Seamheads Updates Negro Leagues Database With 1904-1915 American Series in Cuba
From SABR member Gary Ashwill at Seamheads.com on October 22, 2011:
In the 1900s and 1910s, with Cuba newly independent from Spain but under heavy U.S. influence (and sometimes occupation), a baseball exchange formed between the two countries. In the summers teams of the best Cuban players toured the U.S. as the “All-Cubans” or the “Cuban Stars”; in the fall American teams traveled to Havana to play exhibition series against Cuban League clubs.
These fall games, which served as a prelude to the regular Cuban Winter League season, were major events in Cuba. The fans there called it La Temporada Americana, or the American Series, and it gave them a chance to see some of the greatest teams and players in the world. Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers, Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants, and Eddie Collins and the Philadelphia A’s all played in Havana during these years, as did famous Negro league teams like Rube Foster’s Leland Giants and John Henry Lloyd‘s Lincoln Giants.
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We’ve just added more than ten years of American Series games to the Negro Leagues Database. This includes 101 games of major league teams playing Cuban teams from 1908 to 1913, and 126 games involving Negro league teams versus the Cuban Leaguers from 1904 to 1915. Detailed records, with many play-by-play accounts, have allowed us to include some often elusive data such as caught stealing and sacrifice flies (separated from overall sacrifice hits).
Read the full article here: http://seamheads.com/2011/10/22/negro-leagues-database-update-american-series-in-cuba-1904-1915/
Related link: Read our Q&A with Gary Ashwill about the Negro Leagues Database (September 14, 2011)
Originally published: October 22, 2011. Last Updated: July 16, 2020.