Yet in December 1965 and January 1966, the crafty Cuban ace put together three of the sport’s most remarkable performances – feats rarely rivaled in any other league or in any other decade. Perhaps most noteworthy was his pair of consecutive no-hit, no-run games – a feat achieved just once in the big leagues and only twice ever in North American Organized Baseball (see footnote 6 below for further details). Hardly less rare, however, was this same obscure hurler’s iron-man single-game performance less than a month before. He rang up 19.1 scoreless innings before losing on one run in the 20th. It’s not an exaggeration to propose that no other pitcher in the game’s long annals ever matched this trio of brilliant outings in such a brief span.

Baseball history is remarkably full of short-term wonders that flash for a week, a month, or even a season – but soon fade away to mediocrity. Cuba’s Abreu was a classic example of the phenomenon. He was one of the earliest notable figures of Cuba’s post-1960 “revolutionary” baseball, but his brief fame rested more on his few spectacular moments than on sustained performance. At the end of his near-decade-and-half league career (1962-75), the native of Cienfuegos Province stood below .500 (55-59 in 14 National Series). He earned a few moments of overseas glory with the Cuban national team, long before it became an invincible dynasty in international tournament play. But he never stood out among the Cuban League pitchers of his own decade, let alone the legendary mound aces that would follow. The parallels between Aquino and Johnny “Double No-Hit” Vander Meer are striking – both in terms of their marquee accomplishment1 and their up-and-down overall careers2 – though one must still be careful about equating them.

In his 14 National Series seasons, Aquino won more than he lost in just four.3 Only once did he reach double figures in wins: he was 10-1 during his best season, 1968-69. His 5-10 mark in the winter of 1973-74 balanced that feat. In retrospect, perhaps Aquino’s most distinguished stat was his ERA, which fell under 2.00 in seven seasons, exactly half of his National Series career. Yet that was an era of pitching dominance – Abreu himself never led the league in ERA; the leaders averaged a minuscule 0.95 while he was active (one of them as low as 0.37 and four others below 0.70). In fact, no National Series leader ever went above 2.00 until 1988 (the circuit’s 27th year of existence).4 Nonetheless, he was arguably one of the most solid hurlers in the league’s early years, even if he rarely stood among the year-end statistical leaders.

The Cuban League has emerged in recent decades as a world-class venue ranking only below the majors (and perhaps also the Japanese Central and Pacific Leagues). This was certainly not the case during Abreu’s era, however – Cuba’s top stars of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s performed when IBAF tournament play featured aluminum bats. They earned stellar international reputations largely by drubbing amateur squads composed mainly of university all-stars or pro-league rejects. Had they chosen to leave their homeland, few Cuban Leaguers of Abreu’s decade would have been able to crack big league rosters or even Triple-A lineups. Even so, 18 straight innings of no-hit baseball at any level – merely considering the bounce of the ball, occasional superb contributions of skilled defensive teammates, and the undeniable role of raw luck – is indeed miraculous.

That fact is strongly supported by the equal rarity of such an event at any level of Organized Baseball. Many writers have labeled Vander Meer’s feat as the most unbreakable record in baseball, since a hurler would need to complete an unimaginable three straight hitless nine-inning outings to best it. Only two other major-league pitchers – Howard Ehmke in 1923 and Ewell Blackwell in 1947 – have ever come legitimately close to matching Vander Meer in 1938.5 More obscure were Bill Bell’s consecutive hitless games in May 1952 for Bristol (Virginia) in the Class D Appalachian League.6 No documented evidence is known that might suggest this stellar event has taken place in any other pro league found in any of the world’s ball playing nations.

Little is known publicly about Abreu’s early life away from the baseball diamond, other than his origins. Abreu’s father, Lupgardo Abreu Gómez, and his mother, Petrona Aguila Arbolaez, were part of the largely impoverished farming class that populated central Cuba during the decade immediately preceding World War II. Tomás Aquino Abreu Aguila was born in the rural agricultural distinct of southern Cienfuegos Province – in the village of San Fernando de Camarones7 – on March 7, 1936. The island’s population was then still recovering from a bloody U.S.-backed 1933 revolution that had ended the ruthless dictatorship of President Gerardo Machado, but also first brought future strongman Fulgencio Batista to prominence.

Aquino married twice, the second time in 1958. He sired three sons – all with his first spouse, María Cuéllas – named (in order of age) Francisco, Reinaldo, and Pedro. The remainder of Abreu’s private life remains altogether obscure. His rare public comments have always been narrowly focused solely on his substantial athletic career in the 1960s and 1970s.8

In 1989, interviewers Leonardo Padura and Raúl Arce prompted Aquino to comment about his three sons and their own baseball ambitions. The ex-pitcher’s answers were somewhat evasive. Only the middle son (Reinaldo) apparently harbored early baseball ambitions. “He was also a pitcher and accounted himself well as a youth, but he had to give it up,” Abreu observed. “He is now a physical education professor,” Abreu continued, “but the others followed different paths: the elder is an engineer and the younger is a minor official with FAR (an acronym for the Cuban Armed Forces). Even if they didn’t become ballplayers, the most important thing is that they are happy and that I am proud of them all.” But the self-described proud father never revealed why Reinaldo had to relinquish his own pitching dreams (perhaps because of injury, if not lack of talent).

In that same 1989 interview, Abreu also provided only sketchy details concerning his own start on the amateur diamonds of rural Cuba in the ’50s. His fantasy from the start was to become a famous baseball figure – “I always dreamed of being a ballplayer, of appearing on television, of wearing those fancy uniforms, and of being popular, and cheered for. But despite those dreams I never thought I could play in the organized leagues, or even less that I could represent Cuba overseas. But it all came true and therefore today I am hugely satisfied.”

Abreu also informed Padura and Arce that his earliest memories were of weekend games in local pastures serving as crude diamonds. He and his buddies played barefoot and without any formal equipment outside of a rubber-taped ball and crudely carved bat. A pitcher from the outset, young Abreu was invited in 1950 (at age 14) to play on a neighboring village club from Cumanayagua during the regional juvenile championships. He had apparently drawn some local attention as a hard thrower, although he admittedly knew very little at the time about the art or science of pitching. Early success in these local youth tournaments eventually led to a spot in the Liga Azucarera (Sugar Mill League). There he made his debut in 1958 for a club sponsored by the Central Manuelita (Manuelita Sugar Mill). By 1960 he was working for the Cienfuegos Province Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant and pitching weekend games for the local Cumanayagua ball club in the island’s popular Amateur Athletic Union League.

Aquino never played pro ball (though he later claimed to have received some offers from abroad). Amid U.S. concerns about player safety, Cuba’s franchise in the Triple-A International League, the Havana Sugar Kings, was transferred overnight to Jersey City in July 1960. In the aftermath of this uprooting, the final season of Cuba’s professional winter league took place in Havana in 1960-1961. Only native players (including such recognized local big leaguers as Pedro Ramos, Camilio Pascual and Julio Moreno) participated, amid an ongoing exodus of the nation’s best baseball talent. Immediately before or shortly after Castro’s forces seized government control in January 1959, established big-leaguers (Ramos, Pascual, Moreno, José Valdivielso) and top pro prospects (Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Luis Tiant, Jr., Bert Campaneris, Cookie Rojas, José Tartabull, and Tany Pérez, among others) all departed for the States. The Sugar Kings’ roster in 1960 still included such present or future big-leaguers as Leo Cárdenas, Miguel Cuéllar, and Orlando Peña, but they also were soon refugees from their homeland. Most of those Cubans (including already established big leaguers like 1961 Cuban League MVP Ramos and his Washington teammates Pascual and Julio Bécquer) returned to their North American clubs in the spring of 1961 and almost none returned after tensions escalated between the governments in Havana and Washington.9

Fidel Castro rapidly overhauled Cuban society in the early 1960s, seeking to launch a “fairer and more just” societal order (one founded upon Soviet-style socialist principles). This effort involved totally revamping the island-wide organized sports system. Sports and recreation – like education and health care – would now become a genuine “right of the people” and not an enterprise for profit-oriented commercial business. A revamped government agency labeled INDER (Institute for Sports, Education and Recreation) was founded in February 1961. Under its direction, all professional sports were outlawed across the country (with the famous National Decree 936) by the middle of the same year. There would now be no admissions charges for attending such public events as ball games and concerts; attending matches and ballgames would become a popular celebration aimed at entertaining and building community spirit. Baseball would now involve only native Cubans (no more imported foreign talent) in a new kind of national league with a prime focus on developing strong homegrown and patriotic national squads.

A seven-decade-long tradition of professional winter play in Cuba was suddenly over, but a new type of baseball would soon enough emerge. It would be rebuilt on the backs of a considerable army of “lesser” talents who had remained at home on their native island. The opening decade of a new post-revolution brand of national baseball was full of pomp and circumstance – with a strong dose of patriotism and politics thrown in for good measure – even if the quality of play did not always quite measure up to the earlier professional standards.

The new “National Series” league opened play in January 1962, with only four clubs that recruited their talent from the popular amateur leagues of the previous decade. Amateur leagues (especially the Amateur Athletic Union league and the various sugar mill circuits) had always been highly popular. Now they would no longer take a back seat to a pro league operating only in the metropolis of Havana and featuring many visiting North American professionals. The first few seasons would be played with just a handful of teams – but by the end of the first decade there would be a dozen squads, and they would be spread across the island.10 For the first time Cuba could enjoy not only a purely indigenous brand of baseball but also a genuinely “national” sport that was staged in all of the island’s (at the time) six provinces.

One motive for the new league was to supply and train players for a national team that could carry the Cuban banner into the international arena and thus display the imagined strengths of the socialist (non-commercial) brand of baseball. Whether Fidel (an acknowledged fan) had been deeply stung by the loss of the AAA-level Sugar Kings remains conjecture. But after 1962 President Castro seemed bent on launching a novel system designed to beat the Americans at their own “national game” in international tournament venues. At the very time the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was unfolding some of the top amateur Cuban players (soon to be showcased in the new league) were already winning a first proud victory in nearby Costa Rica. The surprisingly robust Cuban amateur squad went undefeated en route to capturing a cherished gold medal during that spring’s 15th edition of what was then called the Amateur Baseball World Series.11

Early “revolutionary” baseball was also highlighted to a notable extent by staged political displays of yet another flavor. Castro himself would regularly make much celebrated appearances at the first several “opening day” league festivities. It was arranged for El Comandante himself to slug out the first “official base hit” of the inaugural league game on January 14, 1962 (he tapped a fat delivery from Azucareros starter Jorge Santín through a cooperative infield). This staged ritual was subsequently carried on for the next several seasons.

Against this new “revolutionary baseball” backdrop, Aquino Abreu emerged during the first National Series of winter and spring 1962. Performing for the Azucareros (Sugar Harvesters) under manager Antonio Castaño, Abreu was the pitcher of record in all six of his starts that season, with two defeats and three complete games. The diminutive but nonetheless talented righty logged his first league victory on February 8, 1962 in Havana’s Latin American Stadium. It was a complete-game six-hit 5-0 shutout of rival Habana, the eventual league cellar-dweller. Abreu earned four of his second-place ball club’s 13 wins. If that total seems small, the schedule was short (27 games) – even the most successful league pitchers won only a half-dozen games.

Aquino’s physical stature on the mound was less than imposing – he stood a shade less than six feet and weighed in at a fraction less than 150 pounds at the height of his career. His successes resulted more from carefully honed craftsmanship than from any element of raw power or exceptional talent. Years later he commented to Padura and Arce that he had an adequate fastball and tricky curve at the outset of his career – but the tutoring of 1940s-era amateur league great Pedro “Natilla” Jiménez (then the manager of a rival National Series club, Orientales) opened the door. Jiménez painstakingly instructed Abreu on how to mix speeds and stressed the need to concentrate on the specific weaknesses of each batter.

Despite early promise and his developing command, Abreu entered his fifth league season with a lackluster total of 10 wins and 16 losses. He was seen as just a run-of-the mill league pitcher until his rare masterpieces unfolded at the midpoint of that breakout winter. By late-January 1966 he was overnight christened a celebrity hurler, even though he would log only one other win that season outside of his two no-hitters. With a 3-2 won-lost mark but only nine earned runs permitted, he ranked second that year in individual ERA at 1.50, the closest he ever came to leading the league (1961 World Cup hero Alfredo Street was first at 1.09). And he accomplished this even though his Centrales club finished dead last in the six-team circuit at 23-40.

Perhaps Abreu’s greatest outing was actually the one that preceded his pair of no-hitters. That was the marathon game on December 28, 1965 – at the time, it was the longest in Cuban League history. At the Sports City Park in Santiago, Abreu took the hill against Orientales and shut them down for 19 innings. The four opposing pitchers were just as effective, though, and the scoreless contest stretched on for more than four nail-biting hours. Abreu struck out 13, while allowing 12 hits and walking seven. But he gave up the game’s lone run with one out in the home half of the 20th. Elpidio Mancebo doubled, and after an intentional walk to set up a possible double play, Aquino faced his 76th batter, Gerardo Olivares. Olivares finally ended the affair by slapping a single to right.

This marathon feat of Abreu’s was likely even more difficult than his no-hitters. In the big leagues, there have been nearly 300 no-hitters, but only three men have thrown 20 or more consecutive scoreless innings in a single game. The record of 21 belongs to Joe Oeschger, who did it on May 1, 1920 in his 26-inning battle with Leon Cadore, who also finished with 20 of his own. The only other man to do it in the big time was Joe Harris on September 1, 1906 (he gave up a run in the third and then lost in the 24th).12 In Venezuela, on June 5, 1938, Dominican pitcher Andrés Julio Báez went all the way in a 20-inning shutout, scoring the game’s only run himself.

Abreu may well have paid a steep price for his singular show of strength. Arm problems plagued him in his next two historic outings and then lasted until the end of his career. Abreu told Padura and Arce that his arm woes actually could be traced back to the 1963 season (his second National Series) and lingered after that. He claimed that he could hardly throw in 1964, but a year later, surprise improvement allowed him to last as long as he did in the marathon contest. He remarked that he felt “borracho” (drunk) by the end of that game – it is most likely that the recurring pain he felt during his no-hitters came from a re-aggravation during the 20-inning grind less than a month before.13

The first no-hit gem came on Sunday afternoon, January 16, 1966. It was the opener of a doubleheader; Centrales was hosting Occidentales in Santa Clara’s venerable Augusto César Sandino ballpark (named for Nicaragua’s revolutionary hero, and now the home stadium of the current league powerhouse Villa Clara Orangemen). Most of the visitors hailed from Pinar del Río Province, including outfielder Fidel Linares, a solid early league performer in his own right but also the father of future league star Omar Linares, whom many followers of the international game view as the best third baseman never to play in the North American major leagues.

The game was one-sided from the start and regrettably sloppy. The home team jumped ahead with four runs in the first and six more in the third, coasting easily from there to the final 10-0 score. The outclassed losers not only went hitless but also committed six errors. With a substantial lead, Abreu struck out four and walked three. Another base runner reached on an error (second baseman Mariano Alvarez booted an infield roller by the game’s third batter, Fidel Linares). If not artistic, the game was nonetheless a milestone: the first no-hitter in league history.

A quarter-century later, Abreu spoke wistfully to Padura and Arce about the first no-hitter – and about the sore arm that didn’t stop him. Also, he apparently was not aware of what he had going until catcher Jesús Oviedo pointed it out in the eighth. But this violation of baseball superstition was not nearly as troubling as increasing arm pain. By game’s end, Aquino was unable to lift the sore limb above his shoulder. It continued to throb and ache for the full nine days until his next scheduled start (league teams then played only four or five times a week, not on a daily basis).

On the evening of January 25, in Havana’s cavernous Latin American Stadium, Abreu faced the eventual league champion, the Habana Industriales, already the island’s most beloved team. This contest was far cleaner, with the losers only making two errors, but it was also equally one-sided on the scoreboard. Again Abreu benefited from the comfort of an early lead (a pair of runs in the first and a 7-0 cushion after five) and coasted home despite struggling a bit with his control. He struck out seven while also walking six. His pitching arm still pained him severely, though. According to the pitcher’s own later report, he felt sound during pre-game warm-ups, and he remained pain-free until the game’s midpoint. But from the fifth inning on he had to abandon his more effective fastball and rely on a prayer and soft breaking balls. In addition, a pair of remarkable late-inning fielding plays – by second sacker Alvarez and shortstop Ramón Fernández – both saved likely base hits.

The final out was a tame roller to second by outfielder Eulogio Osorio. Abreu had duplicated Johnny Vander Meer’s feat from 28 years earlier. And as was the case for Vander Meer (who had walked the bases full before getting the last out at Ebbets Field), the Cuban’s second no-hitter had been anything but clean or easy.

It is perhaps a curiosity that a flood of 11 no-hitters followed Aquino’s over the next four National Series – with five in NS VII (two on the same day) and three more the following year. And it should also be noted here that no-hit games are far less frequent in Cuba than in the majors.14 This has held true both throughout early league history, when pitchers were dominant, and in latter decades (especially the aluminum bat era), when hitters tended to rule.

Aquino’s pair remained a lofty peak in what was otherwise a chain of often nondescript seasons. With the renamed Las Villas club one season later, “Mr. No-Hit” was just 3-6, and he went 6-8 after returning to the Azucareros club a year after that. But in 1968-69 (National Series #8), Abreu enjoyed a sudden upswing and a surprising return to prominence. His 10-1 mark was one of the league’s best and his ERA again dipped below 2.00 (as it would four more times before his career finally wrapped up). In terms of consistency, 1968-69 was definitely a “career” season for Abreu. He also posted good records in the two following National Series for Azucareros (6-3 and 6-1). But in 1974 (back with Las Villas), he lost a career-high ten (versus five wins). He then quickly faded over his final two seasons, pitching just 38 and 22 1/3 innings.

In addition to his 55-59 record in 14 National Series, Abreu was 1-2 in one Selective Series and 6-4 in one Special Series. His victory total of 62 averages out to less than five per season; his career 2.26 ERA is only impressive if taken out of his era’s context. A half-dozen Cuban League mound stars boast sub-2.00 lifetime marks. A full dozen – some from later, more hitter-friendly decades – are under 2.20 for a full ten-year-plus career. There were far greater pitchers during the same pioneering era, even if none of the others enjoyed three individual outings that were quite so brilliant. In the end, the best that can be said is that Abreu’s overall mound record is somewhat blunted since it came during an era of remarkable pitching that marked the Cuban League’s own “dead-ball” epoch.

Abreu also made a brief mark on the world tournament scene as Cuba was first establishing its international dominance. His first such outing – on the heels of his National Series debut season – came at the August 1962 Central American Games in Kingston, Jamaica. The Cubans were returning to these Games after a 12-year absence; the young and inexperienced club was managed by former big leaguer Gilberto Torres. They lost three heart-breakers to the Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, sandwiched around victories over Colombia and Venezuela. Abreu appeared twice in relief, giving up one earned run in six innings, striking out one batter while walking four, with no game decisions. When asked in 1989 about his fondest baseball memory, he did not cite either of his no-hitters – without hesitation, he said it was in Jamaica, the first time he heard the Cuban national anthem while wearing a national team jersey.

During the April 1963 Pan American Games in Brazil, both the Cuban team and Abreu himself performed far better. Seven victories against a lone defeat brought home a gold medal, and Abreu had two complete-game wins against the hosts: an 11-2 five-hitter, and a 17-3 laugher. A more impressive triumph against stronger competition came after his double no-hit season. In June 1966, at the Tenth Central American Games, he was again part of a Cuban championship squad. This tournament was held in Puerto Rico against a backdrop of severe political tension. The Cuban delegation was purposely detained after its ship arrived at San Juan harbor, long enough to miss the event’s official opening ceremonies. During the baseball matches anti-Castro exiles heaved stones at Cuban players on the diamond, interrupting action on several occasions. Abreu earned a complete-game 5-2 victory over the hosts in the opener (he made one other brief appearance in relief). Cuba took gold again after a second victory over Puerto Rico in the finals.

Abreu recalled being enticed during the 1966 stay in San Juan to leave his homeland and join North American professional ball clubs. As Abreu remembered it, “there was a great effort to buy a number of our players and I got several offers, including 30,000 pesos to sign with Pittsburgh. They even put in the paper that I had signed for 50,000 pesos, but it wasn’t true and in the end none of us on the team stayed in Puerto Rico.”15

After retiring from pitching, Aquino continued working as a baseball instructor and pitching teacher at the lower levels of Cuba’s highly organized and community-based athletic training system. In 1974 (during his final National Series season with the Las Villas ball club) he opened the Manicaragua Baseball Academy, based at the local “Escambray” ballpark in his hometown (a rural outpost in central Las Villas Province about 25 miles east of his birthplace in neighboring Cienfuegos Province).

Immediately after his playing days ended, Abreu also served briefly as a coach for the Azucareros, his team in seven different National Series. He also managed the Arroceros team for a single winter, National Series XVI (1976-77), guiding them to a ninth-place finish (20-19) in the 14-team circuit. That season was also notable as the first in which the Cuban League used aluminum rather than wooden bats (a practice that would last until 1999).

Settled in Manicaragua, the quiet and unassuming ex-ballplayer remained entirely out of the limelight for the next three and a half decades. The hoopla surrounding the Golden Anniversary of the National Series in 2010-11 brought little media attention to Abreu’s achievements. Still, he did reemerge in public for a lengthy Havana national television interview in April 2012 during a pre-game broadcast before the second game of an Industriales-Ciego de Avila championship playoff series. The still-hearty 76-year old veteran spoke eloquently about his skills in combating early-era league hitters, his own particular philosophy of pitching, and the vast differences between the athletes of his own time and the modern day.16

When Cuban League fans and enthusiasts today speak of the great hurlers of the past half-century, even the best-informed have little memory of Abreu. His reputation pales alongside these other luminaries:

• Rogelio García: a 200-game winner in Pinar del Río and all-time National Series and Selective Series strikeout king;
• Braudilio Vinent: Cuban League career leader in shutouts and author of numerous important international triumphs in the 1970s and 1980s;
• José Ariel Contreras, owner of an unblemished 13-0 mark in top-level international tournaments before abandoning Cuba in 2003 for a solid big league career;
• Pedro Luis Lazo, whose 2006 stellar bullpen effort against celebrated Dominican big leaguers vaulted Cuba into the finals of the first World Baseball Classic;
• José Antonio Huelga, decorated by President Castro after a heroic 1970 IBAF World Cup victory in Colombia over the Americans and future big-leaguer Burt Hooton.

Yet even if what Abreu once accomplished has seemingly been relegated to the dustbin of Cuban League history, it can never be entirely erased. So far his signature feats have not been matched – and will most likely never be topped. And as the first (and only) to achieve the double no-hit rarity in his homeland, Aquino Abreu therefore holds a lasting place in the Cuban baseball annals.

This account was adapted from my more elaborate portrait of Aquino Abreu (including a career statistical table) found in the “Estrellas de Series Nacionales” section of my Cuban League website at www.BaseballdeCuba.com. I am indebted to Rory Costello for his skillful editing that helped condense and strengthen this version of the Abreu story. And also to Cuban journalist Martin Hacthoun in Havana for verifying several biographical details during his October 2012 telephone interview with Aquino Abreu. An updated version of this biography appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

• Related link: “Aquino Abreu: Baseball’s Other Double No-Hit Pitcher,” by Peter C. Bjarkman (Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal)
  

Sources

Alfonso López, Felix Julio. Con las bases llenas: Béisbol, historia y revolución. Havana, Cuba: Editorial Cientifico-Técnica, 2008.

Barros, Sigfredo. “La hazaña de Aquino Abreu,” Granma 51 Serie Nacional Webpage (http://granma.cubaweb.cu/eventos/51serie/noticias/html)

Bjarkman, Peter C. A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company Publishers, 2007. See in particular Chapter 8: Cuba’s Revolutionary Baseball (1962-2005).

_____. “Vladimir Baños Provides First No-Hitter of Cuba’s Golden Anniversary Season,” internet column for www.BaseballdeCuba.com (December 28, 2010) (http://www.baseballdecuba.com/newsContainer.asp?id=2345)

_____. “Cuban League Witnesses Historical “Schiller Rule” Tandem No-Hitter,” internet column for www.BaseballdeCuba.com (March 14, 2012) (http://www.baseballdecuba.com/newsite/NewsContainer.asp?id=2763)

Garay, Osvaldo Rojas. “La inedita hombrada de Aquino Abreu,” Blog de Las Avispas de Santiago de Cuba (http://lasavispas-sc.blogspot.com/2011/01/la-inedita-hombrada-de-aquino-abreu.html)

Green, Ernest J. “Johnny Vander Meer’s Third No-Hitter,” The Baseball Research Journal, Volume 41:1 (Spring 2012), 37-41.

Guia Oficial de Béisbol Cubano 1966 (National Series VI). Havana: Editorial Deportes (INDER), 1966.

Guia Oficial de Béisbol Cubano 2010-2011 (National Series L). Havana: Editorial Deportes (INDER), 2012.

Johnson, Lloyd and Miles Wolff (editors). The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball. Second Edition. Durham, NC: Baseball America, 1997.

Padura, Leonardo and Raúl Arce. Estrellas del Béisbol. Havana: Editorial Abril, 1989. (Chapter 5: “Aquino Abreu … sin hits … ni carreras,” p. 74-83.)

Stang, Mark. “Matching Johnny Vander Meer ….. a pair of near misses,” Mark Stang Baseball Books, July 27, 2009 (http://markstangbaseballbooks.com/node/62)

Toledo Menéndez, Dagoberto Miguel. Béisbol Revolucionario Cubano, La Más Grande Hazaña – Aquino Abreu. Havana: Editorial Deportes, 2006.

Photo Credits

Author’s Collection

Notes

“Wish we had him. He is not colored.”1

Those were the words that Frank Bancroft, the Cincinnati Reds’ business manager, wrote to team president and National Commission Chairman Garry Herrmann in 1911 about Rafael Almeida. The Reds were in the midst of acquiring Almeida and fellow Cuban player Armando Marsans, and, as the first two Cubans to play major-league baseball, their signings marked a significant milestone in terms of who could participate in white Organized Baseball at its top level. However, as evidenced in Bancroft’s letter, Almeida’s presence on the Reds roused the suspicions of the league’s white-supremacist gatekeepers, and questions of his perceived skin color and racial background dominated much of his short playing career in the National League.

Almeida and Marsans traveled similar paths to the Reds. Born in Havana on July 30, 1887, Almeida was the child of a wealthy Cuban family, a background that would form the crux of many later battles over his racial “fitness” for white professional leagues in the United States. Wealth and whiteness were linked closely in nineteenth-century Cuba, and Almeida’s family benefited from a racial hierarchy in society and politics that privileged whiteness. Racial knowledge in Cuba differed greatly from that of the United States, a nation simultaneously recovering from an aborted Reconstruction project, indulging its imperialist impulses (including that which compelled the United States to fight for possession of Cuba), and welcoming thousands of immigrants from some European countries while shutting out completely nations with populations comprising people of color. Almeida’s career in both Cuba and the United States occurred in and engaged with all of these historical trends.

At the age of 16, Almeida made his professional debut for a local Havana club, and he spent the next eight years plying his infield craft in a variety of Cuban leagues and in winter series with a mix of black American players and Cubans. Many of the teams for which Almeida played in Cuba fielded players who would go on to become Negro Leaguers and major leaguers, including Marsans, Al Cabrera, and the legendary José Mendez. Almeida likewise gained experience playing with and against players from the United States in occasional series against Negro League and major league teams, and also from playing with a handful of Americans — black and white — who had come to Cuba during the United States’ occupation from 1906 to 1909.2

Almeida’s Almendares club won the championship in 1905, behind his strong play and that of Marsans, and it would be the only Cuban team of the three traditional teams in the circuit — Almendares, Fé, and Habana — to largely field only Cuban players for the next several years. Fé and Habana saw an influx of American players in 1907, with Habana featuring talent from the white major leagues and Fé boasting Rube Foster and other black baseball greats.3 Historian Roberto González Echeverría notes the nationalist underpinnings of the Almendares-Fé contests that decided the champion that season: Almendares were the Cuban darlings, and the Fé club garnered the unsubtle nickname intervencionistas. Almeida’s first experience playing with American players came in competition against them, and not as a teammate.

While he was not a prolific hitter, his overall solid performances for the storied Almendares club earned Almeida recognition from touring players and managers from the United States. When Negro League and major-league clubs sojourned in Cuba, Almeida faced them, and Almeida, Marsans, and Mendez often beat them. Almendares steeled themselves against the American incursions: They fielded almost exclusively Cuban players, defeated American teams, and impressed both their fans and their opponents with their play.

The third baseman Almeida starred in these contests, impressively enough in the eyes of some American gatekeepers to garner his first taste of baseball in the United States. That came in 1908, the product of a peculiar struggle over the talents of Almeida and Marsans. The previous season, minor-league clubs from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Britain, Connecticut, both placed claims on the two players; Garry Herrmann, as chairman of the National Commission, ruled in favor of Scranton, but Almeida and Marsans chose not to report to the team. They signed with New Britain.4

That season in New Britain, Almeida was the 11th-ranked hitter, but Adrian Burgos recounts some of the violence — physical and psychological — that the Cubans on the New Britain roster had to endure en route to that successful mark. Opposing pitchers aimed to hurt the players at bat, and fans rained boos and taunts upon them.5 Such abuse anticipated the treatment faced by Jackie Robinson and the host of integration pioneers after him.

Almeida, for his part, played well. In 326 at-bats over 86 games, the infielder recorded 95 hits (good for a .291 average) and slugged five home runs while playing steady defense. His very participation was in jeopardy for the 1909 season, however, as the league convened to decide whether it would draw the color line more starkly.

The Connecticut League had actually been somewhat of a haven for black players since the 1880s, and had at one point hosted an all-black team featuring legends Frank Grant and Sol White.6 Teams made up of black players had competed against white teams often in the league’s history, some even fashioning themselves under the moniker “Black Cubans” — a common practice at the time, even though the players were black Americans.

The league eventually relinquished plans to bar black players (likely including black Latinos), but it folded only a few years later. Almeida played for New Britain in 1909 and 1910, hitting around .300 in both seasons.

The Cincinnati Reds had lost seven of 13 games while touring Cuba in the winter of 1908 — not an uncommon occurrence for major-league clubs barnstorming in the Caribbean — and saw firsthand the exceptional skill many of their opponents possessed. While there, the Reds noted certain players who might be major-league material. Management settled upon a project to bring some of those players stateside — a pioneering move — but, as with the Dodgers’ signing of Jackie Robinson decades later, their chief fount of inspiration was Garry Herrmann’s pocketbook, not progressive sensibilities.

Almeida and Marsans were already playing with the New Britain club when Herrmann made his move to bring a few Cuban players aboard. However, the two ballplayers had made an impression during the Reds’ time in Cuba, while they played for Almendares. Almeida found himself the beneficiary of that project, and he and Marsans signed with the Reds in June 1911. In its report on the transaction, the Washington Post cited the players’ “good style” of fielding and their good hitting seasons.7 Bancroft, the business manager of the Reds, had clearly become enamored with that style when he visited the country during barnstorming tours.

Anticipating the intense suspicion regarding Almeida’s racial background, Bancroft and the Reds issued a barrage of letters and press insisting on his whiteness. The club called the players “pure Spaniards, without a trace of colored blood,” but the most infamous of justifications came via the pen of the Cincinnati Enquirer: The two Cubans were of “a noble Spanish race, with no ignoble African blood to place a blot or spot on their escutcheons. Permit me to introduce two of the purest bars of Castilian soap that ever floated to these shores.”8 Bancroft, Clark Griffith, and Herrmann had the power to shape the color line to their desires; clearly, their desires were to hem it as close to whiteness as possible. They denied the opportunity to expand Organized Baseball to more players of color, and their rhetoric had significant ramifications for Latinos who sought to play major-league ball.

There were others with stakes in the success of Almeida and Marsans who sought to define their prospective baseball careers in other terms. Robert Peterson, in Only the Ball Was White, relayed the comments of a black newspaper upon the signings: “Now that the first shock is over it would not be surprising to see a Cuban a few shades darker than Almeida and Marsans break into the professional ranks. … With the admissions of Cubans of a darker hue in the two big leagues it would then be easy for colored players who are citizens of this country to get into fast company.”9 The Reds’ language denied this possibility, however. For the next three decades, Cubans and other foreign-born Latinos were whitened in the press, and Almeida’s signing would be only a half-measure of integration.

Almeida and Marsans finally debuted on July 4, 1911, against the Cubs at their pre-Wrigley Field ballpark on the West Side. One journalist noted that Almeida secured his spot on the club in August by doing “what few players would attempt”: getting hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to coax in a run.10 The reporter noted that Almeida received an “awful blow” that “nearly put him down and out.” Almeida’s violent plunk was among the first of the dangerous and racially motivated hit-by-pitches players of color would face for decades.

Almeida’s first month with the club met some skepticism from local and national media, however. In a syndicated piece, the Boston Globe wrote in July that, while “practically certain” that Marsans would stay with the Reds, Almeida had been injured and “unable to show his full worth.”11 By July, however, there was at least some belief that Almeida would be a key part of the Reds. Recounting a game against St. Louis at the Palace of the Fans — in the final season of its service as the Reds’ home park — the Cincinnati Enquirer praised Almeida and Marsans, noting that they “were greeted with great applause,” and reporting on Almeida’s strong arm and speed, saying he “threw like a shot from third base and beat out an infield hit.”12

Jack Ryder, the Reds beat writer near the start of his 30-year career with the Enquirer, continued to relay Almeida’s performance and the Reds fans’ reactions to his play. In a characteristic column, Ryder wrote of Almeida’s “timely hitting” as a “great [factor] in the Reds’ success” that day, driving in the two winning runs. A few lines below, he captured the crowd’s feelings and alluded to Almeida’s purported racial makeup: “Almeida was greeted with rousing cheers from the populace, and responded by doffing his cap in a polite Castilian manner as he left the field. His double was one of the longest and hardest hits of the day, and came just when it was most needed to give the Reds the edge on the contest.”13

This sort of writing is emblematic of how many tied Almeida’s skill to his perceived white professionalism and class background, a theme common with Latino players in the pre-Jackie Robinson era. Ryder directly linked Almeida’s good performance, his favor among the Cincinnati faithful, and his “Castilian manner,” an important schema of thought for those invested in upholding the color line. When faced with the prospect of those who didn’t fit the black/white binary upon which the segregated major leagues were built, it became vital for those white gatekeepers to engage in the rhetorical whitening of those players. Rafael Almeida’s major-league experiences are an important piece in the story of Cubans gaining entry — or failing to gain entry — to white Organized Baseball in the United States.

The next two years were trying for the infielder, as he bounced between Cincinnati’s big-league club and minor-league affiliates. Almeida’s batting line dropped from a good .313/.383/.769 — good for an OPS 18 percent better than league average — to .220/.281/.390 in only 65 plate appearances. The infielder found himself relegated to the Reds’ minor-league club in Montreal, coincidentally the same team for whom Jackie Robinson would debut in 1945.

Almeida performed well enough for the Montreal Royals to merit a larger role on the 1913 Reds, and he capitalized by hitting .262/.324/.392. But Herrmann was willing to let Almeida depart the Reds for a modest sum in 1913, when he asked $1,800 from a Nashville minor-league team for the infielder’s services. The deal was never consummated, but Almeida did return to Montreal, and there he learned to play center field. One report summed up a meeting between the erstwhile Red and his ex-teammates, including Marsans, stating that Almeida’s “presence made the rest of the Reds feel what a big mistake was made in letting him go so suddenly.”14

The 5-foot-9, 164-pound Almeida played third base most of the time he was with the Reds, with a couple of games at shortstop, one at second base, and three in center field. He had an unfortunate career fielding percentage of .904. His major-league career comprised 102 games spread over the three seasons, and he finished with a career batting mark of .270.

Ultimately, it seemed that Almeida’s greatest sin was that he was not Marsans. His pioneering counterpart starred in the National League for several years, and Almeida often faced unfair comparisons to the outfielder who shined. While Marsans would go on to be a key figure in the case of the National League against the upstart Federal League — a case he lost, in part, due to Reds manager Clark Griffith’s testimony — Almeida quietly departed the Reds and the National League to continue his career in American minor-league ball and in the Cuban league. Almeida donned the Almendares and Habana uniforms for many years after his major-league career had stalled, always finding a spot on the field at Almendares Park.

Then a major-league veteran, Almeida patrolled the outfield into the 1920s, and remained active in Cuban sporting culture. He shepherded the amateur Vedado Tennis Club to several pennant victories in the mid-’20s and helmed the winning Cuban national club at the 1930 Central American Games, and his baseball oeuvre warranted induction into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1939 class.15

Almeida’s 102 games with the Reds comprise the centerpiece of his baseball career, but the infielder played a quarter-century in Cuban and American baseball leagues, found himself located in various spots on the spectrum of the color line, and achieved a great deal on the diamond. During his life, his legacy as a pioneer often went unrecognized for reasons rooted in lingering white supremacy. A New York Times assessment of the precarious position in which Cuban major leaguers found themselves in the wake of the Cuban Revolution recounted the tale of Almeida’s signing with the Reds, but removed any semblance of autonomy for Almeida. “The instigator of the immigration was Clark Griffith. … A year before he established his regime in Washington, Griff was managing Cincinnati. It was from there in 1911 that he hired his first Cuban, Rafael Almeida. He was bought sight unseen, a mail-order purchase.”16

Knowledge of the actual circumstances of Almeida’s signing had clearly atrophied — he had played several seasons in the United States, and the Reds themselves had personally seen him before Herrmann inked him to a contract. Fortunately, Almeida’s legacy has been rehabilitated over the past few decades as historical research on the participation of foreign-born Latinos the major and minor leagues has grown. He’s now rightly recognized as the pioneer he was. Almeida died in Havana on March 18, 1969, at the age of 80 and a decade after his home country cut ties to the country in which he was an early integration pioneer.

By the time of his 1939 induction into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame, Almeida had become one of the legends of Cuban baseball’s golden era, joining Marsans, Mendez, Cristóbal Torriente, and others in representing the nation’s diverse racial demography. Almeida was emblematic of the inductees: a participant for decades in the Cuban leagues, the American major leagues, and the American minor leagues, and a representative of the nation’s sizable impact on transnational baseball culture.

Notes

1 Frank Bancroft correspondence, “1080 1914” box, Garry Herrmann Papers, National Baseball Library and Archive.

2 Rob Ruck, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), 12-13.

3 Roberto González Echevarría, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 127.

4 Adrian Burgos Jr., Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 92.

5 Burgos, 93.

6 Steve Thornton, “Swinging for the Fences: Connecticut’s Black Baseball Greats,” ConnecticutHistory.org, https://connecticuthistory.org/swinging-for-the-fences-connecticuts-black-baseball-greats.

7 “Reds Buy Cuban Players,” Washington Post, June 16, 1911.

8 Burgos, 90.

9 Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York: Random House, 1970), 61-62.

10 “Gets Hit; Has a Job Now,” Washington Post, August 29, 1911.

11 “Cincinnati Owners to Give Several Men Another Try in Hope of Bracing the Reds,” Boston Globe, July 20, 1911.

12 Jack Ryder, “One Round: Enough for the Cards,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 24, 1911.

13 Ibid.

14 “Cuban Almeida Calls on His Fellow Countrymen and Old Team Mates,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 14, 1913.

15 Echevarria, 277.

16 Arthur Daley, “Sports of the Times: Decision Is Castro’s,” New York Times, January 6, 1961.

Nonetheless, Santos had the talent. His son and grandson – Rubén Amaro Sr. and Ruben Jr. – were in the majors for 11 and eight years, respectively. Two members of the clan’s fourth generation were chosen in the amateur draft before going to the college ranks. “Baseball is our way of life in the Amaro family,” said Rubén Sr.3

Santos Amaro played 14 winter seasons in his homeland from 1936-37 to 1949-50. He was in Mexico during the summers from the late 1920s through 1955, including at least 17 seasons in the Mexican League. He was also a manager in both Cuba and his adopted home, and he eventually became a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in each nation.

Originally a catcher, Amaro also played third base, first base, and across the outfield – but his true home as a player was in right field, thanks to his powerful throwing arm.4 Fermín “Mike” Guerra, a catcher for many years in Cuba and the majors, told Cuban baseball historian Roberto González Echevarría that Amaro’s arm was the strongest he had ever seen in an outfielder.5 Amaro consistently hit around .300, though he hit mainly line drives and had surprisingly little home-run power for his size. “He never lifted the ball,” said Rubén Sr., “but he was a strong gap hitter who used all fields, got lots of extra bases, and was very conscientious with men in scoring position.”6

Amaro was a man of regal appearance and bearing. The Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame described him as “a complete gentleman outside the diamond, but on the field of play he practiced aggressive baseball, because he did not like to lose; he always wanted to be a winner and always gave his maximum effort to achieve this.”7 He was a member of eight champion teams in Cuba plus at least five more in Mexico – three confirmed as player, one more as player-manager, and another as manager alone. Author Milton Jamail put Amaro in a special category along with three other men he had the good fortune to interview: Curt Flood, Vic Power, and Willie Wells. “All fought the discrimination they faced through the quality of their play on the field and their incredible strength and dignity off it.”8 These attributes served Amaro well as a manager. He also passed them on to his family.

Santos Amaro Oliva was born on March 14, 1908, in Aguacate. This place – its name means avocado in Spanish – is a village in the former province of La Habana.9 It is in the western part of the country, between the Cuban capital and the city of Matanzas. When Santos was a youth, it had between 2,000 and 3,000 inhabitants. As was true of much of Cuba, the area was agricultural. “My grandmother’s family cultivated rice, mainly,” said Rubén Sr.10

Santos Amaro shared his given name with his father, a merchant seaman who came from Portugal. Baseball’s influence was already visible in the family. Author Nick Wilson wrote, “He was following in the footsteps of his father, who played at the turn of the century. When I interviewed Santos at the age of 92, he could not remember whether his father had confined himself to pitching or had played many positions as was customary in those early days.” Wilson added, “But there were many things about his own career which he could recall with clarity.”11 Though Amaro died not long after Wilson spoke to him, Rubén Sr.’s own excellent memory strongly complements what can be gathered from other sources.

Amaro’s mother, Regla Oliva, was (according to Rubén Sr.) “always a homemaker, a great cook, very able – doing everything to raise cattle and children when very young. She died in her sleep in Cuba when she was 114 years old, very healthy. I had just talked to her on the phone four days before she passed away. Abuelita Regla always mentioned that she was born in Cuba, but her parents both were Abencerraje Moors from Africa – nomads. They were slaves brought to Cuba and were given their freedom there, got married, and had three children.”12

Santos was the fourth of five children. He had three older brothers, named Mario, Rogelio, and Elpidio; he was followed by a sister named Visitación (“Niña”). “The family moved from Madruga, a bigger town near Aguacate, to Luyanó/Reparto Rocafort [neighborhoods in the city of Havana] when my father was 13 years old,” said Rubén Sr. “The oldest brothers, Mario and Rogelio, started work to support the family. My grandfather had passed away.”13

Santos became an apprentice carpenter, learning the craft of cabinetmaking and detail work.14 “He played baseball in the placeres, or sandlots, when young,” remembered Rubén Sr. “He was always a catcher – too skinny and too tall, but a great arm. His best friend growing up was Kid Chocolate, one of the greatest boxers of Cuba – very small, totally opposite.”15

With a group of other young Cubans, Santos went to Mexico in 1928 with his first professional team, a traveling outfit called Bacardí. Three teammates also went on to play many years in Mexico: pitcher Alcibíades Palma, catcher Rafael “Sungo” Pedrozo, and shortstop Marcelino Bauza. The manager was a stocky little man named Luis Sansirena; he too spent decades in Mexico as a manager and coach. Amaro earned $10 a week, plus room and board.16

In 1929 Amaro met a young woman named Josefina Mora (1910-2007), a member of the Vera Cruz Women’s Professional Baseball Club.17 They were married in 1930 in Veracruz – “by a justice of the peace,” Rubén Sr. remembered. “They had a Catholic Church wedding in the Cathedral of Veracruz in 1951. It was my 15th birthday gift.”18 Santos and “Doña Pepa” had two sons. Mario was born in 1931 in Veracruz; Rubén was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico in 1936.19 Around 1956, with both of their sons grown men, the couple adopted a seven-month-old baby girl named Ana Teresa, fondly known as “Ana Banana.”

As Rubén Sr. told author Stuart Gustafson many years later, his parents were a study in contrasts. Santos was tall (1.92 meters, or roughly 6-feet-3½) with dark coffee-colored skin. As an adult, he filled out to 95 kilos (210 pounds).20 Josefina was petite (5-feet-1) and fair (her grandparents on both sides were Spanish). Rubén and Mario wound up in between at 5-feet-10½. Doña Pepa was the one with whom the boys practiced their baseball skills, because Santos stressed education above all.21 “He only had an elementary education,” said Rubén Sr. in 2010, “but he told me baseball players have a lot of empty time. He used to read all the time and played with words. When we were doing our homework, he’d come by and say, ‘Fix that. That’s not done properly.’ There would be no playing baseball until we were ready to face the world otherwise. He would preach to us every day. ‘Get prepared. And when you embark on a task, don’t look back.’ ”22

This gentle but firm fatherly guidance continued when Rubén Sr. was in his early years in the minor leagues. Amaro spent the summers of 1956 and 1957 with Houston. Over half a century later, he recalled that he was ready to quit because of the racial and ethnic taunts of some Texas League fans – “the vituperation,” in his own words. Jim Crow laws were also humiliating. But he stuck with it after Santos Amaro calmly reminded his son that he had originally let him leave school on the condition that he do whatever it took to reach the majors.23

Mario Amaro was a skillful baseball player too, but he chose instead to focus on medicine (he also played professional soccer in Cuba while in medical school).24 In 1965, Rubén Sr. said, “No professional sport is as highly regarded in Mexico as it is in the US. A doctor, a lawyer, an engineer has more respect than any baseball player. I have a brother here who is a doctor, and everywhere we go people say, ‘This is Ruben Amaro’s brother.’ But back home, when people see me, they say, ‘Ah, there goes Dr. Amaro’s brother.’ ”25

Another intriguing insight into Santos Amaro the autodidact came from another great Cuban player, Hall of Famer Martín Dihigo. El Inmortal was born two years before Amaro and they played against each other in Cuba in the 1920s. Dihigo later became a teammate in other nations, godfather to Rubén Sr. – and a fellow member of the Freemasons.26 A 1938 letter from Dihigo is visible on the website of the auction firm Leland’s. In it, he described his efforts to absorb the knowledge contained in a three-volume Masonic encyclopedia.27 Amaro must have done the same – “he was a Past Master later on in his life,” said Rubén Sr.28

After barnstorming almost two years with Bacardí, Amaro joined the Mexican League team Tigres de Comintra in 1930, according to Rubén Sr. This team won the league championship. Unfortunately, further documentation has not yet surfaced; La Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano’s records start in 1937.

Though his features did not fit the “African” stereotype, Amaro’s complexion meant that he encountered racism while playing with a barnstorming team in the United States in 1932. By one account, he did not wish to return.29 “But in 1935, he went on an eighty-game, fourteen-state tour of the United States with … La Junta de Nuevo Laredo.”30 He received some press in the U.S.; for example, the Wisconsin State Journal noted Amaro as the “star catcher of the Junta baseball team” and “long dusky rightfielder.” It also referred to him as “the Babe Ruth of the Mexican outfit” even though he was a line-drive hitter.31

Santos was not allowed to play much while the tour was in Texas. The prejudice he faced in the U.S. apparently killed his desire to play in the Negro Leagues. Yet Afro-Cubans faced bias even at home – in baseball and in society at large. Cuba’s high-level Amateur League, which exceeded pro ball in popularity for much of the first half of the 20th century, remained segregated until 1959. Two integrated amateur leagues eventually sprang up in Cuba, but not until the 1940s. Mexico was a more welcoming environment. In addition to greater opportunities on the field, several black Cuban players married Mexican women. One was Pedro Orta, whose son Jorge became a major leaguer from 1972 to 1987.32

Despite his limited action in the Lone Star State, Amaro still made an impression on Texan fans who saw him in Nuevo Laredo. In 1965 a man from the border city of McAllen named Bill Walsh wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated to that effect. It read in part, “In his prime Santos Amaro could have played on any ball club anywhere in the world. There was one reason he did not: he was black. Other Cubans had played in the majors, but they were always light in color. Santos could perform at any spot on the baseball field, except as a pitcher. In 1936 I saw him in a four-game series against an American League All-Star team headed by Rogers Hornsby, and including such players as Pinky Higgins, Red Kress, Eric McNair, and pitchers such as Ted Lyons and Jack Knott. In this series at Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Santos played in the outfield, and in the four games he got 13 hits.”

Walsh continued, “But it was as a catcher that Santos was at his best. I have seen [Gabby] Hartnett, [Yogi] Berra and [Bill] Dickey, and none of them was any better than Santos Amaro. You cannot say anything about a baseball catcher better than that.”33 Mexican sources suggest that Amaro’s height hindered him behind the plate and was a factor in his position switch.34 Perhaps his athleticism was better suited to other spots, though – Amaro’s size and leaping ability won him the nickname El Canguro – “The Kangaroo.”35 By another account, though, it came in the 1930s as he was running to try to catch a team bus that had left him behind at a restaurant.36 Amaro’s contemporary, pitcher Conrado Marrero, cited skin color as well as stature.37

In 1937 Amaro went to play in the Dominican Republic. That was a remarkable year for Dominican baseball; the season was dedicated to the re-election of dictator Rafael Trujillo, and Ciudad Trujillo assembled a powerhouse team, luring the best Negro Leaguers of the day to come down. The league’s other teams competed, at least to a degree. Águilas Cibaeñas of Santiago signed Amaro plus Martín Dihigo and another fellow Cuban, Luis E. Tiant. With all the foreign reinforcements, there were relatively few Dominicans in the league, but the Santiago club had one of the nation’s early stars, Horacio “Rabbit” Martínez (Juan “Tetelo” Vargas was with Ciudad Trujillo). Amaro displayed power that was unusual for him; he tied Dihigo for the league lead in homers with four.38

The Dominican pro circuit collapsed after the excesses of 1937, however, not to reappear for another 14 years. Amaro then went to Venezuela in the summer of 1938, as did various other Latino ballplayers. A book called Historia del Béisbol en el Zulia, which focuses on the game in Venezuela’s westernmost state, notes that he joined the Centauros team.39 This locale remained important to the Amaro family over the years. Rubén Sr. became a manager and executive for the winter-ball team Águilas del Zulia, and Rubén Jr. played with that club for six seasons.

Rubén Sr. said that Santos “started to play in Venezuela with the Centauros, but didn’t have any success and they sent him to the other pro league, the Central League, with the Valdés club. He won the batting title. The other teams were Venezuela, Premier, Vencedor, and Vargas.”40 It was a brief schedule, though; Venezuelan baseball historian José Antero Núñez showed that Amaro was 13 for 31 (.419). He appeared in nine of the club’s 15 games.41

According to Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1878-1961, Amaro’s first Cuban winter team was Santa Clara. He was there for five seasons, starting in 1936-37. (The Great Depression hit Cuban baseball hard in the early 1930s; the 1933-34 season was canceled.) In his second year, the Leopardos won the league championship with a lineup that also starred Negro Leaguer Sam Bankhead, who won the Cuban batting title. The staff ace was US Hall of Famer Ray “Jabao” Brown. The 1938-39 squad – featuring the great Josh Gibson as well as Brown – repeated as champs. “My father’s time in Santa Clara was his favorite,” said Rubén Sr. “It was a prelude to arriving at the top of his game around great players.”42

The first available Mexican League records for “Santicos” Amaro (as he was also known) come from 1939, when he was 31 years old. He joined Águila de Veracruz. In 1940 Águila was not in the league; Amaro played 14 games for the Veracruz Azules (Blues). This team was the league champion, which was not surprising – it was loaded with several of the all-time great Negro Leaguers: Josh Gibson, Willie Wells, Leon Day, Ray Dandridge, and Cool Papa Bell, as well as Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. Martín Dihigo was also with the club as player-manager. Mexican magnate Jorge Pasquel had bought the club before the season, moved it to Mexico City, and persuaded Dihigo to come aboard.43

“He always mentioned the superb experience of playing against and besides players of that caliber,” said Rubén Sr., “but two players that he considered above everyone else of that era were Martín Dihigo and Alejandro Oms, both from Cuba. His favorite players from the USA were in this order: James Bell (Cool Papa), Buck Leonard, Raymond Dandridge, Roy Campanella, and Josh Gibson.

“Pitchers: Dihigo, Satch Paige, Max Lanier, Ramón Bragaña, Lázaro Salazar, Vidal López (Venezuela), Connie Marrero, Tomás de la Cruz, Theolic Smith, Sal Maglie, Sandalio Consuegra, Agapito Mayor, Indian Torres. Whenever my father talked to his peers about their times, those names were always at the top of his conversations.”44

After his year with the Azules, Amaro then played seven-plus seasons with the Tampico Alijadores45 from 1941. Tampico was one of the better teams in Mexico during the 1940s, winning back-to-back championships in 1945 and 1946 under manager Armando Marsáns, one of the early Cubans to play in the majors. Amaro also gained his first experience as a manager in Tampico. He led the Alijadores for part of the 1943 season (replacing Willie Wells) and part of 1947 (taking over for Marsáns). “I remember the days in Tampico. We lived there more than five years,” said Rubén Sr. “When Tampico left the Mexican League [the club folded partway through the 1948 season], he went back to the Azules.”46

As of the 1941-42 Cuban winter season, Amaro was with the Almendares Alacranes. That team was the league champion, and so were the Scorpions of 1942-43, 1944-45, and 1946-47. During this time, Amaro also appeared in the American Series of 1942, when the Brooklyn Dodgers came to Havana for spring training and lost three out of five games to a Cuban all-star team.

In 1947-48, Cuba had an “alternative” league called La Liga Nacional (or Players Federation). The circuit, which lasted just one year, featured players who had become “outlaws” in the US because of their association with the Mexican League in 1946. Amaro played first with Alacranes, and then he went to the club called Cuba in a trade that also involved Sal Maglie. Amaro took over as manager for Cuba, succeeding Napoleón Reyes, who “retired on doctor’s orders. The combined work of player and manager brought a breakdown.”47

Amaro then rejoined Almendares in 1948-49, playing his last two winters at home for the Scorpions. Both of these teams became league champions and thus went on to play in the first and second Caribbean Series. Though mostly Cuban, there were notable Americans, such as future TV star Chuck Connors and Al Gionfriddo. In fact, Amaro was signed to replace Connors in January 1950 – allegedly after manager Fermín Guerra released the Dodgers farmhand “for failing to respect training rules.”48 It is remarkable to note that one man from the 1949-50 roster still survived as of 2012: Conrado Marrero, at 101 the oldest living major leaguer. (Catcher Andrés Fleitas died in December 2011 at the age of 95.)

Amaro ranked sixth in the history of Cuba’s main professional league in hits (725) and ninth in RBIs (321). He batted over .300 five times in his career there, finishing with a lifetime average of .294 – though he had just 12 homers. (Total games played are not available.) He wasn’t quite through as a player at home, though – in 1950-51, another new league sprang up, again called La Liga Nacional. Background on this league is available in Roberto González Echevarría’s book The Pride of Havana.49 Peter Bjarkman, historian of Cuban baseball, summed it up as follows:

“By that time, the ban had been lifted on [all] former Mexican leaguers, but the overall labor dispute had reduced the number of jobs in the Cuban League for older native Cuban players. With the assistance of Martín Dihigo, some of the over-the-hill veterans organized a separate league in Havana which was considered a minor circuit, not a rival to the normal Cuban League, and drew little attention. Amaro played in that league and did manage the club called Fé (the teams were all named after historic teams from the pre-1920s Cuban League).”50

Rubén Amaro, Sr.’s memory tallies with the historians’ description. “My father was active with Almendares until 1950. In 1951 there was an experiment to see if Cuba could support two professional leagues, the other one playing at the old Tropical Stadium. My father managed the team La Fé; lots of young Cuban players that couldn’t make the big season. Four teams formed the league. The people didn’t support that league, they had a much better show in El Cerro Stadium, better than the big leagues. The best black players, the best white players from the big leagues and the best Cuban players at the time, all in one ballpark distributed in four teams.”51

Over in Mexico, Amaro came back to Águila in 1949 and spent his remaining seven summers as a player at home in Veracruz. The Amaro family traveled between Mexico and Cuba until settling permanently in Mexico in 1951. “My father was finished as a player in Cuba,” said Rubén Sr., “but he was going to continue to play in the Mexican League with the Veracruz team in the summer, as well as managing in the Central Veracruz League in the winter.”52

Santos was always a Cuban at heart, though. As Rubén Sr. said, “Both Pipo and Mima [as the Amaro sons called their parents] traveled several times to see their sons and grandchildren. My father never gave up his Cuban citizenship. We all tried to make him Mexican. It was easier for him to travel anywhere with a Mexican passport.”53 Yet it’s worth noting that Amaro liked to remind everyone about the historical significance of the first Mexican-born major leaguer, Baldomero “Mel” Almada.54

Amaro succeeded Martín Dihigo as manager of Águila in 1951 and led the club to the Mexican League championship in 1952. Though well into his 40s by that time, Amaro still played on occasion. His last five games as an active player took place in 1955. Over his documented summer career in Mexico, he hit .314 with 32 homers and 705 RBIs in 1,186 games.

Amaro had also stayed active as a player in Mexican winter ball. His team was the Orizaba Cerveceros, or Brewers – this city had long been known as “the Mexican Milwaukee.”55 He was manager only in 1951-52, but he had a fine season as player-manager in 1952-53, when the circuit went from four to six teams and became known as the Veracruz Winter League. He batted .360 (45 for 125).56 As Cuban sportswriter Fausto Miranda later remembered, Amaro liked to say, “It’s not age, it’s the shape you can stay in.”57

Dihigo returned to the helm for Águila partway through the 1956 season, and Amaro remained with the team as a coach.58 Santos managed part of the 1959 season for the Mexico City Tigres, but was replaced at the beginning of June after the club got off to a dreadful start.59 He came back to Águila as third-base coach,60 and became manager once again in 1960. He spent four more summers as skipper in his home city, winning another league championship in 1961.

In the winter of 1962-63, Amaro managed Jalapa of the Veracruz League, a team that included his son Rubén. But when the governor of Veracruz state withdrew financial support for the Jalapa franchise, it folded, and the league’s three other teams followed suit.61 The following winter, Amaro set off to manage in another nation: Nicaragua.62 His stay with the Oriental team was brief, though; he stepped down during the Christmas holidays.63 Even Rubén Sr. couldn’t add anything about that chapter of his career.

Amaro started the 1964 summer season with León of the Mexican Center League, a lower-level circuit. He was replaced as manager by Dan Bankhead, the former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher. Back in the ’30s, Dan’s older brother Sam had been Amaro’s teammate with Santa Clara and an opponent with Ciudad Trujillo. Amaro also managed Reynosa in the Mexican League that summer. The following year, 1965, was his last as a skipper. He managed Aguascalientes in the Mexican Center League for part of the season.

“I believe Pipo finished his career in baseball after the 1965 Aguascalientes job,” said Rubén Sr. “He started work with Rubio Exsome, a construction engineering firm in Veracruz, after that.” Amaro also worked for Deportivo Veracruzano, the city’s foremost sporting institution. His second career continued for 22 years.64

Santos and Pepa Amaro continued to live in their Veracruz home until late 1997. They stayed for a couple of months with a niece, but Rubén Sr. said, “In February 1998, my brother Mario and I decided to put both Mima and Pipo in the nursing home Residencias La Paz under Spanish nuns. Mima suffered a fall trying to clean windows at her house, broke her hip, recuperated very well and we didn’t want them to have any more mishaps. One of the rules of La Paz was that anyone joining them must be able to take care of themselves. If later on they were unable to do that, they could stay. Mima and Pipo continued to travel and visit their family anytime.

“Both lived there until the Lord took them away. Pipo, May 31, 2001, and Mima, March 16, 2007. They were both cremated and their ashes remain together in Veracruz. Dad passed away of natural causes, all the nuns praying and singing around him. Mima fell in her bathroom early one morning, didn’t call for help, broke her femur in two places and left us after three days from the day she fell.”65

Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso, who played for Amaro early in his career, told Nick Wilson, “[Amaro] was a very kind and gentle man. He never hurt anyone.” A Cuban champion boxer, Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos, knew Amaro because he fought out of Mexico after Fidel Castro came to power. Ramos told Wilson, “He attracted people and liked to engage them. He was a guy who liked to have a good time.” Beyond that, Ramos said, “He brought a great glory to us because he was such a great baseball player.66 The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame (in exile) inducted Santos Amaro in 1967. He became a member of the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977. In 2012 he was named part of the fourth class of veterans to join the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame in the Dominican Republic.

In November 2012, 101-year-old Conrado Marrero contributed his opinion of his teammate from six decades past. “Santos Amaro was a serious, decent, and honorable man … one heck of a ballplayer from his cap to his spikes.”67

This biography was riginally published in 2012. An updated version appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin. Subsequently, it was further updated on January 7, 2023, to reflect Santos Amaro’s recognition as a major-leaguer.

Sources

Grateful acknowledgment to Rubén Amaro Sr. for his memories (telephone interview, October 18, 2012, and a series of e-mails from October 31 through November 25, 2012).

Continued thanks to Rogelio Marrero for obtaining the input of his grandfather, Conrado Marrero.

Continued thanks to Jesús Alberto Rubio in Mexico for various details of Santos Amaro’s career. Jesús knew Amaro personally when he lived in Veracruz in the 1970s and early 1980s. He devoted the March 14, 2010, edition of his column “Al Bat” to Amaro.

Pedro Treto Cisneros, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano (Mexico City: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V.: 11th edition, 2011).

Jorge S. Figueredo, Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2003).

Nick Wilson, Early Latino Ballplayers in the United States (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2005).

Photo Credits

Courtesy of Jesús Alberto Rubio collection.

Notes

Sandy — so called for a supposed resemblance to champion boxer Sandy Saddler1 — was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. He also showed great promise in the Negro Leagues, the Dominican Republic, and Triple-A. In the majors, however, he remained a role player, spending just three full summers there along with fractions of four others. In author Peter Golenbock’s view, a language barrier hindered his career.

“Amorós had been one of the greatest players ever to come out of pre-Castro Cuba. If he had spoken English, he certainly would have played more, because in Cuba he was a .300 hitter in a fast league, was fleet in the field, was excellent at stealing bases, and was a good bunter. But he didn’t learn the language, and it was a handicap that kept him from becoming a star. A manager just doesn’t trust employing a player when he isn’t sure whether the guy understands him or not.”2

After his days as a pro ended in Mexico in 1962, Amorós then fell on hard times, running afoul of Fidel Castro. Poverty and ill health marked the last 30 years of his life.

Edmundo Amorós was born on January 30, 1930, in the Pueblo Nuevo district of Matanzas, 50 miles east of Havana.3 This city is known for Afro-Cuban culture. Many people from the area are called “Congos” — which, as author Roberto González Echevarría notes, is “a common (if tasteless) way of referring to someone who is very black. Cuban blacks themselves apply it to each other. . . . Congos are reputed to be short but tough.”4 Amorós, one of many Afro-Cuban ballplayers from Matanzas, was such a man. At 5-feet-7 1/2 and 170 pounds, he had surprising home-run power. The scout who signed him for the Dodgers, Al Campanis, called him “Miracle Wrists.”5

Edmundo was the youngest of six children born to Guillermo Amorós and Carida Isasi. Guillermo, who labored in sugar cane fields, died when his little boy was just 3. Carida supported her family by working in a textile mill. Edmundo attended school for eight years but began working in the mill too at the age of 14.6

The small but speedy youth had played baseball from an early age; he was already talented enough to hold his own with older players in Matanzas. In 1947, when he was 17, the young black man also drew inspiration from his pioneering future teammate. The Dodgers held spring training in Havana that year, and Amorós later remarked, “When I see Jackie Robinson play in my country, I say if he can do it, I can do it too.”7

In the baseball structure of Cuba before Castro, the cutoff point for the Juveniles division was age 20. In 1949, aged 19, Amorós won the national batting title at this level.8 This is significant because even well into his big-league career, newspapers and Topps baseball cards indicated that he was born in 1932. Yet by 1951, Edmundo had turned pro at home. Clearly the prospect shaved a couple of years off his age for U.S. purposes.9

In early 1950, the young outfielder gained international exposure. From February 25 through March 12, the sixth Central American and Caribbean Games took place in Guatemala City. Cuba won all seven of its games in the eight-team baseball tournament — led by Amorós, who hit .370 with six homers and 14 RBIs. Author Peter Bjarkman described Amorós and pitcher Justiniano Garay as “two initially token blacks carried on Cuba’s roster as racial integration slowly and quietly arrived within Cuban amateur baseball circles.”10

Cuba’s Amateur League, a bastion of white-only private social clubs, actually remained segregated until 1959. There was a strange and surprising Catch-22 at work. Black players could play in the main Cuban professional league but needed places to develop. Yet while two new integrated amateur leagues sprang up in the 1940s, many Afro-Cubans were forced to turn either to semipro ball or the sugar-mill circuit — and thus became ineligible for amateur international competition. Amorós and Garay remained eligible in 1950, though. Joining them was Ángel Scull, another black outfielder from Matanzas, who played nine seasons at Triple-A but never made the majors.

Edmundo then went on to join the New York Cubans, run by Cuban impresario Alex Pómpez, in the Negro American League. Playing first base in addition to the outfield, he hit .338 (an isolated and probably incomplete statistic), with at least one notable homer at the Polo Grounds. Pitcher Sam Williams had promised to knock Amorós down before the game, and sailed a fastball dangerously close to the batter’s head. Sandy then held up his end of the pregame exchange by belting one into the second deck.11

That winter, 24 Cuban sportswriters unanimously voted Amorós Rookie of the Year in the Cuban League. (The records show he played in 41 games but with just 42 at-bats, which is also likely incomplete.) He helped the Havana Rojos (Reds) to their first of three straight Cuban championships under manager Mike González. Down in Caracas, Venezuela, Amorós then went 5-for-15 in the third Caribbean Series, won by Puerto Rico.

The New York Cubans ceased to exist after the 1950 season. During the summer of 1951, Amorós played in the Dominican Republic, where pro baseball had resumed that year (the league would not switch to the winter until 1955). With the Estrellas Orientales club in San Pedro de Macorís, Edmundo went 31 for 79 (.392), scoring 20 runs and driving in 19.12

In the winter of 1951-52, Amorós posted .333-3-27 numbers for Havana and was named a league All-Star. He also attracted the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers coach Billy Herman, who was managing the Cienfuegos team. Herman in turn tipped off Al Campanis, who signed the outfielder for a $1,000 bonus.13 After the Cuban season ended, the Reds went on to the fourth Caribbean Series, played in Panama City. Cuba finished 5-0 with one tie, and Edmundo led all hitters by going 9-for-20 (.450). One of those hits drove in pitcher Tommy Fine with the only run in Fine’s no-hitter on February 21 — a unique achievement in Series history.

That spring, Amorós made his minor-league debut with the St. Paul Saints, one of Brooklyn’s two Triple-A affiliates. At that time he acquired his nickname, Sandy, from veteran teammate Bert Haas, also a teammate with Havana. The resemblance to featherweight champ Saddler was only passing, but the label stuck over time, though many contemporary articles still called him Edmundo. In the United States, however, non-Spanish speakers typically accented the first syllable of his last name.14

In 129 games with the Saints, Amorós hit strongly (.337-19-78). That July, Andy High, the Dodgers’ chief scout, said he was worthy of a $150,000 bonus, given what young American high-schoolers were then receiving.15 About a month later, on August 21, 1952, the Dodgers announced that they were sending down pitcher Chris Van Cuyk and calling up Amorós — touted as “another Willie Mays”16 — for help in the stretch drive.

Sandy made his debut the next day, in the first game of a doubleheader at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. In his first at-bat, as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning, he singled off Woody Main and came all the way around to score as the ball went through the legs of center fielder Brandy Davis. Apparently Amorós was right on the tail of Gil Hodges as he crossed the plate.

Amorós batted .250 in 44 at-bats the rest of the way — “change-ups fooled Miracle Wrists,” as Dodgers chronicler Roger Kahn noted.17 Still, he remained on Brooklyn’s roster for the World Series, appearing briefly as a pinch-runner in Game Six.

Amorós starred again that winter in Cuba. Along with 3 homers and 38 RBIs, he won the batting title with a .373 mark — the league’s highest in more than 30 years. Yet despite playing at home, Havana finished behind Santurce of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Series; Edmundo went just 4-for-24.

For various reasons, Amorós spent the whole 1953 season with Brooklyn’s other Triple-A team, Montreal. He won the International League’s batting crown as well at .353, with 23 homers and 100 RBIs. Don Thompson, Jackie Robinson, and George Shuba saw most of the action in left field for Brooklyn.

The front office may have sought some more seasoning for Sandy, whose English was also still very limited — “Hokay” and “steak” were his key vocabulary words. Another factor is worth noting, though. On April 7, 1953, the New York Times observed, “Delayed for a time in Havana by the McCarran Act, Amorós hasn’t worn a Brooklyn uniform this spring. He has been working out at Vero Beach since his arrival.”18 The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 was a controversial law aimed at “subversives,” passed over President Truman’s veto while the Senate was in the grip of McCarthyism. Even though Communism was still several years away in Cuba, people around the world faced tighter curbs on admission to the United States, especially after the related McCarran-Walter Act was passed in 1952.

Unsavory racial implications were also visible. On days when Don Newcombe pitched, the Dodgers lineup had the potential for a majority of black players (Robinson at third instead of Billy Cox, Roy Campanella, and rookie second-baseman Jim Gilliam, as well as Sandy). Brooklyn had been a groundbreaking organization, but by that time, Branch Rickey was gone. Roger Kahn noted, “Actually, by this time the Dodgers were exceedingly cautious crusaders.”19

Sandy had another excellent winter in Cuba (.322-9-39), and then a strong spring with the Dodgers in 1954. This prompted further “poetic license” with the pronunciation of his surname as New York Mirror writer Dan Parker parodied the song “That’s Amore.”20 Amorós opened the 1954 season in Brooklyn, but the Dodgers sent him down to Montreal in mid-May when the time came to meet roster limits.

Though Dodgers management denied it, the possible racial motive again surfaced, as journalist John Lardner discussed in his May 10 story for Newsweek, “The 50 Per Cent Color Line.” Bill Roeder of the New York World-Telegram & Sun (who had separately remarked on Sandy’s habit of wiggling his wrists at the plate) also wrote of “an undercurrent of suspicion.” When Amorós returned in July, however, the majority-black lineup took the field for the first time in big-league history on July 17 at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Jackie Robinson played third base. Six days later, Edmundo hit his first big-league homer, off Vic Raschi of the Cardinals.

The 1954 season was also notable for a controversy that developed later — Roberto Clemente’s contention that the Dodgers “hid” him in Montreal. Author Stew Thornley re-examined this generally accepted belief in the 2006 edition of SABR’s annual, The National Pastime. He quoted Canadian baseball historian Neil Raymond:

“What becomes apparent going through the Montreal papers daily (La Presse, The Gazette, The Star) is that this team was not perceived as a player development exercise,” maintained Raymond. “They were expected to win. Translation: Sandy Amorós’s at-bats were deemed a lot more valuable.” Indeed, Edmundo swung a hot bat before his recall (.352-14-50). His output for Brooklyn, largely against righty pitching, was good (.274-9-34).

Just after Christmas 1954, Amorós married Migdalia Castro, his childhood sweetheart from Matanzas.21 She may already have delivered their only child — articles from 1967 note daughter Eloisa’s age as 13.

Following a fifth straight fine season in Havana (.307-5-37), Sandy finally became the primary left fielder for Brooklyn in 1955. He posted career highs of 119 games and 388 at-bats. The numbers were not outstanding (.247-10-51), but his World Series action turned out to be special. Amorós was 4-for-12 in five games, and when he entered Game Seven in the sixth inning (as Jim Gilliam shifted from left to second), his peak moment was at hand.

Billy Martin had led off the bottom of the sixth with a walk, and Gil McDougald bunted his way on. This was Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen’s call as the dangerous Yogi Berra came to the plate:

“Johnny Podres on the mound. Dodgers leading 2-0. . . . The outfield swung away toward right. Sandy Amorós is playing way into left-center. Berra is basically a pull hitter.

“Here’s the pitch. Berra swings and he does hit one to the opposite field, down the left field line. . . . Sandy Amorós races over toward the foul line . . . and he makes a sensational, running, one-handed catch! He turns, whirls, fires to Pee Wee Reese. Reese fires to Gil Hodges at first base in time to double up McDougald. And the Yankees’ rally is stymied!”

When asked how he made the play, Sandy summed it up simply: “I dunno. I run like hell.” In addition to his superior speed, Amorós was also left-handed; righty Jim Gilliam said he would not have reached the slicing liner on his backhand. Yet according to winning pitcher Podres, “The big thing about it, though, more than the catch, was how he fired the ball back to Reese.” Podres added that Don Zimmer jokingly took credit for the turn of events because manager Walt Alston had pulled Zimmer for a pinch-hitter and inserted Amorós.22

Life magazine published a splendid photo of Sandy smiling brilliantly around a Cuban cigar as he celebrated the victory. The Cuban press reveled even more.

“Amorós, hero of the year,” proclaimed Carteles. Bohemia published a full-page photograph of Amorós over the caption: “His performance in the World Series has produced intense joy in our nation.” His deeds signified a “triumph and corroboration for the quality of our sports” and “assure him a place of honor in the history of the pastime of Cuba.”23

Sandy spent his last winter with the Havana Reds in 1955-56, falling below .300 (.262-8-34). He enjoyed his best big-league season in 1956, though, hitting 16 homers and driving in 58 for Brooklyn in just 292 at-bats. In the World Series, however, he went cold, going just 1-for-19 in six games — with one crucial near-miss. In the fifth inning of Don Larsen’s perfect game, Amorós hooked a drive barely wide of the right-field foul pole.

Before the 1956-57 winter season, Havana traded Edmundo to Almendares for four players: infielder Héctor Rodríguez, outfielders Román Mejías and Óscar Sardiñas, and pitcher Raúl Sánchez. With the Alacranes (Scorpions), he suffered a poor season, hitting just .194 with 4 homers and 24 RBIs.

Sandy never could reach a higher level in Brooklyn. From the language standpoint, he had not made great progress, relying on support from Spanish-speaking teammates including Joe Black, Gilliam, and Campanella (Roy let him live on his yacht). Brooklyn fan Pete Trunk recalls that as a boy, “My crew of buddies and I always hated when Sandy was on Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang. We couldn’t understand one word he was saying!”

Still, Amorós remained a useful role player in 1957, platooning with Gino Cimoli in left (.277-7-26). He rebounded somewhat with Almendares that winter (.247-7-29). After 1957, though, Sandy saw little time in the majors. In March 1958, the Dodgers — by then in Los Angeles — put him on waivers. Authors Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt described the situation as “a bitter salary dispute,” noting also that “Sportswriter Bill Nunn, Jr., of the Pittsburgh Courier claimed the Dodgers had influenced other teams to ‘keep their hands off Amorós’ to punish him for refusing to sign for the same salary, $10,500, he had made the year before.”24

Passing through waivers unclaimed, Sandy returned to Montreal. It is not known whether he ever picked up much French, though it should have been easier for him. He had good years at Triple-A in both 1958 (.260-16-62) and 1959 (.301-26-79), plus two more middling winters for the Scorpions, highlighted by a return to the Caribbean Series in 1959 (7-for-21). Los Angeles finally recalled him for five games in September at the end of the ’59 season. However, Amorós was not on the postseason roster.

Sandy actually made the Dodgers roster out of spring training in 1960, but saw very limited duty. On May 7, Los Angeles traded him to the Detroit Tigers for Gail Harris. He remained with the Tigers as a seldom-used reserve for the rest of the year. On May 31, his pinch-hit homer off Dick Hall — the last of his 43 home runs in the big leagues — gave Detroit its only run in a 2-1 loss.

The Cuban professional league played its last season in the winter of 1960-61, and Sandy was there until the end with Almendares, going out with a respectable .288 average. His lifetime totals in Cuba across 11 seasons, subject to some uncertainty, were 49 homers, 312 RBIs, and a .281 average in 2,305 at-bats.

Amorós then spent 1961 with Denver in the American Association (.259-10-58). On March 18, 1962, the Tigers organization sold him and infielder Ossie Álvarez to the Mexico City Red Devils. Sandy played well (.305-13-71) — but his days on the field were over, as he hit a new obstacle.

Author Nicholas Dawidoff (perhaps best known for his book on Moe Berg, The Catcher Was a Spy) provided many insights on Sandy’s life in a feature he wrote for Sports Illustrated in July 1989. He described how things went downhill because of a run-in with El Líder Máximo, Fidel Castro.

“Castro decided to form an entire professional summer league in Cuba. He asked Amorós, who, as usual, was spending his offseason in Cuba, to stay home and manage one of the teams instead of returning to Mexico that summer. ‘I told Castro I didn’t know how to manage,’ says Amorós. ‘I could play, why would I want to manage?’ Privately, Amorós had qualms about working for the government. Castro did not take Amorós’s refusal lightly. He stripped Amorós of his ranch, car, all his assets and cash.”25

Sandy worked for himself as a mechanic, repairman, or whatever he could find.26 His reduced circumstances led to other problems, notes Roberto González Echevarría:

“For many players, the collapse of the Cuban League had tragic consequences. The diaspora began. Amorós, for instance . . . could not leave for many years, during which he became an alcoholic and eventually a diabetic. When he did leave, the Dodgers put him on their roster for the few days he needed for his pension.”27

That was in May 1967. John McHale, then assistant to Commissioner Spike Eckert, was behind the kind act. When the future Montreal Expos executive found out that Sandy was seven days short of qualifying, he mentioned it to Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi, who took it in turn to club owner Walter O’Malley. 28 There is a photo of Sandy — “penniless, bald and 30 pounds lighter than when he played for Brooklyn”29 — delivering the lineup card to home plate during his time at Dodger Stadium.

Sandy had been able to escape Cuba at last, thanks to the good offices of Armando Vásquez, his old comrade from home and the Negro Leagues.30 Catholic Charities of Brooklyn sponsored his visa, and Amorós got a job coaching baseball in a Catholic Youth Organization playground in New York City.31 But after the family arrived in the United States and the Dodgers lent their support, a sad sequence of events ensued, as Nicholas Dawidoff portrayed:

“In December 1967, Migdalia divorced him, taking Eloisa with her. After three years, the store he worked in [a TV shop in the South Bronx] burned down. For six months Amorós was unemployed, until a friend at the New York Post, who had connections in the office of New York Mayor John Lindsay, helped him get a job with the parks department in the Bronx. When Lindsay’s term was up so was Amorós’s. Two years of unemployment followed.”

In 1977, Amorós claimed his first pension check from major-league baseball and moved to Tampa, where he lived alone on the money he earned from a variety of menial jobs and from his pension.”32

By that time, Sandy was suffering greatly from leg pain owing to poor circulation from his diabetes. Doctors amputated part of his left leg in September 1987. Roberto González Echevarría offered another moving depiction of Sandy, “who was in no condition to be interviewed formally”:33

“I will never forget peering through a window of Edmundo Amorós’ apartment in Tampa, with Agapito Mayor [a Cuban pitcher], to see if the old hero of the 1955 World Series was awake. Every day, Mayor brought him a meal from a nearby restaurant with take-out service and cleaned up the apartment for him. I was deeply moved by Mayor’s kindness, which he displayed without fuss, as if he were performing the most routine of chores. Once inside we find a withered figure, missing a leg from the knee down (diabetes), and with the ashen color of poor health. He speaks softly of leaving Cuba, of getting an offer to play in some independent league in Canada because they still remembered him there from his salad days with the Montreal Royals. But he knew that he was through, he says. His artificial leg is propped up against the wall. A small television set blares with some adventure movie. Mayor is puttering about, picking up things, tidying up. He has run Amorós to the hospital several times. . . .”34

This was actually a step up from the worst conditions Sandy had faced. After his operation, fellow Cuban and Brooklyn Dodger Chico Fernández got the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) to supplement the meager $495 monthly pension with an additional $400 a month.35

Amorós was still capable of some travel, though, and many other friends still kept him in their minds and hearts. In February 1990, he went to Miami for a meeting. “The Federation of Professional Cuban Baseball Players in Exile hosted their own reception in conjunction with the Caribbean Series of Baseball. The meeting room was full of baseball history. Cuban greats like Tony Oliva, José Tartabull, and Sandy Amorós gathered to talk about yesterday and today.”36

As of 1991, Sandy still lived in Tampa.37 In the last year of his life, though, he moved to Miami to live with his daughter Eloisa and her four children. The New York Times wrote another feature article on him in June 1992, shortly before he was to travel back to Brooklyn as guest of honor at the Coney Island Sports Festival. An autograph signing and memorabilia auction were set up, with the lion’s share of the proceeds intended for his benefit. June 20 was scheduled as Sandy Amorós Day in Brooklyn.38

Alas, he never made it north. He was stricken with pneumonia on June 16 and entered Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital.39 Though it looked as though he was rallying after he went on a respirator,40 Sandy declined and eventually passed away on June 27. He was buried in Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum in Miami.

More than 60 years after his greatest feat, Edmundo Amorós is still remembered in the United States and celebrated as a hero in Cuba. Yet beyond the field, through good times and hardships, there was always one constant about this proud but modest man. Said his lawyer, Rafael Sánchez:

“From the days when he played until now, he’s always had that wonderful smile. You’ll look at him and just marvel at that smile.”41

Sources

SABR Minor League Database

Professional Baseball Player Database V6.0

www.retrosheet.org

www.findagrave.com

Photo Credit

Sandy Amoros, Trading Card Database.

Notes

After that season, he then returned home and helped build the game in Cuba. He wasn’t the first to introduce baseball there; other Cuban players were also trained in America, one or two predating Bellán’s return to the island, and American sailors had been playing on Cuban soil since at least 1866. Yet as player-manager of the leading team in the country, the Habana club, Bellán played an integral role in warming the native people to the sport that would eventually consume the nation.

Bellán was nicknamed the “Cuban Sylph” for his graceful play in the infield. During the barehanded era, he had sure hands and stopped the hardest-hit balls. As the Troy Daily Whig put it, “Steve has courage and activity, laces the hottest liners [and] grounders and [is] an accurate thrower to the bases.” Despite the latter compliment, game recaps throughout his brief career in the United States remarked more than a few times on his erratic throwing. Bellán was also quick, known to be the fastest on the bases among his teammates.

Esteban B. Bellán was born in Havana, Cuba on October 1, 1849, according to his U.S. passport application in 1874. His father, whose name remains unknown, was apparently a wealthy native; his mother, Hart Bellán, was born in Ireland circa 1820. In 1863, at age 13, Bellán and his older brother Domingo left Cuba during the political turmoil as the country sought its independence from Spain. At the time, some wealthier Cuban families sent their children north to study during the tense time on the island.

In the fall, Esteban enrolled in the preparatory department at St. John’s College in the Bronx, New York City. St. John’s, a Jesuit school, was the first Catholic institution of higher learning in the northeastern United States. It was founded in 1841 on the land formerly known as Rose Hill Manor in Fordham in the Bronx. Today, the location is known as the Rose Hill Campus of Fordham University.

Ten other Latin students were similarly enrolled in 1863. One was Domingo Bellán, about four years older, who enrolled a few months earlier in September (presumably at a higher level). Esteban entered the institution’s lowest level of schooling, essentially beginning high school. His area of focus was English grammar. According to the St. John’s Registry, he began there in December 1863.

Although the available papers show Domingo only during that first school year, Esteban remained through July 1868 at age 18. The brothers may have been accompanied at the time by their mother and older sister, whose name was shown in the 1870 U.S. census as Rossa. All four were listed as living in Troy in Rensselaer County, New York. Presumably, the patriarch of the family remained in Cuba.

St. John’s fielded its first baseball team, known as the Rose Hills, in September 1859. They are known for participating in the first collegiate baseball game played with nine men per side on November 3 that year versus St. Francis Xavier College, another Jesuit school. Fordham won that day 33-11. Actually, St. Francis was a college preparatory high school located in Manhattan. The actual St. Francis Xavier College was located in Nova Scotia.

Steve Bellán, 5’6” and 154 pounds, joined the varsity baseball club at St. John’s by age 16 in 1866, playing on the top college nine through the 1868 season. Whether he was exposed to baseball and/or played it prior to coming to the United States seems unlikely, at least not to any meaningful extent. Available knowledge dates the introduction of the game in Cuba at 1866, over two years after his relocation to New York.

Rose Hill box scores are scarce during the era but one appeared in the New York Times following the June 18, 1868 home game versus the Actives of New York City, an amateur member of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). The Actives were no slouch; they would defeat the impressive Mutuals of New York and Unions of Morrisania that season. Bellán led off and caught, placing four hits and scoring twice during the 36-34 victory. According to the Times, “The Actives went up to the college feeling pretty sure of success, having a strong nine with them, but they were met on the field by as plucky, active and efficient corps of players as we have seen play in a match out of town this season.” One of the earliest greats of the game, George Wright, performed the umpiring duties. Two other men with Latin names, Christodoro in left field and Esendoro in right, were also in the Rose Hill lineup.

Eleven days later on the 29th, the Brooklyn Eagle announced that Bellán and Christodoro (more likely Cristodoro or Cristadoro) left the college nine and joined the Unions of Morrisania, also a Bronx-based club. The Morrisanias were the reigning champions of the NABBP. The team’s star happened to be middle infielder George Wright, giving a strong indication that Wright was at least in part responsible for bringing Bellán on board and helping launch his pro career. It’s not clear if Christodoro played for the Morrisanias. Rose Hill’s second baseman H. Madden joined the Athletics of Brooklyn at the beginning of July.

It’s interesting to note that in 1867 the NABBP formally barred black clubs after the Pythians of Philadelphia applied for admission. The reasoning: “If colored clubs were admitted, there would be in all probability some division of feeling, whereas, by excluding them no injury could result to anyone.” At the time, the NABBP was courting southern teams and the admission of clubs with African-American players was contradictory to this objective. In 1868, however, Bellán, a brown-eyed Latin, was included seemingly without a ripple. It helped that his complexion was on the lighter side, being the product of an Irish mother.

Bellán wasn’t the only Latin player in the NABBP in 1868, even if Cristodoro didn’t make the lineup. Rafael Julián de la Rua, another St. John’s student, played 12 games as a pitcher for the Unions of Lansingburgh, based near Troy, New York. Rua, nearly two years older than Bellán, hailed from Matanzas, Cuba, attending St. John’s from 1864 to 1867. Rua started the season with Lansingburgh and thus appeared in a NABBP lineup before Bellán, as the latter was tied up with his college nine into late June.

The Morrisanias took off on a western tour at the end of July 1868. The club won their first 29 games that season and were 17-1 during their month-long western stint, which included stops in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Rockford, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, among other cities. In Rockford, they defeated Al Spalding (not yet 18 years old) 23-17. The reigning champs’ first loss came on August 25 to the Red Stockings of Cincinnati, 13-12. This squad was revamped by George Wright’s brother Harry and would emerge as a fully acknowledged professional team the following season, transforming the game.

In total Bellán appeared in 20 games for Morrisania at second base and in the outfield. Morrisania posted a 37-6 record in NABBP competition, as the Mutuals of New York took the championship.

Bellán joined the Unions of Lansingburgh in 1869. Lansingburgh emerged after the Civil War in 1866 with several members of prewar clubs, the Priams of Troy, Nationals of Lansingburgh, and Unions of Rensselaer County. The new club joined the NABBP and became one of the strongest clubs in the area, winning 90% of their contests in their first five seasons. They were officially called the “Unions” — however, after defeating the powerful Mutuals of New York, the team became fondly known in New York papers as the “Haymakers.” The nickname supposedly derived from one of the Mutual players who popped off after the loss about losing to a bunch of haymakers, a derisive term for country boys.

Lansingburgh was located in Rensselaer County in eastern New York State just outside the city of Troy on the Hudson River near Albany and Schenectady. Lansingburgh became familiarly known as North Troy; in fact, it was officially annexed by the city in 1900.

In 1869, the NABBP essentially split as it formally permitted openly professional clubs for the first time. Lansingburgh was among the first to officially declare itself as a professional nine. Bellán appeared in 30 of the Haymakers’ games, mainly at third base. The club finished with a 24-9-1 record in NABBP competition. Also with the club was Bill Craver, a familiar name to many because of his tie to a future game-fixing scandal in the National League. Lansingburgh took part in several interesting games that season, including a tie with the Atlantics of Brooklyn, a one-run defeat of the Mutuals of New York, and two single-run losses on the road to the Pastimes of Baltimore and Athletics of Philadelphia.

In Cincinnati on August 26, Lansingburgh took on the famed Red Stockings of that city, the game’s first acknowledged all-professional club. The Reds posted a 57-0 record in 1869 — but the Haymakers dirtied that record a little. The teams were tied 17-17 entering the sixth inning when Troy president James McKeon pulled his club off the field in a dispute after an umpire’s call, essentially forfeiting. It was the only non-win — on the field of play — that Cincinnati suffered. Bellán manned third base that day.

With Lansingburgh in 1870, Bellán appeared in 40 games, again mostly at the hot corner. The New York Clipper summed up his skills at the position, calling Bellán “an efficient and faithful guardian [of the sack]” and “one of the pluckiest of base players.” The team finished with a 30-15-1 record, including two narrow victories over the Atlantics of Brooklyn and the Forest Cities of Rockford, Illinois and a 10-10 tie with the pesky Mutuals.

At the end of 1870, the NABBP was in turmoil as internal factions, torn between amateurism and professionalism, fractured the organization. It collapsed and the National Association, the sport’s first professional league, took hold with nine clubs in major eastern and western cities. The Troy Haymakers joined the league, as one of the less populated cities.

The 1871 Haymakers fielded one of the top hitting lineups in the association, including Craver, Lip Pike, Clipper Flynn, Steve King, and Dickie Flowers. Bellán, manning third, hit a so-so .250 in all 29 of the team’s games. He did pound the ball on August 3, however — going 5-for-5 with five RBIs, a triple, and a stolen base against Boston’s Harry Wright and Al Spalding to carry the Haymakers to a 13-12 victory. Over the course of the season, though, Troy’s pitching was woeful. John McMullin led the league in hits allowed, base on balls, runs and earned runs. Overall, they finished in sixth place with a 13-15 record.

Troy completely revamped its lineup in 1872, a symptom of two of the prevailing ills of the sport at the time — contract jumping and tampering. Only Bellán and King returned among the 1871 regulars. Jimmy Wood from Chicago was hired as captain. George Zettelin, Wood, Charlie Hodes and Bub McAtee were added from the Chicago White Stockings as that team dropped out of the league. Phonney Martin and Count Gedney were brought in from the Brooklyn Eckfords. Likewise, Washington Olympics players Doug Allison and Candy Nelson joined the Haymakers.

The team again hit well and Zettelin performed much better than McMullin. Unfortunately, the Haymakers went bankrupt and dissolved on July 23. As the Brooklyn Eagle colorfully described, “The Troy club is no more. It commenced with a flourish and has gone out like an exploded sky rocket. The directors disbanded the members on the 23rd.” In truth, 1872 proved too much financially for most of the clubs. Only four teams – Boston, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia – competed in over 40 games. Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. shot themselves in the foot by fielding two clubs each; though, the Brooklyn teams completed the season after joining the league in May. The Washington teams collapsed long before midseason.

Troy finished with a decent .600 winning percentage, 15-10. Bellán was used in a utility role, splitting his time between shortstop, third base and center field. In 23 games he hit .263. Allison, Gedney, Zettelin, Martin, Nelson and Wood all joined the Eckfords. Bellán, King, and McAtee remained in Troy and formed the nucleus of a new club that competed as an independent. The lineup was filled out with some members of the Putnam club of Brooklyn.

Into April 1873, efforts were made in Troy to field another top-flight team. Bellán was among those in the endeavor. However, it didn’t pan out and he joined the New York Mutuals in mid-May for eight games, mainly as a third baseman. June 9, a 22-3 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics, marked his final game.

In January 1874, Bellán gained naturalization as a United States citizen and received a passport in his hometown of Troy. He then permanently returned to Cuba, though the St. Louis Globe Democrat, via a wire report, declared that he was expected to return to Troy for a visit in 1880.

Bellán was not the only Cuban-born, American-trained ballplayer to return to the island. Nemesio and Ernesto Guillo studied at Springhill College in Mobile, Alabama. They returned to Cuba in 1864 just about the time Bellán was beginning at St. John’s. Also, Emilio Sabourín attended a business college in Washington, D.C. These men, with several others, were the pioneers of baseball in Cuba.

Baseball was played in Cuba by 1866, initially brought to the island by American sailors. On October 1, 1868, it was outlawed by the colonial head of the country, Francisco de Lersundi, as an “anti-Spanish game with insurrection tendencies, opposed to the language and favored the lack of affection to Spain.” At the end of 1874, Bellán participated in the first formal, organized contest in Cuba. On December 27, a team from Havana visited Palmar de Junco Field in Matanzas. According to Havana El Artista, Havana, fortified by pitcher Ricardo Mora and catcher Bellán, routed Matanzas 51-9. Bellán, not known as a power hitter, clocked three home runs and scored seven times. Sabourín scored another eight runs for Havana. In 1877, the first game pitting Americans versus Cubans also took place at Matanzas’s Palmar de Junco Field.

The Cuban League was established at the end of 1878. Bellán caught for and managed the Habana team through the 1885-1886 season. During the league’s early era, only a few games were played per season, on Sundays and holidays. The first season, 1878-1879, ran from December 29 to February 16 and included three clubs, Habana, Almendares and Matanzas. In the first ever league game Habana defeated Almendares 21-20 after scoring eight runs in the eighth inning. Habana, under captain Bellán, took the pennant with a 4-0-1 record.

The 1879-1880 season, which ran from November 11 to March 7, was a contentious one. The Colón club brought in two players from the Syracuse National League team, Jimmy Macullar and Hick Carpenter, under assumed names, George McCullar and Urban Carpenter. On November 23, Macullar struck out 21 Habana batters and hit the league’s first home run, sparking a strong protest that ultimately ended with Colón’s withdrawal from the league on January 11.

In December, the first American professional team visited Cuba, playing its first game on the island in Havana on December 21. The Americans were led by Frank Bancroft. The group was composed mainly of members of the soon-to-be Worcester, Massachusetts National League club, which was ascending to the majors from the minor National Association, where it had played in 1879. Financially, the trip was a failure and the group returned to New Orleans on the 31st. They may have played as few as two games on the island.

Habana finished the 1879-1880 season with a 5-2 record, good for another pennant. In fact, Habana won the first five official Cuban League championships. A feud between Habana and Almendares prevented the undertaking of the 1880-1881 season. No league games were played again until January 2, 1882 and even then the league collapsed after only four games due to disputes. Fe led the league with a 3-1 record; Habana was 1-3. All contests were declared void by league officials.

Habana took the pennant again in 1882-1883 with a 5-1 record. Almendares posted the same record but Habana was declared the champion when Almendares withdrew from the league. The 1883-1884 season never got underway and Bellán did not play or manage during the 1884-1885 season. He returned for 1885-1886 to help Habana take their fifth consecutive title, with a 6-0 record. In the five seasons under captain Bellán, Habana posted a 21-6-1 record, counting the voided season, and four league championships.

Bellán’s life after baseball seems to be a mystery. He apparently lost contact with his friends from the game and wasn’t mentioned by them in a newspaper article from 1911 as one of the living pioneers of the game in Cuba. Esteban Bellán died on August 8, 1932 in Havana at age 82. A statue was erected in his honor in Havana; it was spied by American ballplayers during a barnstorming tour in 1911.

An updated version of this biography appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

Bellán’s passport application notes his height as 5’8”. The reference sites list 5’6”.

Some references cite Bellán’s middle name as Enrique but the St. John’s Register, his passport application and naturalization papers indicate a middle initial of “B,” no middle name listed.

A “Stephen Bellan” is listed in the New York Times on September 19, 1867, arriving in the city aboard the ship Morro Castle from Havana. This might suggest that he or his family periodically returned to Cuba during their stay in the United States. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to positively identify any of them in ship manifests. The manifest of that ship that day shows a “S. Bellan,” 39 years old, working as a merchant. Unless there’s an error in the listing, it is not the baseball Stephen Bellán. It may warrant further inspection though.

Roberto González Echevarría in The Pride of Havana notes that Bellán and others founded the Habana club in 1868. However, it seems more likely that 1878 was the date.

Sources

Ancestry.com

Baseballchronology.com

Baseball-reference.com

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005).

Boston Daily Advertiser, 1873

Brooklyn Eagle, 1868, 1872

Brown, Bruce, “Cuban Baseball,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1984: 109-114.

Burgos Jr., Adrian. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2007).

Chicago Tribune, 1872

Cubaheadlines.com

Cubanball.com

Echevarría, Roberto González. The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Figueredo, Jorge S. Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2003).

Gary Ashwill’s Agate Type website

Gomez, Cesar Gonzalez, Origenesdelbeisbol.com, page 22

Library.Fordham.edu

New York Clipper, 1870, 1879

New York Times, 1867-1872

Origenesdelbeisbol.com

Regalado, Samuel Octavio. Viva Baseball: Latin Major Leaguers and their Special Hunger (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

Retrosheet.org

Sporting Life, 1911

St. Louis Globe Democrat, 1879-1880

Tiemann, Robert L. and Mark Rucker. Nineteenth Century Stars (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1989).

Troy Daily Whig, New York, 1871

Wright, Marshall D. The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000).

During a wide-randing 30-year career, in which he pitched and played in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and the US Negro Leagues, Ramón Bragaña made his most indelible mark from the baseball mounds of Mexico.

Born on May 11, 1909, in Havana, Bragaña was most notably a right-handed mound authority, though he began his career in his native country as an 18-year-old infielder for a team named Cuba during the 1927-28 winter-league season. Bragaña played in only three games. But he had evidently shown enough promise to earn an invitation that summer to come to the United States to play for the Cuban Stars East of the Eastern Colored League. The ballclub was owned by impresario Alejandro “Alex” Pompez. After his internship abroad, Bragaña returned to Cuba over the winter of 1928-29 and debuted as a pitcher, appearing in four games. He chalked up a loss in his only decision.

Before his Negro League career had barely commenced, Bragaña, and several other players, were suspended by Pompez for not honoring their contracts and reporting to the team in 1929. Having a change of mind, or weighing other considerations, Bragaña decided to cast his lot in the Dominican summer league and joined the Licey Tigres.

Back in Cuba that winter, the 20-year-old registered his first victories from the hill as a member of the Santa Clara Leopardos. The young pitcher, with a 5-3 record, trailed only teammates Basilio “Brujo” Rosell (6-7) and Leroy “Satchel” Paige (6-5), and Almendares hurler Johnny Allen (7-4) for most victories in the league. For Paige, incidentally, it was his only winter season pitching in Cuba.

In the summer of 1930, Bragaña returned to the Cuban Stars. After that campaign, the itinerant pitcher, who stood just under 6 feet and weighed 195 pounds, did not return to the U.S. until 1935. He formed part of Pompez’s redesigned entry into Negro League baseball called the New York Cubans, which maintained the high profile of outstanding Hispanic talent as had the Cuban Stars East. Among Bragaña’s teammates that 1935 season were Martín Dihigo and Luis Tiant Sr.

In 1936 Bragaña made ingresses into both the Venezuelan and Dominican Leagues. In an early-summer session in Caracas, with a team called Senadores, Bragaña notched a 4-2 record in six games, helping to hoist the 12-4 squad to the Venezuelan National Series League title. For Estrellas Orientales of San Pedro de Macoris, Bragaña posted a 9-1 mark, lifting the Eastern Stars team to the island championship. He was also named most valuable player of the circuit. Over the winter of 1936-37, the busy moundsman won another nine games (and lost five) in 16 appearances for the Cuban League Almendares squad; he tossed 11 complete games.

The trailing performance came after a five-year absence from Cuban baseball. (One of those years, 1933-34, the Cuban Winter League did not convene a season due to political turmoil in the country.) Bragaña had apparently become content with the playing commitments he had established in Mexico, starting in 1930, pitching for several years with teams loosely tied to the Mexican League. These teams were the equivalent of semipro clubs.

In the spring of 1937 the New York Giants traveled to Havana to condition themselves for the US season. The Giants played four exhibition games against three Cuban teams — Almendares, Habana, and Fortuna, an amateur club. The visiting New York team managed one victory — against the amateurs. Bragaña was one of two Almendares pitchers to defeat Bill Terry’s club (Rodolfo Fernández, the other). On February 28, at Tropical Park, Bragaña tossed a six-hitter over the defending National League champions and took home a 6-1 victory.

In a rematch, later during the Giants’ stay, Bragaña, starting for a squad of Cuban All-Stars, matched three Giants hurlers over 11 innings in pitching to a 1-1 tie. Bragaña allowed only five hits to the New Yorkers in the March 11 matchup. “This Ramon Bragana is just about as great a pitcher as I ever saw,” said manager Terry. “He has speed, a wonderful assortment of curves, and perfect control.” [fn] 1 Peter Williams, When The Giants Were Giants: Bill Terry And The Golden Age of New York Baseball (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994), 225. [/fn] 

Bragaña seemed in tiptop form when he joined the Estrellas team for its title defense in 1937. The Eastern Stars were not quite as dominant as the prior year, as Dominican baseball enjoyed its most celebrated season of the first half of the 20th century. The stellar competition provided from the other two teams in the league played a determining factor for Estrellas’ third-place finish at 11-14 and Bragaña’s 4-7 record. Packed with North American Negro League talent, and featuring a sometimes battery of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, the famed Ciudad Trujillo team triumphed as league champion with an 18-13 record over Estrellas and Águilas Cibaeñas (13-15).

In 1938, the 29-year-old Bragaña joined the Agrario team of Mexico’s premier league, beginning an 18 – season, star-studded career in the land of Montezuma. He won eight games in each of his first two seasons in the league, and then won 12 games or more in eight of the next nine campaigns.

In 1940 Bragaña joined Veracruz and excelled. He registered a 16-8 won-lost ledger, and his 2.58 ERA, in 233⅔ innings, topped the league. Mexico’s irrepressible business tycoon Jorge Pasquel purchased the team, moved it to the capital city and changed its nickname to Azules. Pasquel also installed himself as manager. The Blues won the pennant with a 61-30 record, six games better than the Mexico City Reds. Bragaña established a 12-year pitching residency with Veracruz and developed a close-enough friendship with the team owner to accompany him on hunting trips.

Veracruz repeated as league champion the following season, this time under the helm of player-manager Lázaro Salazar, one of many Cuban stars in the league. Bragaña contributed 13 wins, as Veracruz (67-35) ran away with the pennant by 13½ games over the secondplace Mexico City Reds. Also propelling the Blues’ cause was the record setting 33 home runs hit by catcher Josh Gibson in 94 games played.

Salazar assumed the reins of Monterrey in 1942 and Veracruz coincidentally fell on hard times, finishing last in the league and winning only 39 games.Amazingly, Bragaña won 22 of the games, while losing 10. Bragaña tied Martín Dihigo of pennant-winning Torreón for the most wins in the league.

Bragaña’s season may not have appeared amazing for those who had seen him pitch the prior winter (1941-42) in Cuba. The right-hander led the Cuban Winter League in games (21), wins (9), complete games (11, tied with Dihigo), and shutouts (5), in furnishing a major assist to the Almendares Scorpions’ championship-rendering campaign. Four of Bragaña’s shutouts were consecutive, and he established a league record for scoreless innings at 39⅔. The goose-egg streak ended on January 3, 1942, on an error by shortstop Antonio Rodríguez.

The circuit’s top pitcher was involved in two extrainning games that both ended in 1-1 ties. The first was initiated on October 22, 1941. Facing Habana, Bragaña tossed 13 innings, matching the combined efforts of Habana hurlers Santiago “Sandy” Ulrich and Gilberto Torres. Bragaña and reliever Torres permitted the contest’s only runs in the same 12th inning. On November 8, also against Habana, Bragaña held Mike González’s team to one eighth-inning run in 12 innings. Mound opponent Manuel “Cocaina”

García equaled Bragaña’s exceptional labor. Lamentably, no ERA records were officially kept, or preserved, for the league that season.

The following winter season, 1942-43, the pitcher managed a 6-6 record for Almendares while leading the league in appearances once again with 22.

In 1943, pulling in another 17 victories for another poor Veracruz contingent, Bragaña helped his 39-51 team barely stay out of the circuit’s cellar.

In 1944 Bragaña literally did it all for his Mexican club, which made a return to championship form. He was appointed manager, after Rogers Hornsby resigned early in the season, and guided Veracruz to its third pennant in five years. The pitcher won a remarkable 30 games from the hill. The historic 30th win occurred on October 5, versus the Nuevo Laredo Owls, a 6-0 six-hitter that clinched the pennant for Veracruz with two games remaining on the schedule. The right-hander amazingly accounted for 30 of his team’s 52 victories! He was defeated only eight times.

Veracruz slipped in the standings the following season and Bragaña experienced his first losing campaign (15-16). The Blues, with a 42-48 record, dropped to fifth place in the six-team league. After skipping the previous two winter campaigns, Bragaña was back competing in Cuba over the winter of 1945-46. Hurling for a third-place (29-31) Almendares squad, his 9-6 record topped all other Scorpion pitchers. The year 1946 was the grand coming-out year of Jorge Pasquel. The Mexican mogul shook the contractual foundation of baseball’s ivory towers with his free-market challenge of the reserve clause. Pasquel’s high-priced signings of major-league players unnerved the game’s North American hierarchy and provided a tumultuous side show during much of the Mexican and major-league baseball seasons. The tumult did not escape Pasquel’s own Veracruz club and its multiple managers. Four field bosses directed the team, starting with Bragaña and ending with the big boss himself. In an expanded eight-team circuit, Veracruz finished seventh, 16 games under .500. Bragaña must have been bothered by the external disorder, judged by his final 9-16 record, despite a 3.66 ERA.

At age 38, Bragaña recorded a strong bounce-back season upon his return to Mexico in 1947. He tossed the principal Mexican League opener, March 27, at Delta Park, with Mexican President Miguel Alemán and league President Jorge Pasquel in the capacity crowd. Bragaña and Veracruz defeated the Mexico City Reds, 6-2. For the season, Bragaña’s 18-12 record placed him at the head of his team’s squadron of pitchers. Once again, the veteran pitcher was the only stabilizing pitching force for what was a last-place Veracruz team (52-67).

Pasquel’s bold foray had repercussions in winter baseball in 1947-48. In Cuba an independent league, with players supporting Pasquel’s more liberalized way of thinking, was formed. The league was populated with ostracized players who had left Organized Baseball to play in Mexico, and many Cuban and Negro League players with previous ties to the Mexican League. The new circuit, called the Players Federation, competed against the established Winter League, whose players preferred to remain loyal to Organized Baseball. After having skipped the 1946-47 winter campaign, Bragaña joined the short-lived Federation League and won the last six games of his Cuban Winter League career with the team entry that carried the Winter League knockoff name of Alacranes (Scorpions).

Veracruz improved to 43-43 in 1948, with the fivetime Mexican League All-Star infusing a positive 12-9 record into the club’s otherwise mediocre totals. A 3.06 ERA accompanied Bragaña’s seventh straight season of 200 or more innings (his eighth in nine years).

The Mexican League began experimenting with split-season formats in 1949. For the next two seasons Veracruz watched from the sidelines as other playoff teams vied for the ultimate prize. Bragaña won 8 and 10 games in successive seasons for his also-ran teams.

A few days into the 1950 season, Ramón Bragaña Day was held, on March 26 before a game at Mexico City’s main baseball venue, Delta Park. Celebrating his 25th year in professional baseball, Bragaña was honored and bestowed with gifts by constituents and fans. The pitcher did not disappoint the latter, taking the mound after the ceremonies and tossing an 11-3 victory over the rival Mexico City team.

On May 31 an automobile accident sidelined the well-respected hurler for more than a month during the season. The vehicle Ramón was in rolled over twice and he was reportedly critically injured. He obviously made a fast recovery from his injuries and returned to action in mid-July.

In 1951 Veracruz returned to glory once more. The team won the second half-season of play and faced off against the first-half winner, San Luis Potosí. During the team’s second-half run, Bragaña had taken to working some games behind the plate, due to a shortage of catchers on the squad. From his natural position, on the mound, Bragaña excelled in the championship round between the two split-season victors.

In a best-of-seven series, Veracruz won four games out of five, including a forfeited contest in Game Three. The gift win for the Blues came as the result of an outright riot by San Luis Potosí fans in their Twentieth of November home ballpark. Bragaña was involved in an altercation with fans outside the park after the umpired had declared the game forfeited. Jorge Pasquel had to be hospitalized with a head injury after a hazardous clash with rock-throwing belligerents. Pasquel had witnessed the hostile encounter involving Bragaña and was coming to the defense of his favorite pitcher when he was struck on the head by a granite missile.

Back in Mexico City, Bragaña picked up victories in the last two games. (League officials ordered the remainder of the series played at Delta Park.) Bragaña pitched a two-hit, 6-0 shutout in the fourth game, and then won the clincher with 3⅔ innings of scoreless relief, preserving a 3-2 triumph.

Jorge Pasquel withdrew from Mexican baseball the following year, 1952, and the Veracruz club was resettled back to its original geographic port city, reborn as the former Veracruz Eagles. Ramón Bragaña’s lengthy association with the team ended, however, and he moved over to manage and play for the Jalisco Charros. It was for Jalisco that Bragaña recorded his 200th Mexican League win. At the Charros’ Guadalajara ballpark, the 43-year-old defeated the Monterrey Sultans, 8-2, in early June. He gave up eight hits and walked two. The sentimental favorite was carried off by fans and placed at the head of a line of automobiles that paraded him around town. It was Bragaña’s fifth win of the season, with only two more to be had for what was an average 46-44 Jalisco team.

El Profesor

Ramón Bragaña was nicknamed “El Profesor” for the astute attributes he displayed on the mound, earning him many successes. However, it could not be said that he used any amount of “scholarly judgment” in 1946 during a one-on-one pitching exhibition against baseball’s greatest living legend. In the hope of attaining greater legitimacy for his league, Jorge Pasquel invited Babe Ruth to Mexico in May. Ruth accepted and was coaxed into trying to demonstrate his long-gone splendor, at Delta Park in front of 22,000 fans. Wearing civilian clothes, with spikes and a baseball cap, Ruth picked up a bat to hit. Bragaña was on the mound, clearly in no mood to allow the Bambino any easy swings. What ensued was an embarrassing repetition of swings and misses or foul tips by the 51-year-old Ruth against Bragaña’s difficult tosses. Bragaña resisted being relieved by another pitcher and engaged in an argument with Mexico City manager Ernesto Carmona IV, who was also one of the early founders of the Mexican League in 1925.

Bragaña eventually left the mound, but the heated exchange with Carmona continued inside the clubhouse, ending in fisticuffs. Bragaña was suspended, and Pasquel was forced to make his first managerial change of the 1946 season.

Bragaña closed out his 18-season, 211-win Mexican career in 1955, at age 46. He won another won 48 games in 10 winter campaigns in Cuba. Roberto González

Echevarria, a professor at Yale and a Cuban baseball author, painted Bragaña from the mound as “a pitcher with great velocity, a wicked curveball and excellent control.” [fn] 2 Roberto González Echevarria, The Pride of Havana — A History of Cuban Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 258. [/fn]

In 1959 Bragaña was elected to the Cuban Hall of Fame, in the next-to-last-election conducted before the socio-political repression of dictator Fidel Castro’s Marxist revolution, which abolished the thriving Cuban Winter League and all professional sports on the island.

In their published investigations for the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, Layton Revel and Luis Muñoz itemized a total of 310 lifetime wins for Bragaña, amassed over the years in various countries. With the added speculation of incorporating “missing records,” the pair believe Bragaña’s career win total could top 400.

Very little is known about Bragaña’s personal life both before and after baseball. Many years before he won his 200th career game in Mexico, Bragaña had become a naturalized Mexican citizen. He not only maintained a special love for Mexico but he found a special love there, as well, whom he married. Bragaña, along with other Cuban greats, such as Lázaro Salazar and Santos Amaro, married and started families in Mexico, where they enjoyed the celebrity status of star athletes.

When Ramón Bragaña died, on his 76th birthday, May 11, 1985, in Puebla, Mexico, he had been elected to the Halls of Fame of Cuba and Mexico (1964) during his lifetime.

He was rightfully inducted into the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame, as part of its third class of honorees, in 2012.

This biography originally appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

Sources 

 In addition to the sources cited in the notes, the author also relied on:

Figueredo, Jorge S. Cuban Baseball A Statistical History 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers, 2003).

Figueredo, Jorge S. Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers, 2003).

Revel, Layton, and Luis Muñoz. Forgotten Heroes: Ramón Bragaña. Cnlbr.org.

Treto Cisneros, Pedro. Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano (Mexico D.F., Segunda Edición Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V. Mexico D.F., 1994).

Virtue, John. South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Organized Baseball Toward Racial Integration (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers, 2008).

Bert Campaneris had a distinguished 20-year major-league career that included six All-Star selections, six American League stolen-base crowns, and a major role in the Oakland Athletics’ three world championships in the 1970s.

Dagoberto Campaneris was born on March 9, 1942, in Pueblo Nuevo, Cuba. His father was a mechanic in a factory. Campaneris had three brothers and four sisters. He attended Jose Tomas School in Pueblo Nuevo.

Campaneris was gifted with incredible speed and quickness, but the only sport he played was baseball. He competed in a Cuban Little League at the age of 11, and later was a catcher for a semipro team. He said he loved baseball so much that he even assisted as a groundskeeper. Reflecting on his childhood, Campaneris said, “I never worked in Cuba. All I did was play baseball. I play, I play, I play, I like to play.”1 At the Pan-Am Games in Costa Rica in 1961, he drew the attention of Kansas City Athletics scout Felix Delgado, who persisted in efforts to sign him. Eventually Campaneris signed a contract that called for a $1,000 bonus, payable only if he remained with the A’s organization for at least 60 days. Campaneris was one of the last players to leave Cuba for the United States before the Castro revolution made emigration extremely rare.

Campaneris split the 1962 season between Daytona Beach (Florida State League) and Binghamton (New York) of the Class A Eastern League. Campaneris was eager to play at every position, and was ambidextrous. Once with Daytona Beach, he pitched both right-handed and left-handed in a two-inning relief appearance. He faced a switch-hitter during his stint on the mound, and changed over when he faced him.

Campaneris spent two months of the 1963 season on the disabled list with a sore arm but got into 48 games with Lewiston of the Northwest League and Binghamton where he caught, and batted .308 as the leadoff hitter. He spent the offseason playing for the A’s team in the Florida Instructional League.

Campaneris began the 1964 season with Double-A Birmingham and batted .325. On July 22, 1964, Campaneris was called up after A’s shortstop Wayne Causey injured his elbow. After an overnight plane trip, he arrived in Minneapolis the next day two hours before the start of the A’s game against the Twins, and had an unforgettable major-league debut. Playing shortstop and batting second, he sent a pitch by the Twins’ Jim Kaat over the left-field fence in his first at-bat. In the seventh inning he hit another home run. He turned in a brilliant defensive play, singled, and stole a base in the A’s 11 inning victory. Campaneris became the second major leaguer to hit two home runs in a debut game, after the St. Louis Browns’ Bob Nieman, who did it in 1951.

Campaneris finished the season batting .257 for the A’s with 10 stolen bases in 67 games, and earned a spot on the Topps Major League Rookie All-Star team. He was in the major leagues to stay, though he spent the offseason playing for the Caguas Criollos in the Puerto Rican League.

In 1965 Campaneris battled his second cousin, Angels outfielder José Cardenal, for the American League stolen-base title. (Cardenal said in an interview that they played baseball together constantly during the youth.2) Campaneris won the stolen-base title with 51, besting Cardenal’s second-place total of 37. He batted .270 with 23 doubles, a league-leading 12 triples, and 6 home runs.

Campaneris was honored with a “night” at Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium on September 8, 1965. He marked the occasion by playing all nine positions in that night’s game against the Angels. He started at shortstop, went to second base for the second inning, then successively played third base, each outfield position, and first base. He pitched the eighth inning, yielding a run, and caught the ninth inning. The 5-foot-10, 160-pound Campaneris injured his shoulder in a collision with Ed Kirkpatrick at home plate in the ninth and had to leave the game. He was out of the lineup for five games. He spent the offseason playing for Caracas in the Venezuelan League.

In 1966 Campaneris teamed with second baseman Dick Green, and their great range gave the A’s a very dependable double-play combination. Green remarked, “I had never played with a shortstop who threw the ball that hard.”3 Campaneris led the league with 259 shortstop putouts. Again he led the league in stolen bases, pilfering 52 in 62 attempts.

In the A’s last season in Kansas City, 1967, Campaneris captured his third consecutive stolen-base title with 55. On August 29 against Cleveland he belted three triples. His batting average for the season slipped to .248.

In 1968, the A’s inaugural season in Oakland, Campaneris raised his batting average to .276, aided by a 15-game hitting streak between August 4 and 18 (including a five-hit game on the 9th). He captured his fourth consecutive stolen-base title with a career-high 62 thefts (he was caught stealing 22 times), and led the league with 177 hits and 642 at-bats. On August 29 he repeated his feat against Cleveland, again belting three triples. Of his success at the plate, Campaneris said, “Now, I’m trying to hit to right field. I was swinging too hard trying to hit it too hard.”4 He spent the offseason playing for Lara in the Venezuelan League, where he batted .335.

Campaneris had 62 steals in 1969, but his four- year reign as the AL stolen-base leader ended as came to an end in 1969 as Tommy Harper of the Seattle Pilots stole 73. Campaneris missed most of July after he fractured his right index finger while taking a double-play relay throw at second base in a game against Seattle on July 3. The injury kept him out of the lineup until July 25. For the season, Campaneris batted .260, and along with Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and a host of others led the A’s to a contending role in the AL West. Oakland finished with an 88-74 record, nine games behind the division champion Minnesota Twins.

During the season Campaneris married Norma Fay, a Kansas City native. Afterward, the shy player said, “I had no one in the United States. I was so lonely. Now I got somebody to take care of me.”5

In 1970 Campaneris batted .279, posting career highs in home runs (22) and RBIs (64). The A’s finished second again with an 89-73 record, nine games behind the Twins.

The A’s won the American League West title in 1971, by 16 games over the Kansas City Royals. Campaneris experienced a power outage that season, hitting only five round-trippers while batting .251. Two of his homers came in a game in Cleveland on May 12 off Sam McDowell. On September 6 Campaneris was thrown out of a game by home-plate umpire Russ Goetz after burying the plate with dirt while protesting a called third strike. Two days later, after stealing second he broke the base loose from its mooring, chased it five feet, and wrapped his arms around it so he wouldn’t be called out. In the American League Championship Series, Oakland was swept by the Baltimore Orioles.

Campaneris had a great season in 1972, leading the league in chances (795), at-bats (625), and stolen bases (52). He finished second to Boston’s Luis Aparicio in balloting for the All-Star Game. Even after Aparicio broke a finger and couldn’t play, AL manager Earl Weaver selected Texas shortstop Toby Harrah. Harrah was also unable to play because of a sore shoulder, and Weaver then selected Orioles shortstop, Bobby Grich, who played the entire 10 innings in the game, much to Campaneris’s chagrin. Three weeks later Campaneris responded to the All-Star snub in a game at Baltimore: After collecting his third stolen base of the game in the fifth inning, he went to third on a throwing error by Orioles catcher Andy Etchebarren, then coaxed Jim Palmer into a run-scoring balk. While heading home, he looked into the Orioles dugout and tipped his hat to Weaver.

On the last day of the season, Campaneris led by two in the stolen-base race, and was going to sit out the season finale. After the A’s broadcasters found out that Dave Nelson of the Texas Rangers had stolen three bases in his game, Campaneris entered the A’s game in the fourth inning as a pinch-runner. He stole second and third, denying Nelson the title, and also spoiling Nolan Ryan’s bid for his first 20-win season. Of Ryan, Campaneris said, “I know I can steal on that guy. He pitches so slow.”6 Campaneris was referring to Ryan’s deliberate motion, not his velocity.

The A’s finished the 1972 season with a 93-62 record, winning their division by 5½ games over the Chicago White Sox, earning them a berth in the ACLS against Detroit. After the A’s won Game One, 3-2, fireworks erupted during Game Two. In the bottom of the seventh, Campaneris who was already 3-for -3 with two stolen bases and two runs scored, was hit in the ankle by a pitch from Lerrin LaGrow. Campaneris threw his bat toward LaGrow, who ducked to avoid being hit.

With Detroit manager Billy Martin in the lead, the Tigers went for Campaneris. (Afterward, Martin said of his role in the fracas, “You bet I was after him! There’s no place for that kind of gutless stuff in baseball. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in all my years of baseball. I would respect him if he went out to throw a punch, but what he did was the most gutless thing of any man to put on a uniform. It was a disgrace to baseball.”7) Three umpires held Martin back, and home-plate umpire Nestor Chylak ejected LaGrow and Campaneris. Explaining his actions, Campaneris said, “My ankle hurt so bad. I knew he was going to throw at me, but people now tell me it’s better to go and fight. I don’t know. I just lost my temper.”8

Oakland’s Joe Rudi said he thought LaGrow threw at Campaneris because “Campy had run the Tigers ragged in the first two games, and when (Billy) Martin gets his ears pinned down, he’s going to do something about it.”9 Teammate Mike Hegan said he thought Martin “wanted to light a fire under his ballclub, and Campy was the guy that they were going after because he was the guy that set the table for us. There’s no question that Billy Martin instructed Lerrin LaGrow to throw at Campaneris.”10

American League President Joe Cronin suspended Campaneris for the remainder of the ALCS, fined him $500 and left the decision about a possible World Series suspension to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Kuhn ruled that Campaneris could play in the World Series, but would be suspended without pay for the first seven games of the 1973 season.

The incident did indeed spark the Tigers; without Campaneris in the A’s lineup, they tied the series. But the A’s won the fifth and deciding game, 2-1 and went to the franchise’s first World Series since 1931, when they were in Philadelphia.

The underdog A’s, playing without Reggie Jackson, who had ruptured a hamstring during the Tigers series, captured the world championship, defeating the Cincinnati Reds in an exciting seven-game Series.

The A’s led the Series three games to two, but Cincinnati stormed back in Game Six, tying the Series with an 8-1 drubbing of Oakland. When Campaneris came to bat in the eighth inning he told Reds catcher Johnny Bench, “We never lose three in a row!” Bench replied, “You’ve never faced the Big Red Machine!”11

Campaneris batted only .179 in the World Series, but it was a defensive, pitching-oriented affair in which each team batted .209. Campaneris scored the run in Game Seven that gave the A’s the lead for good, coming home on Gene Tenace’s double in the top of the sixth inning.

In 1973 Campaneris became the first A’s player to be offered a two-year contract by owner Charlie Finley, signing a deal for a reported $65,000 a season. Campaneris sat on the bench the first five games (the seven-game sentence had been reduced on appeal) and watched Dal Maxvill play shortstop. On May 25 the A’s returned to Detroit and Campaneris was welcomed back to a loud chorus of boos from the fans who had not forgotten the LaGrow incident. Tigers catcher Bill Freehan took out Campaneris in a play at the plate, and Campaneris suffered a shoulder injury that forced him to miss six games. In the 11 games Campaneris missed as a result of the suspension and injury, the A’s record was 2-9. For the season, Campaneris batted .250, had 34 stolen bases, and was selected as the American League’s starting shortstop for the All-Star Game.

The A’s won the American League West with a 94-68 record and faced the AL East champion Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS. Before the series, Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer commented, “I think the key to beating Oakland is keeping Campaneris off base.”12 The Orioles failed miserably in Game Two, as Campaneris reached base three times in five plate appearances, hitting a home run to lead off the game, stealing a pair of bases, and scoring two runs in the A’s 6-3 victory. He hit a walkoff home run in the 11th inning of Game Three. The A’s wound up winning the series three games to two.

Against the New York Mets in the World Series, Campaneris batted .290, stole three bases, and hit a two-run home run in the third inning of Game Seven which along with Reggie Jackson’s two-run homer in the same inning, gave the A’s a lead they did not relinquish in a 5-2 victory. Reggie Jackson (.310, 6 RBIs, was named the Series Most Valuable Player. Campaneris (.290, 3 RBIs) was disappointed that he did not get the award, but said, “Reggie is my friend.”13

The A’s returned to the World Series in 1974, their third straight appearance. Campaneris again represented the American League in the All-Star Game. He batted .290 and stole 34 bases for the season. He missed 15 games between July 29 and August 11 when he suffered a severely sprained left ankle.

After defeating the Orioles three games to one in the ALCS, the Athletics faced the National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, and won the Series in five games. In Game One, a 3-2 victory, Campaneris laid down an excellently executed squeeze bunt on which Ken Holtzman scored. Campaneris batted .353 in the Series, stole a base, and contributed sparkling defense. He was also named to The Sporting News AL All-Star Team for the second consecutive season.

Campaneris received a substantial raise for the 1975 season, reported by various sources at $20,000, $25,000, or $35,000. He batted .265 and stole 24 bases. Despite the loss of Catfish Hunter to free agency, the A’s won the AL West division, but were swept by the Red Sox in the ALCS.

The A’s entered a difficult period in 1976. The team was aging and many members were passing their prime. And free agency had become a factor in contract negotiations, something Charlie Finley had difficulty dealing with. Campaneris was among the players who sought big raises. Finley offered $90,000, but Campaneris asked for a five-year contract at $120,000 per year, or $135,000 for one year. (According to The Sporting News, Campaneris wound with a salary of $72,000.14) Campaneris batted .256, made 23 errors in 149 games, and stole 54 bases in 66 attempts, including a club-record five in a 12-7 victory over Minnesota on May 24. Despite the loss of Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman via trade, the A’s posted an 87-74 record and finished in second place in the AL West, just 2½ games behind Kansas City.

A free-agency re-entry draft was held after the season and Campaneris was selected by the maximum of 12 teams. After considering all the offers, he signed a contract worth a reported $750,000 for five years and became a Texas Ranger. Rangers general manager Dan O’Brien said Campaneris “adds two dimensions to our team – speed and defense.”15 The signing meant that Toby Harrah would be moved to third base. (Harrah commented, I consider it a pleasure to play next to him in the infield.”16) To comments that he was now 35 years old, Campaneris said, “I think I know what I can do and how long I can do it. … I plan on playing seven, eight more years. Who knows, maybe more than that.”17 Campaneris had a decent season, batting .254 and stealing 27 bases, and his veteran leadership was a contributing factor in the Rangers’ rise from fifth place a year earlier to a second-place finish with a 94-68 record.

Despite his confidence, Campaneris began a downward slide in 1978, batting only .186 and playing in only 98 games. After being benched in early August, he voiced his displeasure: “This is the first bad year that I’ve had and it’s because they’ve taken me out of games for pinch-hitters, and now I don’t play. I’m not going to say anything the rest of this year. I’ll do the best I can when I do play, but I’ll tell you one thing – I’m not going to go through this again next season.”18

Rookie Nelson Norman was named the Rangers starting shortstop for the 1979 season, sending an unhappy Campaneris to the bench. On May 4 the Rangers traded him to the California Angels for infielder Dave Chalk. The Rangers also made the trade to rid themselves of Campaneris’s $190,000 annual salary, which ran through the 1981 season. With the Angels, Campaneris split time at shortstop for the next two seasons with Jim Anderson and Freddie Patek, batting .234 with 12 stolen bases in 85 games in 1979. On June 20 he got a measure of revenge by stealing three bases in a 5-4 Angels victory over the Rangers.

Campaneris batted .252 with 10 steals in 1980 and had a good stretch in midseason; in September Angels manger Jim Fregosi praised him, commenting, “Over the last six weeks, Bert Campaneris has been our best player.”19 However, Campaneris realized his role when 22-year- old Dickie Thon was called up by noting, “They want a young kid, someone to stay around another two years. Maybe we can be like Baltimore with (Kiko) Garcia and (Mark) Belanger. I can help the kid.”20

Campaneris played in 55 games in 1981 for the Angels, 46 of them as a defensive replacement at third base, and batted.256. He had five stolen bases. After the season he was granted free agency.

After an unsuccessful tryout at the Orioles’ camp during 1982 spring training, Campaneris played for Veracruz and Poza Rica in the Mexican League, batting .277 in 104 games primarily as a third baseman. He still loved playing, and said, “I’ll play as long as my legs and arms allow me.”21

On February 24, 1983, the 40-year-old Campaneris signed as a free agent with the New York Yankees, who invited him to spring training in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Yankees had to pay

$5,000 to obtain his release from Poza Rica. Happy to be getting another major-league shot, Campaneris said, “All my life I’ve thought about one day playing for the Yankees. Everybody wants to play for the Yankees. That’s why I came here first.”22

Campaneris was one of the final players in camp that was cut, and he was sent to Triple-A Columbus, where he batted .333 in 13 games, with seven runs batted in and three stolen bases. When Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph was injured, Campaneris was called up to the Yankees on May 4, and in his first start on May 6, playing second base, he had four hits, stole a base, and took part in four double plays. Campaneris played in 60 games, batting a career-high .322 and was a valuable backup at second and third base for the Yankees.

Released by the Yankees after the season, Campaneris was hired by the Angels as a minor-league bunting and baserunning coach. One of his special projects was working with Angels speedster Gary Pettis. He also had stints as a coach with the Houston Astros and the San Francisco Giants. In 2014 he libed in Scottsdale, Arizona, and was a frequent participant in old-timer’s games. He conducted baseball camps and was actively involved in the charity golf tournaments held by the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association.

The highest praise for Campaneris may have come from his old boss and antagonist, Charlie Finley, who said in 1980, “You can talk about Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Sal Bando, all those great players, but it was Campy who made everything go.”23

Last revised: April 17, 2023 (zp)

Notes

1 Ron, Bergman, “Quiet Campy Stealing Thunder … and Bases,” The Sporting News, June 25,1970

2 Joe McGuff, “Campaneris Thrills Kaycee Fans With Exploits as Bandit,” The Sporting News, July 31, 1965.

3 The Sporting News August 26, 1967

4 Ron Bergman, “Kennedy Turns Campy Into the Wild West Gunslinger,” The Sporting News, August 17, 1968.

5 “Ouiet Campy.”

6 Ron Bergman, “Oakland Fans Welcome Their Hero – Speedy Campy,” The Sporting News, October 28, 1972.

7 “Oakland Fans.”

8 “Oakland Fans.”

9 Bruce Markusen, A Baseball Dynasty (Haworth, New Jersey: St. Johann Press, 2002), 133

10 Markusen.

11 Markusen, 162.

12 Markusen, 234.

13 Dave Anderson, “Bert Campaneris Is Still Hurt,” New York Times, February 28, 1974

14 The Sporting News, January 8, 1977.

15 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Land Campaneris With a $750,000 Package,” The Sporting News, December 4, 1976.

16 Randy Galloway, “Campy’s Arrival Convinces Harrah to Switch to Third,” The Sporting News, March 26, 1977.

17 Randy Galloway, “Campy Looks for Fountain of Youth in Texas,” The Sporting News, April 16,1977

18 Randy Galloway, “Campy Counting His Bucks on Ranger Bench,” The Sporting News, September 9, 1978.

19 Peter Gammons, “A.L. Beat,” The Sporting News, September 13, 1980.

20 Dick, Miller, “Angels Will Test Trade Winds, but Not Free-Agent Market,”

21 Class AAA Notes, “Campy Going Strong at 40,” The Sporting News, June 14, 1980.

22 Murray Chass, “Campaneris, at 40, Tries to Be a Yankee,” New York Times, March 4, 1980.

23 Gammons, Peter, “A.L. Beat” The Sporting News, October 4, 1980.

José Rosario Domec Cardenal was born in Matanzas, Cuba, on October 7, 1943, at a time when Cuba was “free and fun,” attending José Marti High School in Matanzas.1 He is the second cousin of former Athletics standout Bert Campaneris, and they grew up a few blocks apart in Matanzas; they would often play baseball together. Cardenal’s father was a carpenter, his mother a homemaker, and he had two brothers and two sisters. Cardenal left Cuba on March 23, 1960, to come to the United States, when he was not yet 17, receiving $200 to sign with the San Francisco Giants. According to Cardenal, his signing bonus allowed him to purchase a suit, a pair of shoes, and a new baseball glove; his first pair of baseball shoes was issued to him by the Giants.2

Cardenal had a difficult time adjusting to the United States, battling the language barrier and becoming lonely and depressed because he could not communicate with his family back in Cuba. His letters were frequently delayed, if not already opened before his family received them.3

Cardenal made his US baseball debut on April 26, 1961, with the El Paso (Texas) Sun Kings of the Class-D Sophomore League, affiliated with the San Francisco Giants. He played left field and hit a home run. Cardenal hit .355 in 527 at-bats with 35 home runs, 108 RBIs, and 64 stolen bases, and showed versatility in the field in El Paso’s final game of the season by playing all nine positions, a feat his cousin Campaneris accomplished in 1965 for the Kansas City Athletics. Cardenal 35 home runs set a league record for homers in a season,4 helping him to gain MVP honors in the league, and earning him the Spanish nickname Jonronero (home-run hitter) from El Paso fans.5 At season’s end manager George Genovese said of Cardenal’s season: “The best prospect in the league. … He can hit, has power, has fine speed, a good throwing arm, and can play almost every position in baseball and do a good job of it.”6

After El Paso’s season ended, Cardenal earned a call-up to the Class-B Eugene Emeralds for the remainder of their season; he then played in the Arizona Winter Instructional League.

In the offseason the Giants added Cardenal to their 40-man roster, to keep him from being drafted by another team. He played winter ball in Venezuela, and it was reported that he and El Paso teammate Gerry Pedroso expressed a desire to return to Cuba to visit friends and relatives.7 The Giants were not happy with the possibility that he might not return, and the trip never occurred.

Cardenal went to spring training with the Giants in 1962 and then was assigned to Triple-A Tacoma (Pacific Coast League). The boost from Class D to Triple-A proved to be daunting for Cardenal; he batted only .222 in 121 games. Despite his difficulties, he was a popular player there, although he did incur $50 fines from manager Red Davis for “failure to hustle” on the basepaths and for being picked off at second base. Cardenal again played in the Arizona Winter League, seeing limited action because of a sore arm.

Cardenal went to spring training with the Giants in 1963, and, after playing in five regular-season games, was optioned to the El Paso Sun Kings of the Double-A Texas League, where he played in 125 games and batted .312 with 36 home runs and 95 RBIs. In his first game with the Sun Kings he walloped three two-run homers. But issues of behavior on the field continued to plague him. In June the 19-year-old Cardenal was suspended and put on a year’s probation by the Texas League for rushing the dugout of the heckling Austin Senators and making threatening gestures with a letter opener.8 After being reinstated, he was suspended again and fined $50 for an incident involving teammate Lazaro Gomez. Still, he was able to play 125 games for El Paso and was called up to the Giants on September 15 for the remainder of the season, appearing in four games. He played winter ball again, in Puerto Rico for the Caguas Criollos.

Batting .289 for Triple-A Tacoma in 1964, Cardenal was called up on September 4 to replace the injured Jesus Alou on the Giants, and had no hits in 15 at-bats. But even a trip to the majors was not without controversy, as Cardenal was given a “disciplinary fine” of an undisclosed amount for reporting late to the Giants, possibly because of missing a flight connection.9 The Caguas Criollos again signed him for the Puerto Rico Winter League and, on November 21 the Giants traded him to the California Angels for Jack Hiatt. The Seattle Times probably expressed the general feeling about Cardenal in February: “José Domec Cardenal is one of the most gifted youngsters in baseball, but he never has unwrapped all of his gifts, never has applied himself fully to the job at hand.”10

Despite a report that Cardenal would compete for the third-base job, his original position coming up with the Giants, he eventually returned to center field. It didn’t take him long to express his feelings about leaving the Giants: “Nobody was working together with the Giants. … I was never happy with the Giants.”11 After recovering from surgery in January, Cardenal got off to a great start with the Angels and seemed to have a supporter in manager Bill Rigney, who said, “He can be a really good one. He has a lot of things going for him.”12

Cardenal began to show his baserunning prowess with the Angels, stealing 37 bases in 1965, three of them steals of home, and was given the green light to run by Rigney.13 Cardenal, however, began to wear down in June and began to slump, and ended the season batting .250 with 11 homes runs and 57 RBIs. On September 8 he played in the game in which cousin Bert Campaneris played all nine positions for Kansas City. As a pitcher, Campaneris retired Cardenal on a pop fly, after retiring him on a fly ball as a left fielder.

Cardenal made the Topps All-Rookie Team for 1965 and went to Venezuela to play in their Winter Baseball League for the LaGuaira Sharks, but was released for “not giving his best” and “hurting the morale of the other players.”14 The Sharks acted after learning that Cardenal had an offer to play in the Puerto Rican League with Arecibo; they sought to have him banned from playing baseball anywhere in the Caribbean. Cardenal claimed that his performance was hampered by a leg injury.15

In March 1966 Cardenal and pitcher Rudy May claimed that they and their families were victims of racial discrimination. The two players, both black, complained that when they tried to find housing near the Angels’ new ballpark, they were strongly discouraged by three landlords.16 (No official action resulted. The Angels assigned outfielder Jimmy Piersall to mentor Cardenal during the season in case Cardenal’s spirits flagged. In April Piersall said of Cardenal, “José can be the best center fielder in our league and a tremendous gate attraction. His whole attitude has improved. He is doing everything in his power to make the other guys on the team like him.”17 Cardenal got off to a good start, partly because he began to try to hit up the middle, rather than pull everything, despite having a pulled groin and bruised throwing arm. The Angels, in turn, felt that Cardenal had made great progress, both on the field and off. Playing in 154 games, he batted .276, hit 16 homers, and stole 24 bases. After the season Cardenal played for a team of minor and major leaguers who toured Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, managed by Angels coach Billy Herman.

In 1967 Cardenal faced a new challenge – competition for his job from Jay Johnstone. Cardenal backed up Johnstone and outfielder Jimmy Hall until he injured his right knee in a home-plate collision with Detroit Tigers catcher Bill Freehan on August 28, ending his season. Trade rumors sprang up involving Cardenal, with one report saying that the Cleveland Indians were interested in acquiring him, even as his batting average plummeted to its final .236. Pronounced fit to play again after the injury, Cardenal again played in the Puerto Rican Winter League, for San Juan. In December he defended himself against an article in The Sporting News by Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times that said he was moody and a pouter, among other things. “I cannot understand how these things could possibly be said of me,” Cardenal responded. “I would guess that every person has varying moods, but I do not believe mine is exceptional. … I love to play baseball and this is all I ask – to be able to play, and carry my … own weight.”18

Shortly after the article appeared, Cardenal was traded to the Indians for outfielder Chuck Hinton. Angels general manager Fred Haney put the reason for the trade succinctly: “Bill Rigney didn’t like Cardenal.”19 The change of scenery and playing for former Giants manager Al Dark seemed to agree with Cardenal. On May 23, 1968, he had four hits in an Indians victory – a game in which Dark had allowed him to make up the lineup card; for the season, he batted .257 in 157 games, with 40 stolen bases, and became the fourth outfielder to pull off two unassisted double plays in a season.

By 1969 (.257, 36 stolen bases), Cardenal had worn out his welcome in Cleveland with his moodiness during the Indians’ disappointing season. After the season he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for outfielder Vada Pinson. Cardenal embraced the trade, and in 1970 improved his batting average to .293 in 148 games. But he was also criticized for lackadaisical play, an accusation he vehemently protested in a press conference held in St. Louis with his wife, Pat, by his side. He objected to anonymous comments made by teammates in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about his style of play. Manager Red Schoendienst came to Cardenal’s defense, calling him one of the best players on the Cardinals, but hinted that he could be a better team player.20 Cardenal credited Cardinals teammate Dick Allen with helping him to stop fighting himself as a player, quit trying to hit everything out of the ballpark, and learning to be more of a bat-control hitter.21

In 1971 spring training Cardenal hit .366 and seemed, for the short term, to silence those who thought he should be traded. But the critics returned as Cardenal’s batting average stayed around .200 for the first six weeks of the season, despite his use of Japanese bats with a hollowed-out end that shifted the center of gravity, supposedly providing better bat control for him.22 (For using them, he was fined $70, but after the season the major leagues approved them, saying that they gave no unfair advantage to the hitter.23)

Batting.243 on July 29, Cardenal was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in a five-player deal. Marvin Milkes, a Milwaukee scout, called Cardenal the player to lead Milwaukee “out of the wilderness.”24 After initially showing hesitancy about the trade, he joined the Brewers in a few days, and there was great optimism about what he might bring to the Brewers. Cardenal batted.258 for the Brewers in 53 games, then went to Venezuela to play for the LaGuaira Sharks. On December 3, the Brewers traded him to the Chicago Cubs for three players, Brock Davis, Jim Colborn, and Earl Stephenson. Cubs manager Leo Durocher valued Cardenal for his speed. Cardenal started off strong and became a fan favorite at Wrigley Field. Even the tempestuous Durocher liked him.

Everything seemed to be going in the right direction for Cardenal with the Cubs. But a problem surfaced when Cubs pitcher Ferguson Jenkins complained about how Cardenal missed balls in right field and lost balls in the lights.25 Also, in a game against the Montreal Expos on September 20, Cardenal and Expos manager Gene Mauch exchanged words after Cardenal had been knocked down by pitcher Mike Torrez. After the game Mauch and about 20 Expos players attempted to confront Cardenal in the Cubs’ clubhouse. Cubs manager Whitey Lockman (who had replaced Durocher after 91 games) was able to calm the situation without further incident. The situation had a humorous sidelight. The Cubs won the game, and it was Milt Pappas’s 200th victory. When Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse saw Mauch and the players approaching the Cubs dugout, he blurted out on the air: “Look at that! That’s the most sportsmanlike thing I’ve ever seen. Gene Mauch is leading his entire team over to congratulate Milt Pappas on his 200th victory.”26

Cardenal lasted six seasons with the Cubs. After batting.291 in 1972 with 17 homers, 70 RBIs, and 25 stolen bases, he returned to the Venezuelan Winter League, but battled illness. “One doctor tells me it might be hepatitis. A second doctor tells me it might be kidney trouble. And a third, he tells me I may have amoebic problems,” he said.27

Cardenal played with injuries in 1973, among them an infected toe, and a head injury suffered when he was hit by a throw trying to leg out an infield hit. Still, he had a strong season. In July Cubs bullpen coach Hank Aguirre was effusive in his praise, saying, “I played with (Al) Kaline 10 years, and I’ll tell you Cardenal is the complete player and in some areas is better than Kaline.”28 Aside from baseball, Cardenal became a US citizen during the season.

The 1974 season shaped up as one of change. The Cubs had cleaned house, and veterans Ron Santo, Ferguson Jenkins, Randy Hundley, and Glenn Beckert were no longer with the team. Cardenal had another solid year, batting .293, and heading into 1975, he was considered to be one of the team’s strengths, a team player and no longer a journeyman.29 In the offseason Cardenal signed a two-year contract with the Cubs for a reported $250,000, and he batted a career-high .317 with 34 stolen bases.

Cardenal was batting .299 in 1976 when his season ended on September 11 after he sprained a ligament in a game against the Phillies. He hoped to join Bill Veeck, the president of the Chicago White Sox, who planned to go to Cuba to scout baseball prospects.30 Cardenal hoped to be able to travel with Veeck to see his family, whom he had not seen since he had left Cuba in 1960. He filled out the needed paperwork, but did not receive the approval of the Cuban government to make the trip.31

Fully recovered for 1977, Cardenal hoped to duplicate or better his 1976 season. But manager Herman Franks shuffled his lineup after a short losing streak and benched Cardenal. Trade rumors grew louder. Returning to the lineup after 19 games, Cardenal soon went on the disabled list with fluid in his left knee and a bone chip in his wrist. Cardenal seemed resigned to being traded, but when a proposed trade for Phillies’ left-hander Tom Underwood was canceled, he responded testily: “That’s a bad way to treat a man who has done as much for the Cubs as I have.”32

Cardenal seemed to accept his new role as a platoon player when he returned from the DL. On August 10, the Chicago columnist Mike Royko called him “the new Mr. Cub,” even after he had earned the wrath of manager Franks for missing signs.33 However, the Cubs believed that Cardenal’s unhappiness may have been a negative influence on his teammates. He was traded on October 25 to the Phillies for journeyman pitcher Manny Seoane. As a 10-year player with five years on the Cubs, he had to give his approval for the trade, but his displeasure with the Cubs was apparent: “I was the target. They were beating my brains in. People treat dogs better than I was treated last year.”34

Seeking a new start in Philadelphia, Cardenal got some good off-field news when he learned that his parents, Felipe and Consuelo, would finally be able to visit the United States on a six-month visa.35 The Phillies used Cardenal in a reserve role at first base for 50 games, in addition to the outfield. The Phillies finished atop the National League East but lost to the Dodgers in the NLCS. In 1979 Cardenal returned in a similar reserve role but on August 2, after batting .208 in only 29 games, he was sold to the New York Mets. He played only 11 games with the Mets for the remainder of the season after injuring a knee and breaking his left wrist. Playing in the Venezuelan Winter League with LaGuaira, he fractured his left jawbone in two places on December 19; his injury was responsible for his loss of about 20 pounds due to the wiring of his jaw.

In 1980 Cardenal criticized the Mets management over his lack of playing time (26 games, .167 BA). He was released on August 13. On the 21st the Kansas City Royals signed him, hoping he could provide a veteran presence and versatility in the field to a club heading toward the playoffs. He batted .340 in 61 at-bats, but his power and speed had diminished. The Royals finished first in the American League West, defeated the New York Yankees in the ALCS, and faced the Phillies in the World Series. The teams were tied at two games apiece when in Game Five in Kansas City, manager Jim Frey allowed Cardenal to bat against left-hander Tug McGraw in the ninth inning with the bases loaded, two outs, and the Royals behind by a run. McGraw proceeded to strike out Cardenal to end the game, and the Series ended in the next game. Frey was strongly second-guessed for his decision to let Cardenal bat; John Wathan was available, in most people’s eyes a better choice. Shortly after the World Series, the Royals dropped Cardenal. He officially retired in 1981.

Cardenal remained around the baseball world in a number of roles over the next few years. In 1982 he returned to his hometown, Matanzas, Cuba, for the first time in 22 years to conduct baseball clinics. He also appeared at fantasy camps involving other retired Cubs, such as Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ferguson Jenkins. He participated in the All-Time Old Timers series that was popular in the 1980s, ran a baseball camp for little leaguers, and was involved with charity events for MS and other causes. The Reagan administration in 1985 sent Cardenal and fellow Cuban Minnie Miñoso on a goodwill tour of Central America. Later that year he was hired by the Chicago White Sox to be a roving minor-league instructor; one player he worked with in particular was Ozzie Guillen, helping teach him to switch-hit. In December 1986 the White Sox scrapped their roving minor-league instructor plan, and Cardenal and others were fired.

Another door opened for Cardenal when the Cincinnati Reds hired him as a roving minor-league instructor in 1988. In spring training in 1990 he was struck in the head by a batted ball and suffered a fractured skull for which surgery was required to break up a blood clot. He had a successful recovery and moved up to the Reds in 1993 as a coach, but resigned after the season.

Cardenal went to the St. Louis Cardinals for the 1994 season as a first-base coach to help with baserunning and outfield play, and to aid in communicating with Latin players on the club. After two years in St. Louis, he left the Cardinals and was the first-base and outfield coach for the New York Yankees from 1996 through 1999, with a role in the successful Yankees teams of that period. Part of Cardenal’s responsibilities was to mentor and serve as an interpreter for pitcher Orlando Hernandez, who had come to the United States from Cuba and signed with the Yankees in 1998.36 Hernandez “fired” Cardenal as his interpreter twice in 1999, but quickly “rehired” him when no one else on the Yankees felt up to the task.37 The Yankees, though, were not willing to meet Cardenal’s request for a $30,000 pay raise for the 2000 season, so he left the Yankees to become the first-base, outfielders, and baserunning coach for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays; his tenure with Tampa Bay ended in April 2001 when Devils manager Larry Rothschild and his coaches were fired.38 Cardenal was not unemployed for long, and he signed with the Reds as a special consultant to the general manager and farm director in August 2001; later he was named first-base coach for 2002. When asked whether he had any aspirations of managing in the major leagues, Cardenal responded: “I don’t want to go through all that hassle and aggravation that managers go through today. With the players making so much money, it’s hard. I like to go to bed at night.”39

Cardenal remained with the Reds through the 2003 season, then became an adviser with the Washington Nationals. In October 2009 he was let go by the Nationals. He said that he had no hard feelings and that his plan was to work toward bringing Cuban ballplayers to the United States. “My plan is to go to my country and try to see if I could start something if possible,” Cardenal said. “That’s going to be my next dream, to bring players from Cuba to the United States [legally].”40

No discussion of Cardenal’s career would be complete without mention of three issues: his use of bats, his interesting antics, and the matter of his Cuban heritage as it may have affected his relationships in baseball. Concerning the bats, Cardenal in 1970 started using bats made in Japan, given to him by former Cub George Altman, a veteran of Japanese baseball. They were made of a harder wood than most American bats, had a hollowed-out concave end and were known as “teacup” bats.41 This Louisville Slugger-style bat, made by Hillerich & Bradsby, is branded with C271, the C standing for Cardenal and the 271 meaning it was the 271st bat named for a specific player whose last name begins with the letter C.42 With a handle not too skinny, and a barrel not too fat, it became the bat of choice for players for many years, including Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.

As for the antics, Cardenal had a few managers scratching their heads regarding reasons why he would not be able to play in a game. In one incident, in 1972 while with the Cubs, Cardenal reportedly told his manager that he would not be able to play that day because crickets in his room kept him awake all night. On Opening Day in 1974, Cardenal told his manager, Whitey Lockman, that he would not be able to play because his eyelid was stuck open.43 When Cardenal was sold to the Mets in August 1979, between games of a doubleheader, he said that he was so in shock from the transaction that he could not play in the second game, although he just needed to cross the field to get to the other clubhouse. Cubs Hall of Famer Billy Williams provided another anecdote regarding Cardenal’s behavior. He said that often before games at Wrigley Field, Cardenal would hide balls in the outfield ivy and then during games would pull one out and throw it back in play.44

It is clear that society in general and baseball in particular have changed their treatment of Latin players over the last 50 or so years. For many years players of Hispanic heritage were described by many adjectives, among them fiery, brooding, temperamental, sulking, nonchalant, and uncooperative. When quoted in the press, their words were spelled in broken English; for example, when Cardenal spoke of facing Whitey Ford for the first time, it was put into print as follows: “I was a leetle nervous the first time I face Ford. … I not nervous now. I like eet here. I got chance play.”45

In Cardenal’s case, it must be considered that he came to the United States at the age of 16, with little fluency in English, and his family still in Cuba; it does not seem to be a stretch to say that he must have felt some frustration from those experiences and suffered some discrimination because of his heritage. Whether or not Cardenal should be “excused” for some of his behavior on and off the field because of such factors is a question left to others. But it is clear that Cardenal overcame many obstacles to become the accomplished player he was and, for that, he should be given credit.

In March 2016 Cardenal was among the former players selected by Commissioner Rob Manfred to represent Major League Baseball at events in conjunction with the exhibition game played in Havana between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team on March 22.

Last revised: May 1, 2016

This biography originally appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

Casanova’s career had many intriguing dimensions. In his native Cuba, he apprenticed for two winters, from 1959-60 to the end of professional play there in 1960-61 — though he never got into a league game. Like another Caribbean catcher, Elrod Hendricks, two big-league organizations released him in the early ’60s — but he made it after paying a lot of dues at lower levels. Casanova played with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1961, as the barnstorming club kept the memory of the Negro Leagues alive. He stayed active and won notice in semi-pro ball. After making it to the majors, he also spent nine winters in Venezuela, from 1965-66 through 1974-75.

An elbow injury ended Casanova’s career during spring training 1975, but he came back to play in the Senior Professional Baseball Association at age 47 in 1989. He coached for several years in the minors, and later founded his own academy. In his seventies, he was still supporting the game at the grassroots level there, with the involvement of other former ballplayers from Cuba who came by to lend their expertise.

Paulino Casanova Ortiz was born on December 31, 1941 in Perico, a small city located in the Cuban province of Matanzas. Some baseball references currently show the date as December 21 and the place as Colón, but Casanova offered these corrections in 2012. Colón was the town where he was raised. His father, Alejandro Casanova, was a sugar cane laborer. His mother, María Herminia Ortiz, was a maid. Paulino was the fourth of seven children, all boys.

For insight on Casanova’s playing days — from childhood to his years as a professional — one rich source is his talk with author Brent Kelley for the book of interviews with Negro Leaguers, “I Will Never Forget.” He told Kelley, “Ever since I was a kid I wanted to play so bad. . .The reason why I became a catcher was because I was no good at all.” At the age of nine, he was so determined to play that he cut down a tree to make his own bat, fashioned a mask from wire, made his own glove too, and then formed his own team from the other kids who got left out.1

When he was 13, Paulino’s family moved to the capital city of Cuba, La Habana. There he played Little League and sandlot ball. He also got to play occasionally with a semi-pro team with many older men who had played black ball in the United States. Then, at the age of 17, he joined the Almendares Alacranes of the Cuban professional league. The chance came courtesy of Tony Taylor, a fellow Matanzas native who was then playing for Almendares and was in the early stage of his 19-year big-league career.2

With the Scorpions, Casanova sat and observed behind first-stringer Allen Jones, a career minor-leaguer; Enrique Izquierdo; and Jesús McFarlane.3 The youngster did not see any action even after Jones broke his right index finger and was lost for a few weeks.

The club’s part owner and general manager, Monchy de Arcos, was also head scout in Cuba for the Cleveland Indians.4 He gave Paulino a contract with the Indians, with a bonus of 200 Cuban pesos (then equal to US$200). In 1967, Casanova told Washington sportswriter Bob Addie, “I never forgot those 200 pesos. The first thing I did was give some money to my mama and then I went out and bought a lot of clothes. I always liked clothes. I didn’t know it then, but I was in for a lot of trouble before I ever got to the big leagues.”5

The young catcher went to spring training at Daytona Beach, Florida. The competition was heavy, but “I was willing to do anything,” Casanova told Addie. “They felt sorry for me and gave me a job as bullpen catcher” with Minot of the Northern League (Class C).6 He got into just 10 games, with a mere six at-bats. A 1969 feature from The Day of New London, Connecticut (where Casanova lived and worked for some time) said, “He was with the club a month when Minot acquired another catcher — a $30,000 bonus baby. Casanova was put on the reserve list. Released at the end of the season, he returned to Cuba.”7

Back with Almendares, Casanova continued to learn on the bench behind Izquierdo and McFarlane. Only Cubans played in the league’s final season. In the last game, on February 8, the pennant was on the line between Cienfuegos and Almendares, which entered with equal 34-31 records. But Pedro Ramos dominated for the Elephants, who won 8-2. With the game out of reach, Casanova, a “nervous 19-year-old. . .was about to get his first at-bat. But his dream never came true. Casanova was left standing in the on-deck circle when a teammate flied out to end the game. The next day he fled the country with six other players.” They went to the Mexican embassy and got visas for Mexico, and went from there to the United States.8 Casanova told Brent Kelley, “If I would’ve went back to Cuba I probably would’ve been Cuban and never got a chance to play here.”9

The Indians had invited Casanova back after his first season with Minot, but released him again in April 1961. Bob Addie told the story in 1967 of how “the breaks continued to go sour for the earnest young catcher.”10 However, Casanova corrected that version in 2012. Assigned to Newton-Conover in the Western Carolinas League, he took a cab from Charlotte — but he had no money in his pocket and could not explain to the irate cabbie that somebody with the club would pay. “I spent the night in jail since I had no place to sleep, and they were kind enough to allow me to sleep in one of the open cells until the next day when one of the police officers did me a favor and called Cleveland. A scout was sent to pay the cabbie, who had retained a glove and a pair of new shoes in collateral until his fee was paid,” Casanova recalled.

He then toured the country for three months with the Indianapolis Clowns, sleeping in the team bus most of the time. A big thrill came when he got a hit off Satchel Paige while going 5-for-5 in a morning/afternoon/night tripleheader. He also recalled hitting a homer off Joe Black, the former Brooklyn Dodger who was still active in semi-pro ball in New Jersey. He earned $300 a month. The Clowns paid half of his salary and San Antonio — then a Chicago Cubs farm club — paid the other half. Dick King, the general manager of San Antonio, recommended Casanova to the Cubs organization after seeing him play.11

That summer, the Clowns visited New London to play a team representing Electric Boat, the submarine manufacturer based in nearby Groton, Connecticut. This game had two big effects on Casanova. First, Washington Senators scout John Caruso (who was based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he owned a restaurant) saw him play. He said that he would be in touch about a contract. Second, the catcher met a New London woman named Minnie Johnson. “They corresponded during the summer and were married when Casanova returned to New London at the close of the season.” They had two children: Paulino Antonio and María Luisa.12

Casanova didn’t hear from John Caruso. He wondered what had happened; unbeknownst to him, the scout had been in a car accident and was hospitalized for six months. Meanwhile, “Casanova did a variety of odd jobs. In the winter, he shoveled snow with a street gang and, in the summer, he operated a steamroller for a construction company. . .He also worked part-time laying linoleum and did whatever [else] he could.”13 As he recalled in 2012, that included washing cars, which strengthened his arm.

Still just 20 years old, Casanova appeared twice for San Antonio in the 1962 season, with just one at-bat, before getting released once again in April. That summer he played for the Quaker Hill club in the Morgan League, a semi-pro circuit that operated in southeastern Connecticut from 1934 through 1985.14 That chance came thanks to Jorge Hernández, another Clowns veteran who had worked at the same trucking company with Casanova during the winter in New London.15

Casanova also played with Electric Boat’s team, which went up to Barre, Massachusetts for a tournament. John Caruso was there — for months, he had thought the young Cuban had gone back home. In the interim, a tryout with the New York Mets had come to nothing, but when Caruso saw Casanova’s arm on display, he signed him.16

In 1963 and 1964, Casanova played for Geneva, a Senators farm club in the New York-Pennsylvania League. He finally got some regular duty, playing 94 games and posting a .261-7-34 batting line in 1963. He started to emerge the following year, hitting .325-19-99 in 120 games and making the NYP All-Star team at catcher along with Jerry Moses.

Unfortunately, he did not have the opportunity to develop his game in winter ball in those years. Starting in 1962-63, former Commissioner Ford Frick had prevented Latino ballplayers from going anywhere other than their home country in the winters — which hit Cubans particularly hard, since the Castro regime had done away with their league. Casanova did, however, play in the Florida Instructional League.

Casanova spent his third year in A ball in 1965, hitting .287-8-76 in 142 games for Burlington of the Carolina League. That September, he got his first call to the majors; as Bob Addie in The Sporting News wrote, “The catching situation is acute with the Senators, which is the reason that Casanova is being given a trial.”17 He got into five games, and got his first hit — an RBI double off John O’Donoghue of Kansas City — on September 28 at D.C. Stadium.

In the winter of 1965-66, Casanova was able to play in Venezuela. He joined Tigres de Aragua, a first-year franchise whose batboy was a skinny young local named Dave Concepción — the future All-Star shortstop of the Cincinnati Reds.18 The club’s big star was Rico Carty. Carty was in South America that winter because the league in his homeland, the Dominican Republic, was still not operating amid political turmoil.19 More important, though, was the experience that Casanova gained by playing against major-leaguers such as Luis Aparicio.20

Casanova started off 1966 at Double-A, with York in the Eastern League. He played five games there but was then needed in Washington. As he told Brent Kelley, “The only reason I get my break because everybody get hurt and they had to play me.” John Orsino had a sore arm and so manager Gil Hodges put him at first base. Doug Camilli started most of the games behind the plate early on, but then he split a finger. In May, the Nats sent catcher Mike Brumley down and called up two receivers: Jim French and Casanova. In his second appearance, “Cassie” (or “Cazzie,” as his teammates also called him) hit his first big-league homer, breaking up a no-hitter by Fred Talbot of Kansas City in the eighth inning.

Soon after, Orsino went on the emergency disabled list — he had a cyst on a nerve in his throwing elbow that needed an operation. French’s knee bothered him, opening the door for Casanova to become the regular. In early June, Bob Addie wrote a description reminiscent of Charles Johnson, the big-league catcher of the 1990s and 2000s. “Big, good-natured Paul Casanova, with the arm of a rifle and the potentially-powerful bat, has been doing all the catching. . .He stands 6-4 and weighs 190 solid pounds.”21

After Doug Camilli went on to suffer a broken thumb, the Senators were so thin at catcher that they even activated coach Joe Pignatano, who had last played in the majors in 1963. Yet Casanova, despite being banged up all over like all big-league backstops, stayed in the lineup. Later that season, he got mention as an AL Rookie of the Year candidate. Longtime major-league catcher Rollie Hemsley, who lived in the D.C. area, had seen him in person at Senators home games and offered constructive criticism. Gil Hodges said, “He has done a remarkable job for his first year in the big leagues.”22

Casanova set career highs in games played (141), at-bats (551), and RBIs (53) in 1967. One particularly memorable game started on the evening of June 12. In Washington, the Senators and Chicago White Sox played a 22-inning marathon. Casanova caught the whole thing, receiving 268 pitches. As he recalled in 2012, “The reason the game went so long was because of my defense” — he wiped out a number of runners. He went 1-for-9, missing a chance to end it in the 20th when he hit into a third-to-home-to-first double play with the bases loaded — but his one hit was the game-winner at 2:44 A.M.23

In those days, the fans had still not regained the privilege of voting for the All-Star teams. The players, managers, and coaches cast the ballots, and Casanova came in second behind the AL’s clear-cut winner, Bill Freehan of Detroit. When the game was played, in Anaheim Stadium, Freehan stayed in throughout the entire 15-inning contest. Casanova was sad and disappointed that AL manager Hank Bauer did not see fit to use him at all, without even a word as to why.24

Casanova had much success that year with his arm against the White Sox, a running club. On August 28, the Senators beat the Sox, 2-1, thanks again to his defense. He picked Don Buford off third after Buford faked a dash to the plate. Then in the ninth, with Tommie Agee on third and Ken Berry on first, Duane Josephson struck out. Casanova bluffed Agee back to third after Berry lit out for second, then he threw to second baseman Tim Cullen, who trapped Agee off third to end the game. At various points that year, his snap throws picked runners off every base. Joe Garagiola, the catcher turned broadcaster, said to Casanova, “The Army could use you as a secret weapon. I never saw a gun like that.”25

The pitcher as the August 28 game ended was SABR member Dave Baldwin, who recalled the action in 2012. “That game in which Cazzie caught Agee off third occurred after he had acquired the reputation of having the best arm of all catchers in the American League. I remember thinking that we were lucky that Agee wasn’t paying attention to that reputation.

“Cazzie and I were teammates first at Burlington, North Carolina, in the Carolina League, in 1965. I was just learning to pitch at the age of 27, making the switch from throwing overhand to throwing sidearm and submarine. We were both learning a lot that season. He was very helpful to me, letting me know how the pitches were behaving (a pitcher can’t tell if the ball is sinking, sailing, or tailing). I remember he encouraged me to throw more screwballs, a pitch I should have used more throughout the remainder of my career.

“What I remember best about Cazzie is his rifle arm. The Washington coaches (Pignatano and [Rube] Walker) worked with him to improve his accuracy. Cazzie gained confidence and wasn’t afraid to try to catch runners off base, as Agee discovered.”

That winter, however, as a stipulation of Casanova’s new contract, Senators general manager George Selkirk forbade the catcher to play in Venezuela. Selkirk thought that it was wearing Casanova down late in the big-league season.26 By contrast, Paulino felt that winter ball benefited his summer hitting.27

The player may have known better than the GM. In 1968, he got off to a terrible start with the bat, and he was optioned to Triple-A Buffalo for a stretch during June and July. The slump and the demotion weighed on his mind and overall play.28 When he returned, things improved just a bit — he got over the Mendoza Line just once all year, on August 30, when his average stood at .201. He finished at .196, with 4 homers and 25 RBIs.

According to what he told Brent Kelley, Casanova was not skilled in calling a game when he first made it to the majors. When he focused on improving in that area, his hitting suffered — he modestly noted that he wasn’t the kind of catcher like Johnny Bench who could accomplish both things.29 Yet his arm remained powerful and accurate — during his big-league career, Casanova gunned down 40% of the runners who tried to steal against him (210 out of 524).

Casanova also told Kelley that he learned a lot from John Roseboro (a Senators teammate in 1970) and Earl Battey of Minnesota. He added that black catchers then were an elite few — akin to football quarterbacks, men of African descent found it hard to win the trust from management to call a game.30 He made another interesting point about Battey with Venezuelan columnist Broderick Zerpa, calling the Twins catcher the first whom he could remember to throw runners out from his knees. Casanova adopted the style himself, well before Benito Santiago gained wider notice for it.31

From 1969 through 1971, Casanova played under Ted Williams with the Senators. When Williams took over for Jim Lemon, Paulino said, “I’m looking forward to meeting him. Everybody says he’s a real nice guy. I’ll be glad to get all the help I can from a great hitter like him. He will bring up the morale of the team. The players will hustle for him.”32 Looking back in 2012, Casanova said of Williams, “A good friend of mine, a tremendous person. Wanted everyone to hit like him and nobody could hit like him.”

Casanova’s hitting did not pick up appreciably during his three last years in Washington: a .216 average overall, with 15 homers and 93 RBIs. He also remained a free swinger throughout his career, with an on-base percentage of just .252. Nonetheless, he still got the bulk of the catching duties over this period, ahead of the even weaker-hitting Jim French (.196 lifetime), John Roseboro (at the end of the line in 1970), and Dick Billings.

On December 2, 1971, the Texas Rangers — the move of the Senators franchise had been approved that September — traded Casanova to Atlanta for another catcher, Hal King. King was generally better known for his bat than his catching, yet he had hit just .207 in 1971. He was a lefty swinger, though, and the Rangers wanted him to pair with Billings and Ken Suarez (obtained the same day).33

From 1972 through 1974, Casanova was a backup catcher for the Braves. The first year, he was behind Earl Williams, a strong hitter who didn’t relish being behind the plate. In ’73, Johnny Oates came over from the Baltimore Orioles in the deal that sent Williams away, but he hurt his leg in July, and so Casanova was the starter during the second half of the year. In ’74, he was the third-stringer; Atlanta obtained Vic Correll near the end of spring training and gave Correll his first real chance to play in the majors. Overall, Casanova played in 173 games during those three seasons, batting .210 with 9 homers and 36 RBIs.

Casanova and Henry Aaron became quite friendly in Atlanta because they were both alumni of the Indianapolis Clowns.34 The biggest on-field highlight of his time in Atlanta was catching knuckleballer Phil Niekro’s no-hitter on August 5, 1973. Paul helped carry Niekro off the field “because he’s a beautiful guy.”35 Analyzing the game, he declared, “I’ve never seen his knuckler better and he threw 95% knucklers. I just tried to keep him cool and keep him throwing it. All I worried about was blocking the ball.”36

Padres manager Don Zimmer responded, “It’s pretty hard to hit a ball that Casanova can’t even catch.” When asked in 2012 about his approach to receiving the knuckleball, Paulino responded, “It is like catching butterflies with a catching glove.”

It’s also noteworthy that Ted Williams said, “Casanova is one of the better knuckleball hitters around.” That was in August 1969, after a game-winning pinch-hit homer off Wilbur Wood, who said, “He [Casanova] can hurt you with his power. He swings hard and when he makes contact, he can hit a long ball.” Paulino himself said, “I’ve been lucky against him” — actually, his record against butterfly artists was mixed. 37

Except for 1967-68, Casanova returned to Venezuela for winter ball through his big-league career. After his first two years with Aragua, he spent the rest of his South American career with Tiburones de La Guaira. Overall, during 450 games across nine seasons, he hit .268 with 20 homers and 200 RBIs. He was a member of three champion teams. In 1966-67, he reinforced the Caracas Leones in the playoffs; then he was with La Guaira as the Sharks won in 1968-69 and 1970-71.

In 2008, Casanova told Broderick Zerpa, “In Venezuela, they play a form of baseball that’s more fun than in the majors. The fans make you play and make you want to win each game. They’re not waiting for the playoffs, you have to win the games from early in the season.”38

Casanova was back with the Braves in spring training 1975, but Atlanta released him — which might not have been legal, for he had hurt his arm. A 1989 article showed him looking back. “Paul Casanova bends his right arm and with a long finger traces a scar running around his elbow. ‘After this, that was all,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘It was over for me. I was only 33.’”39

In 1985, Casanova finally got to swing a bat in the uniform of the Almendares Blues. It came as he made his first appearance in the in the annual benefit for the Federation of Cuban Professional Baseball Players. He hit a double off Luis Tiant and said, “This is really exciting for me. I never got to play for (Almendares). I never had the feelings these other guys had. This is really my debut.” The story in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel also emphasized Cuban camaraderie. “Unlike 24 years ago, Casanova was not playing to win. He was playing to see old friends, sign autographs for Latin American fans and share old memories. ‘It really doesn`t matter what teams we’re playing for,’ Casanova said. ‘It`s always exciting when we get together again.’”40

When the Senior Professional Baseball Association began play in the fall of 1989, Casanova joined the Gold Coast Suns, managed by Earl Weaver. He said, “This is like coming back to life. When you have to leave the game and you get a chance to come back to it, that’s when you appreciate what the game is.”41

In 1992, Casanova became part of the Chicago White Sox organization. He told Brent Kelley that at first he was going to be bullpen coach with the big club, but because of vision problems, he wound up instead with their Class A farm team in Hickory, North Carolina as a first base coach and catching instructor. One of the young players he came to with Hickory there was Magglio Ordóñez, then still a teenager. “I worked there for two years, going on three,” Casanova recalled, “But when the strike came they let everybody go.”42

In March 2010, SABR member Nick Diunte devoted one of his regular columns to “Paul’s Backyard,” as Casanova’s academy affectionately became known for its location. He praised Paulino and his fellow Cuban, former big-league shortstop Jacinto “Jackie” Hernández, for their vigor, love for the game, keen eyes, and relaxing, encouraging nature.43 Plenty of people shared Diunte’s opinion.

Along with all its training equipment, the academy also served as “a virtual museum with a focus on the Cuban legends who represent Casanova and Hernandez’s home country.”44 Casanova was an ambassador of sorts, keeping in touch with many of the Cuban vets living in South Florida. Younger big-leaguers had ties to the academy too, such as J.D. Martínez. “Flaco” trained under Casanova and Hernández and rewarded them with his first homer in the majors on August 3, 2011.45

Paul Casanova was a most amiable personality — photos of him almost without exception showed a pleasant smile on his face. As Broderick Zerpa put it, “To talk with Paulino Casanova is an activity that, aside from being a lot of fun because of his great sense of humor, is really educational for those who want to learn more about baseball every day. Without doubt, to talk with this baseball globetrotter is to get to know in depth the game at the end of the ’60s and beginning of the ’70s in the Caribbean and the Big Show.”46

Casanova appeared at Major League Baseball’s FanFest as part of the entertainment surrounding the 2017 All-Star Game, which was held in Miami. He was in a wheelchair, because for some time he’d had severe back problems and other health issues that required regular medical attention and some hospitalizations.47 Nonetheless, he was in typical good humor as he talked about how salaries had spiraled since he broke into the majors. “We only played because we loved the sport,” he said.48

During 2017, Casanova had been suffering from respiratory problems, and severe cardiorespiratory complications ensued after his public appearance in Miami. On August 12, he died at the age of 75, surrounded by family members. His remains were to be cremated.

Nick Diunte wrote a column for the website La Vida Baseball full of warm memories — his own and others’ — about Casanova. Diunte observed, “Paul was the glue that held together a generation of baseball players,” and added, “Look at the game of today, and Casanova’s fingerprints are all over it.”49

Luis Tiant, who heard the news from fellow Cuban Tony Oliva, was saddened by the loss of his longtime friend, with whom he had played in Cuba and Venezuela. Jackie Hernández underscored Tiant’s emphasis on how caring Casanova was and how much he helped others. “To the end a good and respected person,” said Hernández. “Casanova was very proud that his baseball academy helped so many youngsters learn and enjoy the game and advance in their career.”

An earlier version of this biography appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment to Paulino Casanova for his ongoing help with the SABR BioProject’s effort to honor Cuban ballplayers. He provided handwritten comments on his own story to José Ramírez on a draft copy (reply received July 2, 2012). Thanks also to Dave Baldwin for his memories (via e-mail, June 7, 2012) and to Nick Diunte.

Continued thanks to Jackie Hernández and Luis Tiant for their ongoing input, especially following the loss of their dear friend (conversations with José Ramírez, August 13, 2017).

Sources

Books

Jorge S. Figueredo, Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1878-1961. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2003.

Internet resources

www.baseball-reference.com

www.retrosheet.org

www.purapelota.com (Venezuelan statistics)

www.checkoutmycards.com

Notes

“[Manager Paul Richards] made a pitcher out of me,” Consuegra said that year through interpreter Buck Canel, the longtime Spanish-language broadcaster. “Before I came to the White Sox I was just a thrower. I threw a fastball and a curve and that’s all. As soon as I came over here Richards taught me how to throw a palmball and a sinker. Now I throw them quite often, mixed with my fastball and curve, and I have confidence that I can win.”2

Consuegra was a swingman, a role that has vanished with five-man rotations and specialized bullpens. He started 71 times in 248 appearances in the majors. He had only 26 saves, since that was not the focus for relievers in his time. He got batters to put the ball in play. In 809⅓ innings pitched, he struck out just 2.1 men per nine innings – but his walk ratio was 2.7, he allowed almost exactly one hit per inning, and he kept the ball in the park, giving up just 43 homers. Les Moss, who caught the Cuban with the White Sox in 1955-56, offered further insight. “Little Sandy Consuegra [he was 5-feet-11 and 165 pounds] was a pretty good pitcher who fooled batters with an array of pitches, including an effective slider, and motions.”3

Sandalio Simeón Consuegra Castellón was born on September 3, 1920, on a sugar plantation in Potrerillo, Cuba.4 This is a rural town in a mountainous region in the central part of the island. Cuban baseball author Roberto González Echevarría wrote, “The name means little pasture land.” He added, “Consuegra … had a typically backwoods first name found who knows where by his parents.”5

In 2011 Sandy’s son Rogelio (Roger) told the story. “In Cuba most homes had a Catholic calendar and it gave the name of the saint for each day of the month. I must assume his name came from the calendar, as all his other brothers and sisters had similar ‘strange’ names.” Indeed, the feast day of San Sandalio (St. Sandila, a ninth-century Spaniard martyred by the Moors) is September 3. Roger Consuegra further related, “When I was born my mother refused to name me Sandalio and I was going on the fifth day with no name. That afternoon Rogelio Martínez and Julio Moreno were facing each other, and they agreed I would be named after the winning pitcher. Deportivo Matanzas won, thus my name is Rogelio.”

Consuegra got his nickname (Potrerillo) in Cuban ball from his hometown. Much the same was true of Rogelio Martínez, who was dubbed “Limonar” for the name of the town where he first played.6 Manolo de la Reguera, the famous Cuban sports commentator, was responsible for Consuegra’s nickname and those of many other players.7

Sandalio, who was one of five boys and six girls born to Sotero Consuegra and Luisa Castellón, worked on the family’s 50-acre farm. He went to an elementary school in the countryside.8 The youth played ball after work and on weekends. After a while he and his friends came up with a team to play in a local league on cow pastures turned into baseball fields. He eventually moved on in 1935 to play with Cumanayagua, a larger town a few miles out.9

Roberto González Echevarría wrote, “A significant development in the thirties and forties was the emergence of players, mostly pitchers, from the provinces … white guajiros – country bumpkins.” The foremost of these “revered amateurs and later professionals” was Conrado Marrero, El Guajiro del Laberinto, but “Jiquí” Moreno was a distinguished runner-up, while Martínez and Consuegra weren’t far behind. In their amateur days, all four “often appeared in magazines, sometimes even on the covers.”10 It seemed as if it was almost compulsory in those days for Cuban men to sport pencil mustaches, like Hollywood stars of the time (Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Ronald Colman, et al.)

After beginning his amateur career in Cumanayagua, Consuegra then played with Regiment 7 of the Cuban Armed Forces from 1936 through 1940. Roger Consuegra recalled, “At age 16, my father decided he wanted out of their rural existence and one day after work buried his mocha (a machete to cut sugar cane) in a wood column in the porch of the main house. According to him, he told my grandfather he was through with farming and was going to join the armed forces (Regiment 7), where he played ball and rode with the equestrian teams for the regiment.

“That mocha remained buried in that wood column until the day my grandfather died and I remember hearing that story many times. Eventually the one farm became seven and until 1960 the Consuegra clan’s baseball team played their baseball every time they could.”

Upon returning from Regiment 7, Consuegra spent a year with Sancti Spíritus. From 1942 to 1945 he was with Deportivo Matanzas. He also appeared twice in the Amateur World Series for Cuba. In 1943 he was 1-1 with a 3.44 ERA. In 1944 he was 1-0 with a 1.00 ERA11

White-only social clubs dominated the Cuban amateur scene – yet the level of play was high. Cuban baseball expert Peter Bjarkman described it as “a thriving tradition that grew up alongside Havana’s pro league and that, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, actually outstripped the pro game in island-wide popularity and fan stature.”12 Cuban all-star teams of the day also made a good showing against major leaguers. After the Boston Red Sox lost such a game in 1941, manager Joe Cronin reportedly said, “They may be amateurs, but many are better than our players.”

Consuegra started as a center fielder for Deportivo Matanzas.13 He began his transition to the mound in his first season there, 1942, going 3-1 (although Roberto González shows him with five victories). The 1943 season was noteworthy; at least one other expert, César López, viewed it as the best-quality season for the Cuban amateur league. It was a great race between Círculo de Artesanos, starring Jiquí Moreno, and Deportivo Matanzas. Amateur league games took place just once a week, and Moreno started virtually every Sunday for Artesanos. By contrast, Matanzas relied on three pitchers: Limonar Martínez, Consuegra, and Ángel “Catayo” González. The trio was known, without much imagination, as Los Tres Mosqueteros – The Three Musketeers.14

Given the schedule, one wonders how they stayed sharp, but manager Tomás “Pipo” de la Noval did not use them in rotation – rather, he gave them each three innings a game.15 González Echevarría called them “the best staff ever in Cuban amateur baseball.”16 He added, “All three were also feared batters.”17

Heading into the season’s final week, Matanzas had a record of 22 wins, 5 losses, and one tie. Artesanos was half a game back at 22-6. Jiquí Moreno struck out 14 (including eight in a row) to put his team ahead in the win column, but Matanzas responded with a victory of its own to take the title, as Martínez and Consuegra combined on a two-hitter. Consuegra’s record that year was either 11-2 or 9-1; his sparkling 0.97 ERA led the league.18

Círculo de Artesanos won the 1944 amateur championship, despite Consuegra’s 11-4 record. In 1945, though, he stepped forward as the primary pitcher for Deportivo Matanzas, leading them to another title with a spectacular performance. According to statistics provided by Conrado Marrero’s grandson Rogelio, he was 24-2, with a 1.39 ERA. This suggests that neither Limonar Martínez nor Catayo González was with the club any more. (The amateur circuit suffered from the loss of many players after 1944.) The Consuegra family does not have specific knowledge, but Roger Consuegra said, “Those were very happy years for him and he always drifted back to them in his conversations.”

Potrerillo was supposed to make his debut in US pro ball that year, having signed with the Minneapolis Millers, which were then unaffiliated. The Millers had brought in a number of other Cubans, including pitcher Isidoro “Izzy” León.19 As The Sporting News wrote that May, “Manager Rosy Ryan, catcher Jack Aragon, and other members of the club’s Cuban contingent stormed the telegraph offices to bombard Sandalio Consuegra with wires urging him to report. Consuegra, who is rated a better pitcher than León, failed to report with the other Cubans because he wasn’t sure he could make the grade.”20 Then again, he could have been in need of rest after the amateur league season, even though the games were played only once a week on Sundays.

The amateur status of these athletes was nominal, though, as columnist Roberto Rodríguez de Aragón wrote in his tribute to Limonar Martínez after the latter’s death in 2010. Around 1944 or so, Havana Reds manager Miguel Ángel “Mike” González offered Limonar and Consuegra a contract for 125 pesos a month to pitch for his team. They laughed and said that they made more than that for pitching one good game, thanks to the gifts of fans! They hastened to thank González, though, since he was a man of much respect.21

In the winter of 1945-46, Potrerillo turned pro at last, joining Tigres del Marianao of the Cuban Winter League. He got into five games and was 2-0 with a 2.86 ERA. The following spring, he made a decision that strongly influenced the course of his career: He went to Mexico. The 1946 season was when wealthy Jorge Pasquel made his push to put the Mexican League on the same level as the majors, fueled by higher salary offers. For Hispanic players, though, language and a more similar culture were also good reasons.

Consuegra went 14-13, 4.72 for the Puebla Pericos in 1946; that staff also featured 20-game winner Sal Maglie. Consuegra followed with 8-11, 3.06 marks for Marianao that winter. In 1947, the Havana Cubans – then a Class C farm club of the Washington Senators – wanted Sandalio to join their staff. If he had come, Consuegra would have joined Marrero, Moreno, and Martínez. Instead, another Cuban pitcher, Tomás de la Cruz, persuaded him to go back to Mexico. Havana club president Merito Acosta pressed charges against Consuegra, seeking damages of $1,600. “Acosta said he took the necessary steps to have Consuegra reinstated [since the Mexican League had become an “outlaw” circuit], signed him and advanced money to him.”22 With Puebla again, Consuegra trimmed his ERA to 3.36 while winning 10 and losing 10.

Cuba had a new league in the winter of 1947-48: La Liga Nacional, or Players’ Federation League. Consuegra started with Santiago, but after that club disbanded on December 15, he went to Leones. His overall record was 13-8, 3.76. The league completed the season but was defunct thereafter. That winter Consuegra played alongside Sal Maglie, Max Lanier, and others who became outlaws for jumping from the majors to Mexico in 1946. This had an ongoing effect on his ability to play in Organized Baseball – and many winter leagues – until the ban was lifted.

Consuegra went back for a third summer in Puebla in 1948 (8-5, 2.67) – taking a hefty pay cut to do so.23 As another part of its belt-tightening measures in the post-Pasquel era, the Mexican League folded two franchises in August. Consuegra went back to Cuba, either uncertain that the season would finish or fearing a further pay cut to offset the devaluation of the Mexican peso.24

Consuegra had also applied for reinstatement to Organized Baseball that summer, with an eye toward playing in the “proper” Cuban pro league that winter.25 His request was not granted – he went back to Mexico to play in a little-known winter circuit, La Liga Peninsular, on the Yucatán, 120 miles west of Cuba. With the club Cardenales de Motul, he led the league with a 1.33 ERA while going 8-2. His friend and fellow Cuban, outfielder Roberto Ortiz, won the Triple Crown for the Cardenales, who were the league champion.26

For the summer of 1949, Consuegra went to Venezuela, where La Liga Occidental (the Western League) was then operating in the summers. Up to that point, this circuit and the Venezuelan winter league had steered clear of ineligible players. With Gavilanes de Maracaibo, the Cuban starred again, posting a 14-3 record. In early June 1949, Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler issued a general amnesty to the outlaws. George Trautman, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, put Potrerillo back in good standing. 27

La Liga Occidental’s season ended in July, and Consuegra finally became a member of the Havana Cubans. In 11 games, he was 6-5, 3.04. He might have made it to the majors that summer, but “when the Nats [Senators] wired for Consuegra to report, somehow, between Washington and Havana, the orders got scrambled. Instead of Consuegra, another Cuban righthander, [Julio González], showed up.”28

That fall, in the Inter-American Baseball Tournament at Caracas, Consuegra threw a no-hit, no-run game against host team Venezuela. Center fielder Pedro Pages preserved the gem in the ninth inning with a catch after a long run.29 The winter of 1949-50 was Sandalio’s busiest in Cuba. He was 13-12 for Marianao, leading the league in innings pitched and losses.

After a disagreement with Senators owner Clark Griffith, Consuegra started the 1950 season in Havana again. “He had incurred a $3,000 debt by signing with a Venezuelan team during the winter. He said that he had spent the $3,000 ‘bonus’ and asked Griffith to make that sum up to him. Griffith didn’t hesitate a moment. He just handed the Cuban a one-way ticket back to Havana.”30

In June 1950 Consuegra made it to the majors at last, following a hot start with the Cubans (8-2, 2.15 in 11 games). Roberto Ortiz, who had become a backup outfielder with the Senators, praised Consuegra and helped iron out differences with Griffith. Sandalio made his debut on June 10 at Griffith Stadium. “With his sneaky fastball and unorthodox windup,” he threw a rain-shortened five-inning shutout against the White Sox. The St. Louis Browns shelled him in his next outing, but Consuegra won his next two, going all the way and then eight innings. That July, The Sporting News wrote a feature about him, accompanied by a picture of the hurler making a zany face and a goose-egg hand sign.31

Consuegra lost his last three decisions to finish at 7-8, 4.40 in 21 games (18 starts). He pitched poorly in 17 games in Cuba that winter (4-8, 6.10), and Clark Griffith instructed him to stay out of winter ball for fear of sapping his strength.32 Sandy started the 1951 season with a bang for the Senators, throwing three straight complete-game victories and allowing just one run in each.

That May, The Sporting News ran a full-page feature on Conrado Marrero and Consuegra. As was typical of the time, their accents were parodied, but one quote shined through nonetheless. In his first start, Consuegra retired Mickey Mantle the first four times he faced him, twice by strikeout, before giving up a triple in the ninth. He told reporters (through translator Willy Miranda) that none of the Yankees gave him any trouble. A reporter asked him, then, was Mantle lucky? “No, he no luckee. I fool heem four time, he fool me one time.”33

As the season wore on, though, Consuegra may have worn down. Manager Bucky Harris used him much more in relief (12 starts in 40 games), and he finished with numbers similar to 1950’s (7-8, 4.01). Consuegra did not pitch in the winter of 1951-52, and with the Senators in 1952, he started just twice in 30 games. He was effective in his limited action: 6-0, 3.05 in 73⅔ innings.

Consuegra returned to winter ball in 1952-53, splitting the season between Marianao and the Cienfuegos Elefantes (6-9, 3.04). He pitched just four games for Washington in the early going in 1953. On May 12 the White Sox bought his contract for roughly $15,000. As Chicago columnist Edgar Munzel put it the following year, “[N]o one paid much attention to the little bowlegged Cuban. He was dismissed as just another second-flight bull pen pitcher who probably would be on his way elsewhere within a short time in Frantic Frankie Lane’s endless shuffling of material. The general understanding was that Sandy was a happy go-lucky Cuban who spent so much of his time on clubhouse gags that Washington finally decided to get rid of him. Furthermore, Consuegra already was 32. He wasn’t too strong, either. He lacked ruggedness and the Senators had several other Cubans like him on the roster.”34

Once in Chicago, Consuegra pitched well. Over the rest of the ’53 season, he was 7-5, 2.54 in 29 games (13 starts). Despite his limited English, he took active part in the clubhouse fun. There were three Cubans to keep him company: Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso, Mike Fornieles, and Luis “Wito” Alomá. Because of his sharp nose and narrow features, his teammates called Consuegra ‘The Crow’ or ‘Chicken Head.”35 Munzel added, “He’s still the clubhouse gagster. … he’ll entertain his mates with imitations of other players that would make a professional actor envious.”36

Having skipped winter ball again in 1953-54, Consuegra may have been fresher in the spring of 1954. Manager Paul Richards said, “[He] will be our number three pitcher and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is our number two pitcher.”37 As the season unfolded, Richards was right in some important ways. Starting 17 games and relieving in 22 others, Consuegra was tied for second on the club in wins, along with Bob Keegan, behind 37-year-old ace Virgil Trucks. Along with his 16-3 record, Sandy led the club in ERA (2.69).

He also made it to the All-Star Game for the only time that July, as manager Casey Stengel named him to replace Mike Garcia of the Indians, who had broken a blood vessel in one of his fingers.38 He got shelled after replacing Whitey Ford in the top of the fourth at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. He got Alvin Dark to fly out, but then gave up four straight singles to Duke Snider, Stan Musial, Ted Kluszewski, and Ray Jablonski. When Jackie Robinson then doubled, that was all for Consuegra. All five runners scored, leaving him with a 135.00 ERA – the highest tangible number in All-Star history.39

Even so, as Roger Consuegra recalled, “The three things he considered most relevant in his years of baseball were that 24-2 season with Deportivo, the no-hitter in Venezuela with Pages’ catch as a highlight, and playing in that All-Star Game. At the time only a couple of Cubans had achieved the honor.”

“The Crow” finished second behind “The Big Bear” (Mike Garcia) for the ERA title; the race for both this and the best winning percentage featured some entertaining sidelights. Consuegra did not pitch from August 27 to September 18 – he was hospitalized with a severe case of hives. Pitching coach Ray Berres remembered the exchange between Sandy and Marty Marion, who had replaced Paul Richards as manager with nine games left on the schedule. “Me itch,” Berres quoted Consuegra as saying. “Marion says, ‘You itch here with us until the end of the season. Then you can go home and itch all winter.’”40

“A friend frantically informed [Consuegra] he still needed a few innings to reach the then-required total of 154 to qualify for the percentage title. Consuegra sprang into action.”41 He threw two-thirds of an inning at home on September 19. The following day, at Cleveland, he threw three scoreless innings, then on the 21st he ended the game by getting Dale Mitchell (always a tough out) to fly to right. That got him to 154.0 innings pitched on the nose, and he did not appear in any of the club’s remaining three games.

Meanwhile, Garcia held the ERA lead at 2.55, but he nearly coughed it up in the last game of the season, on September 26. He gave up four runs to Detroit in the first two innings, but – gunning for his 20th win of the season – wound up going 12 and allowing just two more runs to finish at 2.64.42

In his 154 innings – a big-league career high – Consuegra struck out just 31 and walked 35. He was 8-3 as a starter and 8-0 in relief. Another note of interest that year was Paul Richards’ tactical maneuvering. One of his favorite ploys when seeking better matchups was to station his pitcher temporarily in the field and then bring him back to the mound. On July 3 at Cleveland, he put Consuegra at third base while Morrie Martin retired Larry Doby. Richards might just as well have given Sandy the hook, though, because the Indians then tied the score at 3-3 and went on to win in 15 innings. “The proviso prohibiting pitchers from assuming a position other than pitcher more than once in the same inning was added to Rule 3.03 largely to thwart managers like Paul Richards.”43

After another winter off, Consuegra remained effective for Chicago in 1955: 6-5, 2.64 in 44 games (seven starts). Coming back to Cienfuegos that winter after two seasons away, he continued to pitch well, mainly out of the bullpen. The Elefantes won the league championship, and so in February 1956, he went to the Caribbean Series for the first and only time. In his lone appearance, he lost to Puerto Rico (the only loss for the Cubans in the round-robin tournament).

Consuegra’s performance fell off with the White Sox in 1956 (1-2, 5.17 in 28 games). In late July the Baltimore Orioles – where Paul Richards had jumped in September 1954 – purchased his contract. Consuegra didn’t want to go to Vancouver in the Pacific Coast League, which was then Baltimore’s top affiliate. “Too far place,” he pleaded with Richards, who then arranged for him to play with the Havana Sugar Kings (in the Cincinnati Reds chain).44 The Orioles called Potrerillo up in September, and he got into four games.

Back with Baltimore in 1957 after just 10 winter games with the Elefantes, Consuegra made just five appearances through early May. On May 14 the New York Giants purchased him from the Orioles as Baltimore got down to the 25-man roster limit. Sandy came out of the bullpen four times for the Giants. His final game in the majors was May 28, 1957.

Roger Consuegra said, “The hitter he could not get out regardless was Forrest Jacobs of Philadelphia. I think he broke up a no-hitter once. Also, Larry Doby was not an easy out for him.” Indeed, Spook Jacobs – who also played a good deal in Cuba – was 7-for-18 (.389) in the majors against Sandy, including the Athletics’ only two hits on May 3, 1954. Doby was 12-for-31 (.387) with four homers.

In June the Giants sold Consuegra’s contract to Vancouver. This time he went to the Pacific Northwest, and he pitched well for the Mounties: 7-1, 1.99 in 44 games, all out of the bullpen. Manager Charlie Metro said in his memoirs, “Sandy Consuegra was a fine relief pitcher in the big leagues. He had a very good motion, very smooth, like he wasn’t even trying. He could save games with the best of them.”45

Consuegra wrapped up his winter career in 1957-58 with Cienfuegos. His grand totals in Cuban leagues: 52 wins, 55 losses and a 3.65 ERA. He stayed in Cuba to start 1958, as Havana owner Bobby Maduro brought the local favorite back to play for the Sugar Kings, trading former Brooklyn Dodger Joe Hatten to Vancouver. Sandalio was 0-0 in seven games and then went back to Mexico after a decade away. He was “coaxed by a personal visit from Manager Reggie Otero [a fellow Cuban] to come from Cuba to join Monterrey.”46 In six games (five starts) for the Sultanes, he was 2-2 with a 5.91 ERA. For a while that summer he unexpectedly left and went home to Cuba, but the Monterrey club reinstated him from the disqualified list.47

After that season, Consuegra retired. As of 1954, he had owned five homes in Cuba and planned to purchase more, living off the income from them.48 He eventually built 11 houses and bought one small farm (60 acres) in his family’s hometown of Matanzas.49 Between 1958 and 1960, Consuegra also managed the local stadium there. “This was a source of great pride,” said his son Roger, “as that is the place where not only he played with Deportivo but also the first ball game in Cuba was played (Palmar de Junco). It still stands, has been refurbished and named part of the National Heritage.”50

When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 and set about redistributing the nation’s wealth, Consuegra lost his real estate holdings. “All that was wiped out within the first eight months,” said Roger. “I was the first one to leave Cuba, then my sister and eventually mom and dad. We all arrived in Miami and have lived and died here. I remember when he came over, they allowed him to keep two dimes in his pocket, which he used to call me to pick him up at the airport. I’d be remiss if I did not mention another Cuban ballplayer, Roberto Estalella, who opened his home to us until my father found a job.”

Consuegra made a brief comeback in 1961 with Charlotte, a Class A farm club of the Minnesota Twins. He gave up three earned runs in 6⅓ innings (4.26 ERA) in two games. “The comeback at Charlotte was an impromptu decision to make some money,” said Roger, “but he was 41 and a bit down on his luck and his arm was dead. I remember him coming back on a Greyhound bus and not wanting to talk about the experience.”

“His first job, working at the cargo department of an airline, lasted many years. It was also made possible by another ballplayer, Francisco Campos. After that he worked as a security guard until age 62. His inability to speak English did not help, as I recall taking calls from the Houston Colt .45’s – Paul Richards – and hearing about offers for jobs as scout and trainer for Latin pitchers. But it meant also a move to Houston, and my mother said no and that was the end of the story.

“My father always tended to take under his wing Cuban ballplayers arriving in the big leagues and our house was an open house for many budding players. Unfortunately, he felt shunned by those same individuals he helped or befriended and that made him become very distant to his passion, baseball.”

Nonetheless, Consuegra was one of many former Cuban pros in the Miami community who gave his time to Los Cubanitos, the youth baseball program founded by Emilio Cabrera in 1961. The Facebook page that commemorates Los Cubanitos shows photos of Sandalio – “a nice man who loved to teach and loved the game” – with 1969 and 1970 squads. “He enjoyed Los Cubanitos,” said Roger, “and Emilio Cabrera was one of the few he called friend as time went by.

“He also played in several Cuban old-timer’s games, or Juegos de Recuerdo. He enjoyed these while they lasted and even played center field in one of them.” The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame (in exile) inducted Consuegra in 1977.

Sandalio Consuegra married Blanca Ramos on July 28, 1943. They had three children: Rogelio, Silvia, and Norma. “My parents were married for 60 years,” said Roger, “and when my mother died in 2003, it zapped his will to live. He became bitter and felt alone in spite of having his children and grandchildren around. He died after falling and breaking his hip.” The end came on November 16, 2005, in Miami.

“He never mentioned how he would like to be remembered,” said Roger, “but I think he would be quite happy to know that many folks who knew him, think of him as one of the most humble and affable persons they knew. To this day I am surprised at the amount of people who remember him – or, hearing my last name, ask if I am related to the ballplayer.

“Recently an article came out naming the greatest 15 pitchers in White Sox history and he was number 15. That would really have made his day.”51

An updated version of this biography appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment to Rogelio Consuegra, Silvia Consuegra-Vélez, and the entire Consuegra family for participating in this remembrance of Sandalio Consuegra. Continued thanks to Rogelio Marrero in Cuba (amateur statistics).

Sources

In addition to the sources in the notes, the author also consulted Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com, cubanball.com, santopedia.com; catholic.org/saints, and these publications:

Figueredo, Jorge S. Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2003).

Treto Cisneros, Pedro, ed. Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano (Mexico City: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V.: 11th edition, 2011).

The Sporting News Baseball Register, 1956.

Notes