Carlos Ascanio: Venezuela’s ‘Lost Earthquake’ in the Negro Leagues
This article was written by Juan Vené - Leonte Landino
This article was published in Vinotinto Venezuela Béisbol, 1939–2024: 85 Years of Venezuelans in the Major Leagues
Carlos Ascanio, known as ‘The Earthquake,’ was a consistent player in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League for 15 seasons. A pure contact hitter with an uncanny ability to spray the ball to all parts of the field, his nickname reflected the havoc he created at the plate. Ascanio played for Vargas, Cervecería Caracas, Venezuela, Valencia, Pampero, Gavilanes, and Industriales de Valencia, between 1946 and 1961, but made history as the only Venezuelan in the Negro Leagues. (Diamante 2 3 Archive)
After a life in baseball, becoming famous in his home country as one of the most consistent players of his era, and kind of a “rarity” foreign player in the Negro Leagues, Carlos “Terremoto” (“Earthquake”) Ascanio died in poverty, abandoned by his family and with a lost legacy in the dense and deep world of baseball.
Ascanio was the only Venezuelan player who reached the Negro Leagues, playing first base in 1946 with the New York Black Yankees.
He was born in Santa Lucía, a suburb of the capital city, Caracas, in the Miranda state on April 4, 1918.1
When Ascanio was enshrined in the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019, former president J.J. Avila and his team dedicated many weeks searching for anyone who could receive the honor, but were unable to find anyone.
“The Earthquake” passed away at the National Geriatric Institute in his native Caracas on February 27, 1998. Ramón Corro, a longtime Venezuelan sports commentator, led a group of baseball fans who took care of arrangements to bury the revered star at the Cementerio General del Sur in Caracas.
According to Corro. Ascanio’s burial site is between that of Lorenzo Mendoza, one of the wealthiest Venezuelan businessmen – the owner and founder of the Polar Beer Company – and Carlos “Pantaleon” Espinoza, a longtime shortstop who once was the substitute for Chico Carrasquel for Cervecería Caracas.2
After Ascanio’s death in February 1998, no family members, relatives, or even acquaintances came forward. It was as though he had been a person who never existed.
Juan Vené had known Ascanio for many years and was shocked to see him in his final year, as the former ballplayer was lying in his hospital bed that year. He interviewed him for Ultimas Noticias, a Caracas-based newspaper. Vené was shocked both by the condition he was in and his story.
In a humble bed at the National Geriatric Institute, covered with a dirty bedsheet, the once big, strong, powerful, athletic “mulatto” with a big smile had turned into a sad, depressing face with a dirty, horrible white-hairy beard.
Under his bed sheet, there was a living skeleton. No muscles, just weak bones moving in pain.
Ascanio whispered in pain, “I have been abandoned by the entire world.”
In conversations over the years with Vené about his glory days in New York, he constantly said, “There were no feats or greatness. I played only for three months, but I was not able to adapt to that game. So, they fired me.”
By 1973, already retired from baseball, Ascanio became a prosperous businessman. He received Vené in his sporting goods store located at the Santa Rosalia neighborhood in downtown Caracas.
Vené remembers his words: “The best of this business is that this is my building. My house. Anything can happen to me, but nobody can kick me out of here. All my savings are in this building and this store.”
Carlos and his wife Maria lived in the back of the dwelling. The front was the store, a business that he considered prosperous and invincible. But his future held a tragedy in sight.
Lying on that bed in his final months, Ascanio said, “I don’t understand about my son. You know how things are. He got involved with bad people and slowly became addicted to drugs. He asked me for money; he demanded it. I gave him the money to prevent him from robbing it or doing any damage to anyone. One day, they asked me to sell my house because he was in deep debt and they were going to kill him if he didn’t pay. It is terrible to think that someone is going to kill your son, so I sold my house and I gave him the money. Sometime later, the new owners kicked me out of the house.”
Vené asked, “What is the name of your son?”
“No, please. Do not publish his name! It could do some damage to him, somehow,” added Ascanio in physical and emotional pain.
Vené remembers thinking, “What a good soul!”
After Ascanio left his longtime home, his wife disappeared, and he was left on the streets of Caracas. He barely slept, and the food was scarce. On a random afternoon, he collapsed on a downtown sidewalk.
Authorities and emergency personnel picked him up and took him to the Geriatric Hospital. The cause of death was given as respiratory failure.3 Nobody was waiting for his body or making arrangements for his eternal rest.
That group of fans organized by Corro paid the ultimate homage to a great legend.
Ascanio was one of the most outstanding players of the highly competitive amateur baseball in Venezuela. Several teams from Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as the Negro League All-Stars toured the country to matchup with local teams, especially after winning the 1941 Amateur Baseball World Series. Some players made such a great impression that they were offered to play professionally in Cuba and Puerto Rico, where their pro leagues were long established.
He was one of those players who impressed Cuban legend and former major-leaguer Joseito Rodríguez, who managed Cienfuegos. On a visit to Caracas, he offered contracts for the winter of 1940-41 to Alejandro Carrasquel, who had already pitched in the major leagues, and to promising prospects Carlos Ascanio and Vidal Lopez, as well.4
The Venezuelan trio became a sensation in Cuba, playing for Cienfuegos. After they returned from Cuba, they were labeled “professional players” and became what was called “First Division Players.” Ascanio signed with Magallanes, where he played until 1944.
The 1946 season in Venezuela, the inaugural season of the professional league, started in January, and Ascanio was playing for Sabios del Vargas, managed by Roy Campanella, who won the first league title ever. Ascanio led Vargas with a .378 average. After the Vargas season was over, the New York Black Yankees offer arrived, after a recommendation from Dan Bankhead, who in 1947 became the first African American pitcher in the major leagues. Rights were assigned to the Black Yankees.5 Ascanio played under manager Marvin Barker,
In New York, just as Ascanio always acknowledged, he was not a solid acquisition. Seamheads shows him with 70 plate appearances, and a .161 batting average – 10 base hits (all singles) in 62 at-bats. He drove in six runs and scored three. Drawing six bases on balls, he had a .235 on-base percentage. For the three months he played with the Black Yankees, his salary was $1,800.6 But the experience was one of a lifetime.
The Black Yankees finished in last place in the Negro National League that year. The team had three ballparks as its home parks – Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and Dexter Park in Queens.
Ascanio returned to Sabios del Vargas, becoming a prominent player for the powerful team that was the champion of the first two seasons of professional baseball in Venezuela. He played alongside Luis Aparicio Ortega, the father of Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio. Vargas, with their championship status, beat the American League’s New York Yankees 4-3 in an exhibition game in Caracas on March 1, 1947.7 The Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers toured Venezuela as part of their spring training and played the “Caracas Cup.”
Carlos Ascanio was a true lefty, a better hitter who hit line drives more than a power hitter. In 15 seasons in the Venezuelan Professional League, he hit for .277 but with only one home run in 1,422 at-bats for Sabios del Vargas, Cerveceria Caracas, Patriotas del Venezuela, Gavilanes de Maracaibo, Pampero, and Valencia Industriales.
Like many Venezuelans, Ascanio was a mix of European white and indigenous. Too light for the Negro Leagues, so that he was considered “white,” but too dark-skinned to sign a contract for the major leagues at the time. Lying on his bed, he told the Associated Press a story about playing in the Southern states. Teammates used to send him to buy some food since he was light-skinned, and since he barely spoke English and he tried to communicate with hand signals, store owners thought that he was a white-skinned mute.
Sadly, Carlos Ascanio is the only member of the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame who was without a representative at his induction ceremony.
In the history of Venezuelan baseball, Ascanio has the merit of being part of the first group of players who strengthened baseball as a profession. He was part of the “First Division” or “First Category” players. One of the first ever professional players in Venezuela.
The life and death of Carlos Ascanio is an example of many great Venezuelan players who dedicated their lives to baseball and found only struggles after their playing days. An incipient Professional Baseball League and poor management of the local players’ association never created scenarios or mechanisms for players who fell into misfortune and ended up lonely and forgotten. For such players, there was never any public or private aid; many just saw their skill on the field evaporate into depression and impoverishment.
Ascanio was a decent baseball man and a revered player, and will always be remembered as part of that group of players during the years of segregation. He was a man who shared playing time on the field with history greats like Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Roy Campanella, and Ray Dandridge. These Negro leaguers were pioneers of the Venezuelan League after touring the country in the winter of 1945, and some of them returned to join the new professional teams.
During his final days, his wish was for the Negro League Baseball Players Association to provide some help for his longtime achievement. “Who could have though that 50 years after that experience I would be here sick and poor hoping that the Negro Leagues can allow me to die with dignity in my homeland?” 8
JUAN VENE is a legendary Venezuelan sports journalist, author, and baseball historian whose career spans more than seven decades of continual coverage. Renowned across Latin America and the United States, Vené has become a revered voice in baseball through his incisive writing, vivid storytelling, and deep knowledge of the game. He is best known for his columns, books, and radio broadcasts that have chronicled generations of Latin American players and major-league history with passion and precision. He is a voting member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and an advocate for Latino contributions to the sport. Vené’s influence transcends borders, establishing him as one of the most respected chroniclers of béisbol in the Spanish-speaking world.
LEONTE LANDINO is a Venezuelan-American journalist. With over 25 years in the baseball industry, he led baseball content production for ESPN International for almost two decades and became the first-ever Venezuelan with an executive position at the Office of the Commissioner. Landino is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America and chair of SABR’s Luis Castro Chapter.
SOURCES
In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the authors consulted the archives of El Nacional in Caracas, the Beisbol 007 blog of Andrés Pascual, Baseball-Reference.com, and Juan Vené, 5000 Años de Béisbol (Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones B., 2007).
NOTES
1 According to Seamheads his birthdate was April 4, 1918. Pelota Binaria, a Venezuelan baseball database, has his birthdate as April 4, 1915. According to the report by the Associated Press, he died at age 79.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/ascanca01.shtml
2 Personal email from Ramon Corro to Juan Vené referencing the burial and death details of Carlos Ascanio.
3 Jorge Rueda, Associated Press, “Forgotten Negro league great dies,” Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky), March 1, 1998: 10-B. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1696&dat=19980301&id=IfIaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3kcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6830,113943 Accessed May 14, 2021.
4 “Cienfuegos,” Desde Mi Palco de Fanatico https://desdemipalcodefanatico.wordpress.com/numeros/cienfuegos-liga-profesional-cubana-1940-41/
5 “Carlos ‘Terremoto’ Ascanio,” Museo de Beisbol, Salon de la Fama, http://museodebeisbol.com/salon_fama_venezolano/detalles/2019/carlos-terremoto-ascanio. Accessed May 14, 2021.
6 Conversations between Juan Vené and Carlos Ascanio.
7 Bill Nowlin and Walter LeConte, “1947 Yankees Spring Training in Florida,” in Lyle Spatz, ed., Bridging Two Dynasties: 1947 New York Yankees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and SABR), 2013. https://sabr.org/journal/article/1947-yankees-spring-training-in-florida/.
8 Jorge Rueda, Associated Press, “Forgotten Negro league great dies,” Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky), Marzo 1, 1998: 10-B. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1696&dat=19980301&id=IfIaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3kcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6830,113943 Acceso en Mayo 14, 2021.