Agate Type

Dobie Moore: One Last Word

Dobie Moore with the 25th Infantry Wreckers in 1916

Long-time readers of this blog will remember my nearly decade-long effort at chronicling the search for Walter “Dobie” Moore, the great Kansas City Monarchs shortstop who was shot in 1926 and subsequently dropped out of sight. When I last wrote about this in 2016, we had established the case, pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt, that Dobie Moore the ballplayer and Walter Moore of Detroit, who died on August 20, 1947, were the same person.

But of course it is always helpful to have confirmation. Up to the plate steps Karl Jensen, who also does research for the Medal of Honor Historical Society of the United States, locating the grave sites of Medal of Honor recipients. First, Karl found the 1919 World War I service card for Walter Moore of Atlanta, who enlisted at Georgia’s Fort Oglethorpe on May 11, 1915, at the age of 22 and two months. He then served in Company A of the 25th Infantry until June, 1919, and was discharged “for immediate re-enlistment”—which of course fits Dobie Moore’s career in the Army.

(Moore evidently did re-enlist immediately, as in January 1920 he appears in the U.S. census with the 25th Infantry at Camp Stephen D. Little in Arizona. I really don’t know much about military records, so I am curious about whether there is another record somewhere that shows this last period of service. He apparently re-upped for an additional year, as he and Bullet Rogan first played for the Kansas City Monarchs in early July, 1920.)

Then Karl found Moore’s Veterans Administration Master Index Card. The dates, unit, and serial number—335,099—all match. It gives a birth date of February 8, 1893—Moore, like Rogan, evidently lied about his age when he enlisted—and a clerk has penciled in his date of death: August 20, 1947, the date Walter Moore died in Detroit.

I was already quite sure we had the right person, but thanks to Karl, this should lay to rest any lingering doubts.

If you want to go back and follow the process from the beginning, here are the relevant links:

• Why all published birth and death information for Dobie Moore is wrong (October 20, 2007)
• Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card found (October 23, 2007)
• Image of Walter Moore’s WW2 draft card (February 8, 2013)
• Walter Moore’s death record found (April 30, 2013)
• Dobie Moore at George Carr funeral 1948 (April 30, 2013)
• Copy of Walter Moore’s death certificate; second 1948 sighting of Dobie Moore (May 9, 2013)
• 1924 passenger list found (May 17, 2014)
• Dobie Moore’s younger brother Allen “Pete” Moore was also a professional ballplayer (January 29, 2016)

Josh Gibson, Cuban Stars

The following photograph has provoked some wonder and curiosity in Negro league circles, because it appears to show Josh Gibson playing for a Cuban Stars team—something that has not been documented by historians or noted in any reference works.

At the end of the back row, standing at the far right, are Josh Gibson and Rap Dixon. Here are their images, side by side with other photos of the ballplayers, for comparison’s sake:

The photo certainly shows the Cuban Stars team run by Syd Pollock in the early 1930s, also sometimes known as the Cuban House of David. They had no actual connection to the House of David religious cult and baseball team—Pollock simply appropriated the name and the idea of wearing beards, and combined them with his already existing “Cuban” brand (previously the team was called the Havana Red Sox, or sometimes the Cuban Red Sox), to drum up attendance. One of the other (white) House of David outfits sued Pollock at the end of 1931 to try to force him to give up the name. Then, when he placed his team in the 1932 East-West League, as a condition of entry the league made the players shave off their beards and call themselves the Cuban Stars.

Here’s a photo of the 1932 team, probably pictured early in the year when they were still calling themselves the Cuban House of David. The lone guy in the beard (third from the right standing) is none other than Jimmy Claxton.

According to RMY Auctions, the players in the top row are, L to R: Carlos Etchegoyen, Johnnie Bob Dixon, Lázaro Salazar, Luis Tiant, Jimmie Claxton, Terris McDuffie, and Cándido Gálvez. Bottom row, L to R: Pedro Díaz, Pedro Lanuza, Pablo (really Fermín) Váldez, Ramiro Ramírez, Francisco Correa, Ramón Rojas (aka “Battling Siki”), Barney Brown. All these players indeed played for Pollock’s team in 1932.

As you can see, the uniforms in the Gibson-Dixon photo are identical to those in the earlier picture, with the exception of the socks. Here’s a comparison of the flags on the jersey fronts (U.S. and Cuban flag, crossed):


So, did Gibson and Dixon join the Cuban Stars/Cuban House of David team at some point in the 1932 season? There’s no reason to think so, as far as I can tell. Both were playing for the Pittsburgh Crawfords at the time. Both played in most of the Crawfords games, and the small gaps in their time with the Crawfords don’t match up with each other. Meanwhile during these gaps Pollock’s Cuban Stars were generally playing pretty far away and in obscure-ish locations. It would no doubt have cost a bit of money to hire Gibson and Dixon away from the Crawfords, even for a short time, and one would think Pollock would want to maximize their impact on his bottom line by 1) playing some high-profile games and 2) heavily advertising their presence, in local papers and maybe in the black weeklies, too. There’s no evidence of any of this happening.

So how did two Pittsburgh Crawfords get into a photo of the Cuban Stars when there’s no evidence they played for the team? First, it’s worth noting that the two photos have substantially different personnel—obviously many (in fact nearly all) of the players from the photo with Claxton are missing from the photo with Gibson and Dixon. It almost seems like a completely different team wearing the same uniforms.

In fact, upon closer examination the two photos share only a single player, the manager Ramiro Ramírez. In the Gibson-Dixon photo he’s kneeling on the far right, in the Claxton photo he’s in the middle of the front row. Here are the two photos, together with a third of Ramírez for comparison:

Glancing over the others, aside from Gibson and Dixon one obvious ID is Dick Seay, kneeling on the far left. The player standing just to the left of Gibson and Dixon looks like Terrible Ted Page to me, and in the middle of the back row (fourth from left) is the first baseman Dave Thomas.

So when did all these players appear on the same team? One key document does group them together. It’s a passenger list for the SS Carabobo, arriving in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from New York on November 20, 1933.

This page lists 14 players, the same number as in the photo. Here are Gibson, Dixon, Ramírez, Seay, Thomas, and Page. And in fact the other players on the list allow us to figure out a few other folks.

Neck Stanley:

Leroy Morney:

 

Otis Starks:

 

Harry Williams:

 

Jim Williams:

There are the only a few extant photos of Harry Salmon, the Alabama native who taught Satchel Paige how to control his fastball. Here is the tall guy standing on the far left compared with a not-very-good image of Salmon from the Birmingham Reporter in 1926. I would say it’s a match:

That leaves two players from the passenger list. One is William “Mickey” Casey. I can’t at the moment lay my hands on images of him, aside from a couple that are so poor they really don’t help much. But of the two unidentified players left, the one kneeling in the front row has a catcher’s mitt.

That leaves a lone player who lacks any images anywhere (at least that I’m aware of), the pitcher Tom Richardson. By process of elimination, here is the Cuban Star who’s left, and who seems likely to be Richardson:

The mystery photo, then, appears to show a Syd Pollock Cuban Stars team that we first see headed to Puerto Rico in November 1933. Josh Gibson did play for the Cuban Stars--but, as far as we can tell, only in Puerto Rico during the winter of 1933-34.

It’s worth noting that the Pollock Cuban Stars that played in the U.S. during the summer of 1933 had a completely different roster, with only Otis Starks and Ramiro Ramírez surviving to feature in Puerto Rico that winter. It appears that Pollock put together almost a whole new team for his island venture.

Now, I haven’t been able to find any specific mention in the U.S. press of this team. But W. Rollo Wilson wrote the following in his Pittsburgh Courier column on October 14, 1933, a month before they departed New York for San Juan:

Clearly in mid-October winter season plans were still in flux. Some of this movement can be confirmed, but other plans obviously changed. Wilson has Biz Mackey, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Oscar Charleston going to California. To my knowledge, of those players only Paige actually wound up on the west coast (and Gibson of course went to Puerto Rico).

Wilson says that a Cuban Stars club (he doesn't specify if he means Pollock's team, the Max Rosner-owned Cuban Stars, or another club entirely) was headed for Puerto Rico, one that would include Dick Lundy, Jud Wilson, Bill Holland, Slim Jones, and Tex Burnett (but none of the players in the photo or earlier passenger list). Passenger lists  show that all these guys except Jud Wilson did in fact travel to Puerto Rico that winter.

I think there might be ample coverage of Pollock's Cuban Stars, and all these other teams, in Puerto Rican papers or baseball publications for that winter. If anybody knows, please get in touch!

Thanks to Jay Caldwell for calling the photo of the 1933 Cuban Stars/Cuban House of David team to my attention.

 

Bumpus Jones: Passing as White?

Bumpus Jones, who pitched a no-hitter in his very first appearance in the major leagues in 1892, may have been a black man who passed for white. In fact, as I explained a few years ago, I think he very probably was passing. This conclusion was based mostly on census and other government documents, which I examine in the post.

But there is another line of evidence, one that is potentially much more important. Chris Rainey, the author of two versions of a short biography of Jones, noted in one of them that “old-timers in Cedarville” (Ohio, Jones’s home town) said, “He was black, you know.” Although this is only vaguely sourced, it does point toward something like a consensus within the Cedarville community about the racial identity of Jones and his family.

Since I wrote that post, I’ve come across some additional evidence that at least makes the sourcing more specific. First—upon Jones’s death in 1938, Gordon Graham, an Indiana sportswriter who had grown up in Cedarville, wrote:

“Old Bumpus hurled a no-hitter for Cincinnati in 1893 [sic], his first year in major league baseball. He was a star, somewhat like Johnny Vander Meer, in his freshman season. But Bumpus didn’t last long, although he played in high class minor league baseball until 1903.

“All of this may not mean much to you readers. But we of Cedarville know that Bumpus Jones was a negro. And negroes are not allowed in organized baseball. Whenever you check over that ‘Baseball Hall of Fame’, remember that there is one colored man in the group, despite the fact his race is barred from our National game…Charles ‘Bumpus’ Jones” (Lafayette, Indiana, Journal and Courier, July 8, 1938, p. 10).

(The “Hall of Fame” mention here is not a reference to Cooperstown; it’s an old figure of speech whereby anybody who tossed a no-hitter was said to have entered the Hall of Fame.)

Graham returned to the subject 15 years later when Bobo Holloman of the St. Louis Browns threw a no-hitter in his first major league start in 1953 (he had already relieved in several games, so it wasn’t his first big league appearance). He pointed out that Jones had accomplished the same feat more than 60 years before Holloman, and continued:

“It is quite possible that the career of Charles Leander Jones was choked off by something other than his pitching deficiencies. Negroes were not permitted to play in the majors then. Jackie Robinson broke down that silly barrier and supposedly became the first colored man to play in the big time. Around Cedarville ‘Bumpus’ Jones was listed as a Negro.” (Lafayette, Ind., Journal and Courier, May 8, 1953, p, 18.)

In both columns, Graham made his Cedarville bona fides clear, and spoke of how during his childhood “natives,” including his uncle, used to point out Jones and tell stories about him.

A few years later, in 1958, Al Schottelkotte, a columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, received the following letter:

“When I read your capsule quiz the other morning, I thought perhaps you were going to reveal that the first Negro to play with the Cincinnati Redlegs (Nino Escalera) was really a pitcher who was with the team in 1892 and 1893.

“This was Charles (Bumpus) Jones who, according to Lee Allen’s history of the Reds, was hired informally, pitched a no-hit, no-run game in his first appearance in 1892, and then, after losing five straight games, was released in 1893.

“Now, it is common knowledge in Cedarville, Ohio, which was his home, that Jones was a Negro. And, as far as I know, never claimed to be anything else there. Whether his light skin enabled him to pass as a Caucasian, or whether the Red management shut its eyes to the fact, I have never heard. His pitching exploits in amateur baseball were a great subject of conversation where fans gathered in Green and Clark Counties, when I was a boy. – R. T. Confer, 2531 Burnet Ave., Cincinnati.”

Schottelkotte responded: “The story that Bumpus Jones was a Negro never was officially confirmed, says Lee Allen.” (Cincinnati Enquirer, October 23, 1958, p. 5.)

If nothing else, the story of Bumpus Jones, or as much of it as we can discern now (more than 80 years after his death), serves to demonstrate just how complicated race, racism, and racial identity can be in American culture. Check out this article in The Guardian, about people in East Jackson, Ohio, who may appear white to outsiders, but hold on fiercely to a black identity. East Jackson is only about an hour and a half away from Cedarville.

Bertram Johnson

Bertram “Bert” Johnson was one of those gifted black ballplayers who suffered some bad luck in his career and has as a result been almost completely overlooked in histories. For years I wasn’t even certain of his name. In the 1930 census he appears as “Burton Johnson” (rooming in Houston with his Black Buffs teammates Samuel “Chuffy” Alexander and George “Eppie” Hamilton). His name appears variously as “Bert,” “Bertrand,” or “Burt.” In Riley’s Encyclopedia he is called “Bert Johnston” (with a “t”), and dismissed as “a big, awkward fellow and only a mediocre player” (p. 445).

Johnson was indeed big, a power-hitting outfielder who first appeared in professional ball as a player for the Houston Black Buffaloes of the Texas-Oklahoma League in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Led by player-manager Roy Parnell, the Black Buffs were good enough to challenge the 1929 NNL champion Kansas City Monarchs to a post-season series. In 1932 Johnson was signed by the Washington Pilots of the new East-West League. In February 1933 the Pittsburgh Courier wrote this about him:

(Pittsburgh Courier, February 4, 1933, p. A4)

Johnson’s tenure with the Pilots gave him an entrée into east coast baseball, and over the next few years he played in Baltimore and Newark. He thrived particularly at the latter stop, batting over .400 in recovered games for the Dodgers in 1934.

I haven’t found many details, but evidently Johnson struggled with an unspecified illness in the mid-1930s and dropped out of sight, before resurfacing with the Birmingham Black Barons of the new Negro American League in 1938. He was named to the western team in the second East-West All-Star Game played that year, in the Polo Grounds, and hit a home run in the fifth inning as the West built up a 4-to-0 lead. (They would surrender the lead and eventually lose in ten innings.) After that Johnson fades from the historical record.

Until a few months ago this is all I knew about him. But then his great-grandson, Sam Campbell, wrote. First of all he made it clear that his great-grandfather’s name was Bertram Johnson, and he said he was born in Round Rock, Texas. Here’s what else he had to say about him:

“His father was Andrew Joseph Johnson. My father is Joe Douglas Johnson, who still lives across the street from where Bert opened a beer joint named the Cozy Corner. He played baseball at Prairie View A&M, an HBCU in Texas. Bertram’s son Joe Lee Johnson was a WWII Vet and ran the joint after him, and my father Joe Douglas Johnson worked it up until he retired. It is still standing today. Bertram is buried in Round Rock. His son Joe Lee Johnson has an elementary school named for him in Round Rock. If you are interested, I have the whole history. One of my daughters, Jourdyn Campbell, is attending Texas A&M to play softball next year.  She is a homerun hitter.:)”

Sam also sent along this photograph of three Newark Dodgers. His great-grandfather Bert Johnson is on the left, but Sam wasn’t sure of the identity of the other two players:

I believe the shorter player in the middle is Paul “Sonny” Arnold. I’m not sure about the guy on the right, though to my eyes first baseman Jim Starks is a definite possibility.

Thanks to Sam, and good luck to Jourdyn, following in the footsteps of her great-great-grandfather.

Cuban Baseball Guides

I want to extend my thanks to Jason Mishelow, who recently loaned me three Cuban baseball guides from the 1945/46, 1946/47, and 1948/49 winter seasons. Here are the covers of two of them:

There are certainly some cool images inside these guides. Here is a team photo of the Almendares club, champions of the 1946/47 Cuban League:

Here is a page showing the league leaders and award winners for the 1948/49 season, including home run leader Monte Irvin, RBI leader Lennie Pearson, and runs scored leader Hank Thompson:

The 1948/49 guide also features a photo of the groundskeeper for El Gran Estadio de La Habana, which hosted all Cuban League games in 1948/49. Although his name is misspelled here, it is none other than Alfredo Cabrera, legendary Cuban League shortstop, career U.S. minor leaguer, and cup-of-coffee major leaguer in 1913. Here’s his picture in the 1948/49 guide side-by-side with his 1909 Cabañas card:

But the most important aspect of these Cuban baseball guides is the fact that they printed box scores for every single Cuban League game played during these three seasons.

This means that we can go well beyond the numbers published in Jorge Figueredo’s Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, to obtain fielding statistics, batters’ walks, pitchers’ home runs allowed, and so on—just as I’ve been able to do from newspaper box scores for Cuban League seasons in the 1900s, 1910s, and 1920s.

Thanks again to Jason for generously providing this amazing material. If anybody else has Cuban baseball guides—from any season—please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

St. Louis Stars, 1931

In the era of segregation, mainstream (white) newspapers generally ignored black baseball teams, aside from publishing box scores (as they did for nearly all high-profile baseball games, at least before the 1930s). There was very little reporting, very few interviews with players, managers, or owners, and almost no commentary. There were exceptions, however. On July 26, 1931, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Magazine published a two-and-a-half-page article, with photos, on the St. Louis Stars. Here, courtesy of Newspapers.com, are images of the article. There is a ton of interesting detail in it.

Sadly, the Globe-Democrat was a little late with this effort, as both the original Negro National League and the original St. Louis Stars were already on their last legs. The last NNL games took place exactly a month after the publication of this article (August 26), and the Stars would play their last known game (against the Max Carey All Stars) on October 2, 1931.

Goose Tatum, 1946

Goose Tatum & King Tut

 

Len Durrant alerted me to this silent film (posted by the National Film Preservation Foundation) showing Goose Tatum of the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns doing his thing in Cincinnati’s Crosley Field during a September 8, 1946, doubleheader against the Kansas City Monarchs. Tatum, of course, is more famous now as a Harlem Globetrotters star, but in the 1940s he may have been just as well-known as a baseball player.

Here are a few highlights:

0:16 Talking in the dugout, left to right: Eddie “Peanuts” Davis (number 14), Goose Tatum, and “King Tut” (Richard King).

1:20 Manager Jesse “Hoss” Walker in the dugout as the Clowns (including Tatum and catcher Sam Hairston) take the field.

1:58 Leo “Preacher” Henry warming up.

3:16 Buck O’Neil being thrown out at first.

3:40 Tatum batting left-handed (demonstrating that he was a switch-hitter).

4:12 Buck O’Neil playing first base.

5:20 Hilton Smith coaching at first base for the Monarchs.

5:43 Tatum attempting a hidden ball trick on Herb Souell (who, frankly, seems less than impressed).

I don’t know if these film clips were distributed in any way at the time, but they were obviously put together to highlight Tatum, not to provide an account of the games that were played that day. As it happens, the Monarchs, who had already clinched both halves of the Negro American League season and were headed to the World Series against the Newark Eagles, swept the second-division Clowns 15-5 and 8-5, clouting nine home runs in the process (none of which we see here). Hank Thompson hit four homers on the day, and Willard Brown three, including one clear out of the stadium. To be honest, I would rather have seen some of that action instead of the clowning.

(Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1946, p. 15)

 

Most likely the film was made at the behest of Syd Pollock, who was marketing Tatum pretty heavily as the star of the Clowns’ comedy baseball routine:

(Newark OH Advocate, July 16, 1946, p. 10)

Cuba's Champions

Here’s a photograph I’ve never seen before, showing the Cuban Stars of 1907 prior to a series of games in Chicago with white semipro teams. It’s not a particularly great image quality-wise (having passed through microfilming then scanning), but they look resplendent in jerseys that proclaim them “Cuba’s Champions,” along with some spiffy-looking sweaters.

(Chicago Daily News, May 28, 1907)

In actuality Almendares were the reigning champions of Cuba. The 1907 Cuban Stars did feature a few Almendares players, though, including the pitchers José Muñoz and Inocencio Pérez, outfielder Miguel Prats, and third baseman (and future major leaguer) Rafael Almeida. (Incidentally, the caption here is the first time I’ve seen Almeida identified as the Cuban Stars’ captain that year.)

Cobb & Redding, 1916

I’ve been asked recently (see this comment) whether Ty Cobb ever faced Cannonball Dick Redding. In a 1932 interview with the Chicago Defender (posted here by Ryan Whirty) Redding himself said (or at least implied) that he had played against Cobb in Cuba. Many of the claims in that article are maybe a bit exaggerated, and some are simply false—this one is in the latter category. Ty Cobb only played baseball in Cuba once, in 1910. Redding came to Cuba several times, beginning in the 1911/12 winter season, and he never faced the Detroit Tigers or Cobb there.

In fact, according to many sources, after the 1910 series in Havana, Cobb vowed never to play against black players again. I’ve so far been unable to figure out where this story originated. In any case Charles Alexander affirms that Cobb never did face black players again in his career, and I’ve never seen anyone suggest otherwise.

So no, there’s no known instance of Cobb facing off against Redding in a game. However—John Holway wrote that Cobb once “refused to hit against [Redding] in batting practice,” but gave no specifics. I have found a just such an incident, though not in batting practice.

In the 1910s George Weiss, future Yankees (and much later, Mets) president and Hall of Famer, ran the New Haven Colonials, an independent team that often outdrew the city’s minor league club. In 1916 he hired Ty Cobb to play in five games (as a first baseman) after the regular season was over. As it happened, the town team in Putnam, Connecticut, brought in Dick Redding to pitch during the October barnstorming season in both 1915 and 1916. On Sunday, October 8, 1916, the Putnams played host to the Colonials. Cobb was the headliner obviously, but both Redding and Jimmy Clinton, a white semipro star (there’s a chapter on him in Scott Simkus’s wonderful book Outsider Baseball), were given secondary billing as Putnam’s answers to Cobb.

(Hartford Courant, October 7, 1916, p. 19)

 

(Norwich Bulletin, October 6, 1916, p. 9)

Putnam won the game 1-0, as Redding threw four innings in relief and doubled to help score the game’s only run. He struck out the first seven batters he faced—but Cobb had already left the game. After delaying the contest for an hour while negotiating his fee, Cobb “by previous agreement stopped playing when it was half over when Cannonball Redding the great colored pitcher went in to work for Putnam.” Cobb didn’t play especially well, and the Norwich Bulletin reported that Redding “was given a great ovation by the crowd to whom he proved much more of an attraction than the high salaried Cobb.”

(Norwich Bulletin, October 9, 1916, p. 3)

This was pretty unusual. In fact, I can’t think of another instance of a predetermined agreement for a player to leave a game due to the entrance of another player.

A couple of years later the Bulletin printed an anecdote about Pat Cawley, the Colonials’ manager, who had to put himself in to hit for Cobb against Redding. The article attributes the arrangement for Cobb to exit the game directly to Cobb’s “southern prejudices”:

(Norwich Bulletin, October 22, 1918, p. 3)

(I’m not the first person to notice this incident: Howard W. Rosenberg wrote about it in Ty Cobb Unleashed, though I haven’t read the book.)

The 1899 All-Cubans

(A version of the following piece was originally posted at Negro League History as part of the Cuban Newspaper Project.)

One of the preludes to the integration of Cuban baseball in 1900 was the first visit by a professional Cuban team to the United States. The Spanish imperial authorities had always been suspicious of baseball, and at various times had banned or otherwise hampered the sport; but in the aftermath of the war of 1898, with U.S. authorities established in the island, the first fully fledged Cuban League season in many years was begun in February 1899. In June it was announced that as soon as the current championship was over, a team called the “All-Cubans,” made up of players from all three Cuban League teams, would travel to the United States.

The team was organized by a young promoter named Abel Linares. One of his recent accomplishments had been to convince Reach & Co., the American sporting goods company, to donate a cup for the Cuban League championship. Now he aimed to show off Cuban talent in the country of baseball’s origin. Several years later he wrote about the genesis of his idea:

When base ball in Cuba was in its infancy, in that time of true amateurism, there came to the island picked nines of American players. Because of lack of experience, or maybe fear, the Cuban clubs received royal beatings [“zurras soberanas”; literally, “sovereign scourges”] at the hands of these masters who visited us.

Time passed, with our players learning more every day, and now the Americans could not beat us so easily. Many times we even managed to defeat them, although it took some work.

My trips to the United States had led me to conceive the belief that our players were not as deficient as they said; that Cubans had as much of an aptitude for baseball as Americans; and that if we overcame our defects in teamwork, which were due to a lack of direction in the field, and became more aggressive batters, we could, if not defeat them, at least put up a good fight.

Based on this belief, and with a double motivation of business and Cuban pride, I came up with the idea of organizing a Cuban team and taking it to tour the United States, in search of glory and money.

(Abel Linares, “Los Cubanos en los Estados Unidos,” in El Base Ball en Cuba y America, edited by Ramón S. de Mendoza, José María Herrero, and Manuel F. Calcines [Havana: Imirenta, Comas, y López, 1908], p. 74)

The All-Cubans were a virtual all-star team of the Cuban game, including players from all three of the Cuban League teams. Here’s a photo, printed on the first page of the July 16 issue of El Base Ball, with all the players’ identities penciled in by an unknown reader:

(El Base Ball, July 16, 1899, p. 1)

If you can’t read the handwriting, here’s who’s pictured in the photo:

Back row: Agustín “Tinti” Molina, Emilio Hernández, Abel Linares, Antonio María García (“El Inglés,” usually said to be the best player in 19th-century Cuban baseball), Moisés Quintero

Middle row: Daniel Miguel, Manuel López (“El Cartero”), Bernardo Carrillo, Esteban Prats

Front row: Felo Rodríguez, Miguel Prats, José Baeza

Not pictured: Alfredo Arcaño, Carlos Royer

This picture shows the players in their regular club uniforms: Cuba, Almendares, and Habana (the dark shirts or jackets). According to El Base Ball (June 18, 1899), the All-Cubans were to wear a “blue shirt and trousers with the name in bright red, a white sash, and bright red stockings.” Sounds pretty resplendent. On July 31 the New York Sun confirmed that these uniforms (with a slight variation) were indeed used: “The visitors wore dark blue flannel uniforms with the words ‘All Cubans’ in white letters on their shirt fronts. Their stockings and caps were red, and several of them wore the old-fashioned white canvas baseball shoes.” Here’s a photo of Miguel Prats in his All-Cubans duds (with white lettering):

(El Score, July 29, 1900, p. 1)

As a novelty the Cubans drew some interest from the American press; the most hyped game was probably their contest against the West New York Field Club, a semipro team, at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 30. The Cubans lost 8 to 5, but put up a good fight. According to the New York Sun, fans who were “expecting to see a burlesque exhibition of baseball…were agreeably disappointed. Fifteen hundred spectators were there and were ready to guy the visitors at every opportunity, but before the practice was over the cranks had learned to respect them.”

The Sun singled out several Cuban players for praise, particularly center fielder Alfredo Arcaño and the pitcher-captain Rafael “Felo” Rodríguez, both of whom “played such good ball that before the game was over the crowd applauded them continually.” Rodríguez exhibited “beautiful control and some sharp curves.” He threw “a swift out-drop and a high jump ball with plenty of speed.”

(El Score, February 24, 1901, p. 1)

In the seventh inning he walked Voorhis, the West New York pitcher. Voorhis was suffering from a “lame leg” and wanted to put in a courtesy pinch runner, but Rodríguez objected. When the umpire agreed with Felo and refused to allow the pinch runner, Rodríguez “turned half a dozen cartwheels across the diamond, winding up in the box with a back somersault.”

For his part, Arcaño, a former Cuban League batting champ, got the “best hit of the game, a rattling two-bagger to the left field fence,” and snared several hard drives to the outfield “with remarkable ease.” Despite being in his mid-thirties and “thick set,” Arcaño was “fleeter-footed than anybody else on the field, and as a coacher he kept the crowd in good humor from start to finish”:

Arcano chattered in Spanish so incessantly that the bleacherites soon tried to imitate him, and toward the close they were howling in unison something that sounded like this:

“Wallo, wallo, wallo! Cutta, cutta, cutta! Chickee, chickee, chickee! Wow wow, wow wow, wow wow wow! Hurray!”

But Arcano paid no attention and continued his exhortations until the last man was out. (New York Sun, July 31, 1899, p. 9)

(El Score, December 29, 1901, p. 1)

A week later, the All-Cubans inflicted an epic 26 to 8 defeat on the Hoboken town team, and then Linares arranged a pretty high profile matchup for the All-Cubans: a showdown with the Cuban X Giants, ostensibly as a protest against the X Giants “posing as the representatives of Cuba.”

On August 13, the two teams faced off on the St. George Cricket Grounds in Hoboken. The All Cubans, wracked by illness and injury, had to use an American pitcher from Port Jervis named Perez (it’s unclear who this is exactly, but it could be a guy named Raymond B. Perez, who played both football and baseball for the Marion Field Club, and is the only athlete named “Perez” I could find in the New York area around this time). The Cuban X-Giants put in James Dorsey Robinson, known as the “Black Rusie,” to oppose him. According to the Jersey City Evening Journal, E. B. Lamar, manager of the Cuban X-Giants, was “determined to win, as a defeat by the real Cubans would rob his players of the prestige so long enjoyed.”

And win they did, the X-Giants taking the game 7 to 3, finding Perez’s curves easy to solve. The All Cubans were, however, the better fielding team, according to the Evening Journal.

After the game Lamar and Linares “had a very warm discussion in the clubhouse, in which [Felo] Rodriguez also took a hand.” Rodríguez maintained that “had he been in condition to pitch the result would have been different, and at his request Manager Linare[s] challenged Lamar to play another game…next Sunday, the winning team to take all the receipts, less expenses.”

The challenge was accepted. True to his word, Rodríguez, now recovered from the sprained ankle that had kept him out of the previous game, was in the pitching box—but it didn’t matter. The X Giants belted three home runs off him, won 11 to 6, and took home all the receipts.

Despite the warm words between Linares and Lamar (which may have just been a PR fiction for the sports pages), this was the start of a lasting business relationship. It could be that this was when the idea was hatched for the Cuban X Giants’ first trip to Cuba the following spring. Back in Cuba El Base Ball reported briefly on the first game against the Cuban X Giants, which they called “the famous colored club, one of the strongest in the United States.” “It’s only to be expected: our boys [they use the English word “boys” here] resisted, but couldn’t conquer the famous blacks, who almost always beat their opponents” (El Base Ball, August 20, 1899, p. 3).

The All-Cubans may have had cause to regret the terms of the wager over the second game. In the next few weeks any cash at all would have come in handy.

Linares was relying on Al Lawson as his U.S. connection. Lawson, an English-born minor league pitcher, got a brief opportunity to play in the National League during the Players League revolt in 1890. After that, at the age of 21, he brought a barnstorming team of minor leaguers to Cuba during the winter of 1890/91. This team included a teenaged John McGraw, whose acrobatics at shortstop in the garish uniforms Lawson supplied to his team earned him the nickname “el mono amarillo”—the yellow monkey.

Lawson tried to drum up publicity for the All-Cubans by making showy side bets with the managers of opposing teams, but the promise that Linares’s team would face the “best clubs” in the United States proved to be false. The games booked for the All-Cubans were mostly with semi-pro or local amateur teams. An article in El Base Ball explained in late August:

The greatest difficulties encountered by the All-Cubans in the United States lay less in the strength of the American teams, as many here [in Cuba] had crowed, and more in other challenges found there. Since the major leagues are still going on in that country, and the second-order clubs play in their own leagues, the All-Cubans cannot play every day in the same place. Instead they are obliged to go from town to town offering occasional exhibitions, which are not very appealing to the American public.

According to what we hear, the manager of the All-Cubans will rent the Polo Grounds at the end of this month, when the New York club will be in the West. If Linares achieves this purpose, we do not doubt that the Cubans pick up more than the laurels of victory: they will also gain good greenbacks with which to return to their native soil. (“All Cubans,” El Base Ball, August 20, 1899, p. 3.)

Sickness and injury ravaged the All-Cubans’ lineup, knocking star pitcher Felo Rodríguez and others out of many games. Linares scrambled to hire American players to plug the gaps. In the August 27 issue of El Base Ball, a writer reported encountering three of the All-Cubans—Antonio María García, Alfredo Arcaño, and Manuel López—back in Havana. Their steamship had managed to survive a hurricane.

Manuel López, Jose M. Baeza, and Emilio Hernández of the 1899 All-Cubans, all from the pages of El Score in 1900.

The All-Cubans never were able to secure the Polo Grounds. They began missing dates; the tour staggered into September before Linares decided to call it quits. Running out of cash, he finally sent the team back to Havana on the cheapest tickets available while he remained in New York with Daniel Miguel and Felo Rodríguez waiting for money to be sent from Cuba to pay for their return.

Al Lawson in 1890

Al Lawson’s participation in the All-Cubans tour wasn’t his finest hour. He would go on to start a couple of “outlaw” leagues (the Atlantic League in 1907, the Union League in 1908), both of which featured a number of Cuban players. but these efforts didn’t go anywhere. He went on to be a major player in the early commercial airline industry, and eventually founded his own religion, called Lawsonomy. (See Jerry Kuntz’s book Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines: The Many Lives and Outrageous Times of George and Alfred Lawson.)

Abel Linares

For Abel Linares this was merely a false start. He later acknowledged that the tour was a “tremendous failure,” but noted that “the appearance of the All-Cubans was always an event wherever we played. The exhibitions my players gave left the Yankees with their mouths open. They had thought they were the only ones who cultivated their national game with perfection.” He eventually tried again, with “more experience and better advice,” and “managed,” in his words, “to achieve great monetary and artistic success.” “Our achievements,” he wrote, “have made Cuban players known and sought after by American leagues, and I am proud and satisfied with that” (“Los Cubanos,” p. 75).

Of course Linares here is talking about the Cuban Leaguers who began to enter organized baseball in the United States in the 1900s, beginning with Esteban Prats and Juan Violá with Jacksonville of the South Atlantic League in 1904, and culminating in Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida’s Fourth of July, 1911, debut with the Cincinnati Reds. But Cuban baseball was at the same time establishing other, quite different baseball connections with the United States. The highest profile games the All-Cubans played on their 1899 trip to the United States were against a black team, the Cuban X-Giants. The business relationship forged there would bear fruit within a few months. And it would shine a light of scrutiny on racial relations in Cuban baseball.