor leaguer he was known as “Count Castro.”  At a postseason banquet in 1902, the Athletics players were each presented with a special watch fob in commemoration of the team’s American League pennant.  Despite having been a mediocre rookie who had only played parts of the year, Castro was chosen to give “a short speech of acceptance” on behalf of the players.  He also “sang a Spanish song,” and “on behalf of his fellow-players, crowned [Rube] Waddell with flowers from the table as ‘king of pitchers’, an honor which Waddell accepted blushingly but gracefully” (Sporting Life, October 11, 1902).

After 1902 Castro continued to play in the minors for a number of years.  In 1907 he took a job as an undertaker in Atlanta, and apparently continued to do off-season mortuary work over the next few years while still playing ball in the summer.  He became a boxing promoter in the 1910s and in 1921 headed a Rhode Island group that wanted to buy Jersey City’s International League club and move it to Providence.  In the 1930 census, at the age of 52, he’s listed as a “Ball Player”; this most likely points to work as a semi-pro manager or promoter, though I haven’t been able to substantiate that.

During his career he was always understood to have been born in Colombia (or sometimes Venezuela); most famously, he was frequently said to be the nephew or cousin (or even son) of Cipriano Castro, the president of Venezuela at the time, who had extensive familial and business connections to Colombia. Baseball reference books accepted his Colombian birth until 2001, when Dick Beverage found Castro’s file at the Association of Professional Ball Players of America, dating from the late 1930s, in which Louis Castro gives his birthplace as New York City.  Combined with his 1941 death certificate and a 1930 census entry, this led SABR’s Biographical Committee to decide he had been born in New York.  For some, the change removed Castro’s status as a pioneering Latin player, although Castro was undoubtedly perceived and treated as Latino during his career, regardless of the actual facts of his birth.

Anyway, the consensus, led by the work of Nick Martinez, Leo Landino, Gilberto Garcia (“Louis ‘Count’ Castro: The Story of a Forgotten Latino Major Leaguer,” Nine 16:2 [2008], pp. 35-51), Adrian Burgos (Playing America’s Game, pp. 85-86), and an archivist from Manhattan College whose name I unfortunately don’t have at the moment, seems to have swung back in the direction of a Colombian birth for Castro.  This in my opinion certainly fits the evidence best.  A quick summary:

--A passenger list for the ship Colón, arriving in New York from Aspinwall, Colombia (now Colón, Panama), on October 14, 1885, which includes Louis Castro, 8, citizen of the “United States of Colombia,” traveling with his father N. Castro, 50, a banker (Leo Landino posted the passenger list, originally found by Nick Martinez);

--Manhattan College records from the 1890s showing Castro’s father’s address as Medellín, Colombia, though Garcia notes that some of these records also indicate that Castro was born in Venezuela;

--A biographical sketch in Sporting Life (October 4, 1902, p. 5) that says Castro “was born in the United States of Colombia, in 1877”;

--Numerous press reports, from ca. 1903 to as late as 1914, that Castro was the nephew, cousin, or son of Venezuelan president Cipriano Castro, which sometimes also state that Castro was himself Venezuelan;

(Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1904, p. B4)

--The 1910 U.S. census, showing Louis M. Castro, a 33-year-old undertaker living in Atlanta, born (like his parents) in “Medellin U.S. Col.,” which is crossed out with “So. America Spanish” written above it.

--A passenger list for the ship Vandyck, arriving in New York from Rio de Janeiro on April 11, 1922, showing a Louis Castro, 45, married, born November 25, 1876, in New York City.

--The 1930 U.S. census, which shows Louis Castro, 51, “Ball Player, Base Ball Team,” born in New York and living in Queens.

--Castro’s file, Association of Professional Ball Players of America, late 1930s, showing him born in New York.

--His 1941 death certificate, also showing Castro born in New York.

Note that from 1886 through 1914 or so Castro was said in every press notice or official record to be from Colombia (or in some instances Venezuela).  According to his entry in the 1910 census he was an alien, not a citizen of the United States. 

However, from 1922 until his death the records we have all show him born in New York.  It could be that Castro at some point discovered the truth about his origins.  The above chronology would suggest that this epiphany, if it occurred, must have taken place sometime in the late 1910s or early 1920s.

But I have found a document, one I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere, that might better explain why Castro might have switched his birthplace from Medellín to New York later in his life.  It’s his passport application, dated January 30, 1922.  It shows Louis Castro, born in New York on November 25, 1876 (providing affidavits by two people to this effect), and claiming never to have been outside the United States.  Castro also says that his father, Nestor Castro, deceased, was born in New York.

(click to enlarge)

Castro gives his employment as “salesman,” gives us the name of the ship (the Van Dyck) upon whose passenger list he later appears (see above), and lists the countries he plans to visit: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Jamaica.  He lists the “object” of his visit as “travel,” so it’s unclear whether or not this is a business trip of some sort.  For what it’s worth, there doesn’t seem to be a passport application on file for his wife, Margaret, which might tend to indicate the trip was for business.

If Castro indeed came to the United States as an eight-year-old youngster, and if his father returned to Colombia (as it seems the Manhattan College records suggest), it’s possible Louis was never naturalized.  If he didn’t leave the United States from 1886 to 1922, the issue of his birth and citizenship might never have come up.  But when he did leave, it became necessary to obtain travel documents.  He applied for a U.S. passport on January 30, 1922, and gave the date of his departure as February 4, so it was either a relatively unexpected trip, or he had left everything until the last minute.  Either way, he needed the passport quickly.

Even without that complication, it might have been quite difficult to obtain documents from Colombia after having been absent for 35 years.  Castro’s father was dead, and perhaps he had fallen out of touch with his family there.  In any event, it was doubtless much easier to find a couple of friends to swear to his birth in the United States than to do whatever he would have had to do to get a Colombian passport.  What I want to suggest is that Louis Castro may have simply decided to claim he was born in the United States as a bureaucratic expediency.  He then adopted that fiction for all official purposes for the rest of his life.

Another crucial source needs to be examined.  There is a World War I draft card for “Lou Castro,” born November 25, 1877, and living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately, the form he used did not ask for birth place, and worse, the card’s image is missing from Ancestry.com’s digitization (and presumably the original microfilm), so we can’t check any other information that might be on it, such as his occupation, employer, nearest relative, and, most crucially, his citizenship status (alien, naturalized U.S. citizen, or native-born citizen).  If anyone wants to examine the actual, physical card in whichever National Archives branch has it, it is supposed to be in Roll 1907607, Draft Board 7, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

herrara, herrera

By the way: this guy (“Ramon Herrara”) is Ramón Herrera.  Herrera actually started the 1922 season on the Bridgeport Americans, also of the Eastern League, alongside Cuban Hall of Famer Joseíto Rodríguez, though it evidently didn’t show up in the guides.  He must have played very little with Bridgeport (fewer than ten games) before moving to Springfield.

Herrera and Claudio Manela thus joined the Eastern League from the Negro National League at the same time, though Manela didn’t stick.  Both were nicknamed “Mike,” for whatever reason.  (At least Mike González was actually named Miguel.)

Image of Herrera comes via Ryan Christoff’s Cuban Baseball Cards site.

minor league statistics!

Baseball-Reference.com has greatly expanded its minor league section, now with data from the SABR Minor Leagues Database.  Obviously the whole project of compiling minor league statistics is a work in progress, and the number of gaps remaining to be filled in is astronomical, but it’s  still cool to see bb-ref-style pages for the likes of Luis Padrón (though his name is given as “Louis Padron”), Claudio Manela, and Francisco Muñoz.

By the way, this “Padrone,” who played for Peoria in 1910 and Mansfield, Ohio, in 1911, is also Luis Padrón.

historical minor league stats

If you haven’t seen it, here is SABR’s Minor Leagues Database—still very much a work in progress, of course, but fascinating and very useful nevertheless.