Notes
- ↑ "The New York Cubans of the Negro Leagues".
- ↑ McCarron, Anthony (May 29, 2010). "Road Woes Continue for New York Mets". Daily News. New York. Retrieved 2010-05-30.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2008) |
| New York Cubans | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| League |
|
| Location | New York City |
| Ballpark |
|
| Established | 1935 |
| Disbanded | 1950 |
| League titles | 1947 |
| Negro World Series championships | 1947 |
The New York Cubans were a Negro league baseball team that played during the 1930s and from 1939 to 1950. Despite playing in the Negro leagues, the team occasionally employed white-skinned Hispanic baseball players as well, because Hispanics in general were largely ignored by the major league baseball teams before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.
In 1899, the All Cubans became the first all-Hispanic team to travel to the United States and stage exhibition games, against established Negro league powerhouse teams. The All Cubans kept traveling to the United States each year until 1905. Beginning in 1907, they were replaced by the Cuban Stars, which became accepted as an independent Negro baseball team. In 1916, the team was struck by controversies and competition regarding booking, which led to the creation of a new Cuban Stars carrying the same name. To differentiate between the two teams, the newer of the two was referred to as the Cuban Stars (East), which was owned by Alex Pompez and competed in the New York city area. The older team (which was owned by Abel Linares and Tinti Molina and previously had competed in the New York area) moved to the midwestern region and became known as the Cuban Stars (West).
About 1930, both Cuban Stars teams folded, but in 1935 Pompez was able to re-create a Cuban team under the new name New York Cubans. In 1935 and 1936, the New York Cubans called historic Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey home. Unlike what the team's name may lead some to believe, the team was not composed exclusively of Cuban players, there were players from other Hispanic nationalities and the United States as well. In 1941, Perucho Cepeda, father of National Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Peruchin Cepeda and a legendary player around the Caribbean himself, became the first Puerto Rican to play for the New York Cubans. Apart from Cepeda, there were also players from Mexico and the Dominican Republic playing for the New York Cubans. From 1941 to 1944, the Cubans had the services of well-known Dominican utility player Tetelo Vargas.
Only one other team of the era, the Indianapolis Clowns, boasted a line-up with as many international players as the Cubans did.
With a team that included such notables as Luis Tiant, Sr., and Minnie Miñoso the New York Cubans won their only Negro League World Series title in 1947, defeating the Cleveland Buckeyes.
The Cubans did not win another championship, and, because of many different reasons, which included economical strain and exodus both from African American and Hispanic players to the Major Leagues, the Negro league stopped playing in 1950.
On May 29, 2010, the New York Mets wore Cubans uniforms in a game in Milwaukee against the Brewers, who wore Milwaukee Bears uniforms. The Mets then wore this uniform again on August 22 against the Pittsburgh Pirates. [2]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2008) |
| |||||||||
| Franchise | |||||||||
| Ballparks |
| ||||||||
| League affiliations | |||||||||
| Hall of Famers | |||||||||
| Negro World Series championships (1) | |||||||||
| League pennants (1) |
| ||||||||
| Other play-off appearances |
| ||||||||
| |||||||||
Atanasio "Tony" Pérez Rigal is a Cuban-American former professional baseball player, coach and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman and third baseman from 1964 through 1986, most notably as a member of the Cincinnati Reds dynasty that won four National League pennants and two World Series championships between 1970 and 1976. He also played for the Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies.
James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell was an American center fielder in Negro league baseball from 1922 to 1946. He is considered to have been one of the fastest men ever to play the game. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. He ranked 66th on a list of the greatest baseball players published by The Sporting News in 1999.
Orlando Manuel Cepeda Pennes, nicknamed "the Baby Bull" and "Peruchin", is a Puerto Rican former first baseman in Major League Baseball who played for six teams from 1958 to 1974, primarily the San Francisco Giants. A 7-time All-Star, Cepeda was one of the most consistent power hitters in the National League (NL) through the 1960s. Breaking in with the Giants in their first season after relocating to San Francisco, he was named the NL Rookie of the Year by unanimous vote in 1958 after batting .312 with 25 home runs and 96 runs batted in (RBI), also leading the NL with 38 doubles. Every year from 1958 through 1963, he was among the league leaders in batting, home runs, RBI, slugging percentage and total bases. In 1959 he became the first Puerto Rican player to start an All-Star Game, and in 1961 he was runner-up in voting for the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) after leading the league with 46 home runs and 142 RBI, which remains the club record for right-handed hitters.
The Pittsburgh Crawfords, popularly known as the Craws, were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team, previously known as the Crawford Colored Giants, was named after the Crawford Bath House, a recreation center in the Crawford neighborhood of Pittsburgh's Hill District.
Saturnino Orestes "Minnie" Armas Arrieta Miñoso, nicknamed "the Cuban Comet", was a Cuban professional baseball player. He began his baseball career in the Negro leagues in 1946 and became an All-Star third baseman with the New York Cubans. He was signed by the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball (MLB) after the 1948 season as baseball's color line fell. Miñoso went on to become an All-Star left fielder with the Indians and Chicago White Sox. The first Afro-Latino in the major leagues and the first black player in White Sox history, as a 1951 rookie he was one of the first Latin Americans to play in an MLB All-Star Game.
Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin was an American left fielder and right fielder in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who played with the Newark Eagles, New York Giants (1949–1955) and Chicago Cubs (1956). He grew up in New Jersey and was a standout football player at Lincoln University. Irvin left Lincoln to spend several seasons in Negro league baseball. His career was interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945.
The Homestead Grays were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro leagues in the United States.
Martín Magdaleno Dihigo Llanos, called The Immortal and The Maestro, was a Cuban professional baseball player. He played in the Negro leagues and Latin American leagues from 1923 to 1936 as a two-way player, both as a pitcher and a second baseman, although he excelled at all nine positions and later as a manager.
Emilio Navarro, better known as "Millito Navarro", was the first Puerto Rican to play baseball in the American Negro leagues. At the time of his death, at age 105, Navarro was the oldest former professional baseball player and the last surviving player from the American Negro League.
The Latino Legends Team was an all-time all-star baseball team selected in 2005 to honor the history of Latin American players in Major League Baseball. The players were chosen by fan voting. Ballots were available both online at MLB.com and at Chevrolet dealerships, and over 1.6 million total votes were cast. The team was announced at a ceremony hosted by actor Edward James Olmos prior to Game Four of the 2005 World Series, a game in which Ozzie Guillen became the first Latino manager to win the series as his White Sox clinched their first title since 1917.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2006 proceeded in keeping with rules enacted in 2001, augmented by a special election; the result was the largest class of inductees (18) in the Hall's history, including the first woman elected, Effa Manley.
Alejandro "Alex" Pompez was an American executive in Negro league baseball who owned the Cuban Stars (East) and New York Cubans franchises from 1916 to 1950. His family had emigrated from Cuba, where his father was a lawyer. Outside baseball and numbers, he owned and operated a cigar shop in downtown Manhattan. He later served as a scout and director of international scouting for the Giants franchise in Major League Baseball. He was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 1999 followed the system in use since 1995. The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from recent major league players and elected three: George Brett, Nolan Ryan, and Robin Yount. The Veterans Committee met in closed sessions and selected four people from multiple classified ballots: Orlando Cepeda, Nestor Chylak, Frank Selee, and Smokey Joe Williams.
The Milwaukee Bears were a Negro National League team that operated during the 1923 season, its only season in the league representing Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Cuban League was one of the earliest and longest lasting professional baseball leagues outside the United States, operating in Cuba from 1878 to 1961. The schedule usually operated during the winter months, so the league was sometimes known as the "Cuban Winter League."
Juan Esteban Vargas Marcano, better known as Tetelo Vargas, and nicknamed "El Gamo Dominicano" or "the Dominican Deer", was a baseball player from the Dominican Republic.
Baseball is the most popular sport in Puerto Rico. In terms of spectators and active participants, it is the premier sport on the island.
Pedro Cepeda, a.k.a. "Perucho" and "The Bull" was a Puerto Rican baseball player who was considered one of the best players of his generation. Called "The Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico" and "Babe Cobb", Cepeda was a Latin American baseball superstar. He was denied the chance to play in the major leagues because he was of African descent and played the bulk of his pro career before the color line was broken by Jackie Robinson in 1947. Cepeda refused offers to play in the Negro leagues in the mainland United States as he abhorred the racism endemic to American society at the time. He is now best known as the father of Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda.
The 1947 New York Cubans were a baseball team that competed in Negro league baseball during the 1947 baseball season. The team compiled a 46–23–1 record and won the 1947 Negro World Series, defeating the Cleveland Buckeyes four games to one.
