Baseball in Latin America and the Caribbean

By: Kurt Mullen

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Baseball in Latin America and the Caribbean

Sport that has become a popular pastime in the region.

In June 1866 sailors from the United States who were importing Sugar from Cuba invited local Cuban dockworkers to play baseball. Thus began the Caribbean's initiation to the game, less than thirty years after its North American inception. In the few years that followed, baseball was pushed to the fore of Cuban consciousness by visiting North American businessmen, U.S. Marines, and wealthy Cuban students who had played at schools in the United States. By decade's end the development of a local talent pool was under way, and with the emerging political turmoil in the Caribbean around the turn of the century, both migrating Cubans and occupying Marines took the new pastime across the Caribbean basin.

At first baseball was played by Cuba's wealthy class, lending it the exclusivity of polo, cycling, cricket, soccer, and other European sports that had taken root in the clubs of the Caribbean's urban elite. But it quickly spread to all classes in both rural and urban Cuba, due in part to its accessibility: the poor were easily able to improvise baseball fields, gloves, bats, and balls. It now seems a matter of course that baseball became a “game for the masses.”

From the outset baseball carried political undertones for imperialist Spain and colonial Cuba. As tensions rose during the first decade of Cuban baseball play, the sport became racially mixed, with both light and dark-skinned participants playing together and often uniting in solidarity against Spain, from which Cuba sought independence. It had even become popular in the camps of the mambises, the predominantly black and mulatto guerrilla fighters who aggressively fought for Cuba's independence. This crossing of baseball and politics was no less fortunate than in the case of Emilio Sabourín, a professional who played in the first formal Cuban ball game in 1868, and who was later caught donating baseball proceeds to the independence movement. In so doing he incurred the wrath of Spanish officials and was jailed for life. Subsequently, the Spanish attempted to ban the new pastime from the island.

But these troubles only stimulated baseball's spread. Cuba's first fight for independence, the Ten Years' War (1868–1878), prompted Cubans to take refuge in neighboring regions. Sharing a common language and other cultural similarities, these exiles were well suited to teach the game to other Caribbeans and Latin Americans. Julio Santana, a former sportswriter in the Dominican Republic, punctuated the Cuban contribution, as quoted by writer and historian Rob Ruck in his book The Tropic of Baseball (1991):

"It is much the same as that which happened with Christianity. Jesus could be compared to the North Americans, but the apostles were the ones that spread the faith, and the apostles of baseball were the Cubans. They went out into the world to preach the gospel of baseball. Even though the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico were occupied by the North Americans, the Cubans brought baseball here first, and to Mexico and Venezuela, too."

As a result of the Ten Years' War, several thousand Cubans migrated to the Dominican Republic. Two of the many legacies they brought were the knowledge of growing sugarcane and the game of baseball. In 1891 Ignacio and Ubaldo Aloma, two well-established iron-working Cuban brothers, formed several teams in Santo Domingo. That year they played the first organized game, and even used a ball procured from a sailor aboard a nearby North American ship. The clubs were comprised mostly of Cubans, but the rosters included a few Dominicans who, like the first ballplayers in Cuba, hailed predominantly from wealthy families and from U.S. schools. The progeny of the lower classes, however, were not far behind. Their emulation of the Cubans only kindled their enthusiasm for the sport. Around this time another Cuban, Dr. Samuel Mendoza y Ponce de Leon, was at work in the country's interior, where he organized another pair of clubs. Cubans and Dominicans of all classes soon created a more sophisticated system of teams and tournaments. In 1907 Dominicans saw the establishment of their first professional league.

By then baseball had made its way across the Caribbean basin. It went to Mexico via U.S. railroad workers who played with their counterparts as early as the 1880s. Though that country's chief pastime remains soccer, baseball still predominates in the Yucatán Peninsula, where players learned the game from Cubans. According to legend, the origins of baseball in the Yucatán are traced to a June day in 1890 when three Cuban brothers—Juan Francisco, Fernando, and Eduardo Urzáiz Rodriguez—stepped off a boat in Mérida on the peninsula and started playing ball in the street. Cubans also introduced the game to Venezuela, when Emílio Cramer brought it to Caracas in 1895. Santana was correct to say Cubans ushered baseball into Puerto Rico—but only partially. In 1898 a Spanish diplomat who had learned to play on a previous assignment in Cuba brought baseball to the island.

After the Spanish-American War (1895–1898), contact with baseball-playing U.S. Marines became, for most of the Caribbean, inevitable. Between 1898 and 1933 Marines landed in ten different Caribbean-basin nations a total of thirty-four times. To help morale during longer occupations, soldiers often played baseball. In the four countries where Cubans played a primary role in teaching the game, U.S. troops helped to shape its development. In the Dominican Republic, for example, games among Dominicans were frequent and highly spirited. For the Dominicans the competition became a means of expression: beating the Marines, these representatives of neocolonialism, held a distinct, patriotic significance. In this regard Marines left their imprimatur on the island, for when they vacated after an eight-year stay, baseball was wending its way into Dominican culture.

The tumultuous political and economic situation of the first decades of the twentieth century left Caribbean and Latin ballplayers with few other career options. At the same time, both Caribbeans and Latin Americans were barred, like their African American counterparts, from the game's most exclusive league—Major League Baseball (MLB). But during the opening decades of the twentieth century, professional leagues arose in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela. These leagues were typically closely associated with particular industries—a Nicaraguan coffee manufacturer, a Cuban rum company, a Dominican sugar refinery, for example—which compensated players with work, if not with money. As the game generated more gate revenue, the leagues grew independent of industry. Inter-Caribbean competition ensued, yielding intense nationalistic rivalries among the players and the spectators of the respective countries.

Caribbean teams began playing exhibition games around the turn of the century. Making regular trips across the Caribbean, Latin America, and Central America, the players further increased the sport's popularity. In 1905 the Cuban Stars were the first team to tour the United States. The Stars played in mostly black-inhabited areas and proved to be a popular success. In 1920, when Rube Foster, a ballplayer-turned-entrepreneur, formed his Negro Leagues, he welcomed the Stars. He also formally assimilated their contemporaries, the New York Cubans. Foster, said to be a shrewd businessman, knew the Cubans would continue to be a popular draw with the African American community. He also knew they would play for very little pay.

When the Negro Leagues closed for the season the best players usually signed with Caribbean winter league teams. Winterball, as it is still called today, is played from November to February in most Caribbean countries, wherever baseball is played—Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Winterball has secured an important place in baseball history, for during the first half of the twentieth century it was the only racially integrated baseball. Major league owners claimed black ballplayers could not compete with whites, but winters in the Caribbean proved a cogent counterpoint. For a few months each year, the Caribbean leagues received an influx of the best black and white U.S. baseball players. From the major leagues came Carl Hubbel, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Christy Mathewson, and other future Hall of Famers, all seizing the opportunity to supplement their salaries and hone their skills during the major league off-season. They often found a higher caliber of competition than they were used to.

Most black players could not afford to pass on the opportunity to play during the winters. Barred from the major leagues, but competitive with its best players in winterball, were such stars of the Negro Leagues and barnstorming circuit stars as Josh Gibson, James “Cool” Papa Bell, Satchel Paige and Cuba's legendary Martín Dihigo. For many the Caribbean offered an opportunity to compete for enthusiastic fans, to play for money, and to be free of the racism that pervaded their lives in the United States.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, North American players stopped traveling to Cuba. More players spent winters in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, which hosted the strongest leagues. The leagues sustained their significance, and during the 1960s—long after the American major leagues were racially integrated—stars such as Juan Marichal, Felipe Alou, and Mateo Alou returned to the Dominican Republic to play before their hometown fans. The Dominican season began on October 2—the birthday of General Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator—and lasted until February, when the winner of the playoffs vied with other Caribbean winter league teams for the Caribbean championship. During the 1960s and 1970s the caliber of play stayed very high as North American players, both black and white, continued to embrace the concept of playing year-round. Notables included Frank Howard, Willie Stargell, Phil Niekro, Dave Parker, and Gaylord Perry. The league's makeup changed considerably during the 1980s, however, when major league owners began to offer greater pay and asked their players to rest during the MLB off-season. This posed a difficult situation for Caribbean players in the United States, who were expected to play for their homeland. They were often torn between an allegiance for their country and the pressure from the major league teams that paid them. The stress proved so great for Marichal that one winter he stayed in San Francisco in order to avoid criticism from his Dominican fans. The leagues continue today, but with a different purpose. Where Hall of Fame players once competed, the leagues now feature mostly up-and-coming Caribbeans, U.S. minor leaguers, and young Japanese prospects.

In the United States, Caribbean ballplayers played on either side of the racial divide created by segregation, depending on the color of their skin. The first Caribbean to play professionally was Esteban Bellàn, a Cuban who debuted with the Troy Haymakers in 1871. Reportedly of African descent, Bellàn played before professional baseball imposed its all-white standard. For baseball, official segregation came around the turn of the century. But between Bellàn's debut and the year 1946, forty-nine Caribbeans passed for white—most were Cubans. Most of these careers were short-lived. The first to succeed Bellàn was Luis Castro, a Colombian who, like Bellàn, attended school in the United States. He played only part of the summer of 1902 on Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. The first Caribbean players of any talent came nine years later when two Cubans, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, signed with the Cincinnati Reds. In retrospect, their appearance in the league helps to illuminate the confusion the white press faced during segregation in identifying the Caribbean players' racial background. One Cincinnati newspaper presented Almeida and Marsans as “Castilian,” meaning that they were descended from Castile, a region of Spain, so as not to offend the city's racial sensibilities.

The most successful segregation-era player was perhaps Adolfo Luque, a Cuban pitcher who played twenty major league seasons. He had his best season in 1923 when he pitched for the Cincinnati Reds. He led the National League with twenty-seven wins and a 1.93 earned run average. In 1933 he shut out the Washington Senators in relief in the seventh game of the World Series. The Senators' owner, Clark Griffith, quickly deployed Joe “Papa Joe” Cambria, a Negro League and winterball star-turned-scout, to Cuba. He signed several Cubans to contracts with the Senators. Like Almeida, Marsans, and Luque, these players were primarily light-skinned.

In 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier. Though this led to the demise of the Negro Leagues, the transfer of talent came slowly. In the year of Robinson's debut only two Caribbeans played in MLB—Fermín Guerra of Cuba and Jesse Flores of Mexico. The first Caribbean to begin his career post-Robinson was the Cuban Orestes “Minnie” Minoso, in 1949.

By the 1960s, however, the U.S. leagues actively recruited Caribbean and Latin players. The Caribbean-basin immigrant population in the United States was growing and represented a new baseball audience. For that matter, their countrymen in the major leagues may have represented, in microcosm, the plight of the Caribbean minority in the United States. Team owners, rather than pay these players as much as their white contemporaries, enjoyed an influx of cheap talent. Between 1950 and 1955, fifty-four Caribbean basin players—forty-three of whom were Cuban—started in the major leagues. And, with an eye on the future, scouting efforts were extended through Central America, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.

In the 1960s the Venezuelan Luís Aparicio, the Dominican Republic's Marichal, and Puerto Ricans Vic Power and Roberto Clemente were some of the more dominant players in the league. Clemente played an important role not only in right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but as spokesman for all Caribbean ballplayers. He was joined by Orlanda Cepeda and Felipe Alou, and the three publicly argued against white owners and the media. The owners, they felt, were still paying Caribbeans and Latin Americans less than their major league counterparts. Moreover, they felt the media still paid little attention to the Spanish-speaking players.

If at first they did not receive the accolades the white players enjoyed, their careers were closely watched at home. Clemente was a national hero in Puerto Rico, where he returned each year for winterball, and where he was renowned for his generosity and endeavors in philanthropy. In the Dominican Republic, Juan Marichal's pitching exploits for the San Francisco Giants were copiously documented in Dominican newspapers. The players may have argued against the owner's inclination to pay deferentially to white ballplayers, but their young fans at home were beginning to view the major leagues as a way out of the same poor upbringings from which their idols, Marichal and Clemente and the rest of the growing population of Caribbean-basin players in the major leagues, originated.

This perceived way out had two effects on the young Latin American or Caribbean players. While it fanned youthful dreams of fame and fortune, it also left them open to exploitation. For those whose hopes were realized, many found life in the United States a cruel paradox. Not only did Caribbeans and Latin Americans of African descent face racism in the United States, they faced the further problems of acculturation. A Caribbean player unable to communicate could very well be sent to play minor league ball in Kansas, Indiana, Nebraska, or any other predominantly white and isolated area of the country. There, they would often encounter overt bigotry.

While the language barrier posed obvious everyday problems, for the ballplayer it also prevented desired recognition—English-speakers naturally made easier interview subjects. Moreover, the Spanish-speaking players often sent a portion of their meager salaries home to impoverished families. In addition, Caribbean and Latin American players were frequently stereotyped—usually as good fielders who could not hit or as temperamental hotheads who threatened the unity of the clubhouse. Ironically, the 1947 Dodgers organization had been close to signing Silvio García, a talented Afro-Cuban infielder, instead of Robinson. According to one story, the Dodgers' front office felt the Cuban did not have the temperament for the controversial role of being the first to desegregate major league baseball. But another story puts the Dodgers organization at a loss to locate García when it came time to sign him. The “hothead” stereotype was no stronger than in 1965, when Marichal fought with Dodgers catcher John Roseboro and severely lacerated his head with a bat, in front of a national television audience.

Since integration, players from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Bahamas have taken the field in the major leagues. After 1961, when the United States and Cuba broke diplomatic ties, only a few defecting Cubans would play in America. Cuba continues to be a powerhouse in amateur play, but has been replaced as the deepest source of major league talent by Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and, most notably, the Dominican Republic. Intra-Caribbean baseball has been very competitive; Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Colombia have all won the World Series of Amateur Base ball at least once. Cuba won the baseball gold medals at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. The Dominican Republic has sent the most players to the major leagues. Remarkably, the city of San Pedro de Macorís alone has contributed nearly a third of the Dominican major leaguers. Puerto Rico and Venezuela are well represented, too. While Mexico is larger than any of these countries, most of its players stay and play in Mexico's well-developed professional league.

Between 1954 and 1988 Caribbean players won six Most Valuable Player Awards, seven Rookie of the Year Awards, three Cy Young trophies, and seventeen batting championships. Caribbean and Latin American influence in Major League Baseball expanded dramatically after 1990. That year, 13 percent of all big leaguers were Latinos. Seven years later, that number had increased to 24 percent. By 2003 Latinos accounted for nearly 30 percent of the players on major league rosters. About half of all current minor league players were born in Latin American or Caribbean countries. With major league clubs allocating greater resources to developing baseball talent in the Caribbean basin, this trend will likely continue well into the twenty-first century.

Latino superstars have emerged as a dominant force in the big leagues. Latino-born players won four of the seven American League Most Valuable Player awards between 1996 and 2002. Since 1997, pitcher Pedro Martinez has won three Cy Young Awards and led the league in earned run average five times. Sammy Sosa, the 1998 National League Most Valuable Player, and Albert Pujols, the 2001 NL Rookie of the Year, are among the game's most feared hitters. Though Latinos are still underrepresented in the managerial ranks, Felipe Alou and Tony Pena (both Manager of the Year award winners) are two of the most respected managers in the game. Caribbean-basin players in the Hall of Fame are Aparicio, Clemente, Marichal, Cepeda, Rod Carew, Tony Perez, and—though he never had the chance to play in the major leagues—Cuba's Martín Dihigo, who was inducted for his play in the Negro Leagues.

Latino fans are also important to professional baseball. Several clubs now provide Spanish-language broadcasts of their games. The Florida Marlins hold block parties for Latino fans. The San Diego Padres charter buses on Sundays to bring fans from Tijuana, Mexico, to their games. In 2003 the Montreal Expos played twenty-two home games in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

See also Baseball in the United States; Colonial Rule; Integration: An Interpretation; Segregation in the United States.

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