As a book collector on Latin American baseball, I’m always looking for the rare item that might provide a clue about how the game arrived to this part of the world. And I’m always hunting for books that refer to countries in which baseball is a favorite pastime such as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, etc. But, frome time to time, you can expect jewels from unexpected places.

Some weeks ago, a rare item appeared on sale in an internet based shop. It was a book about the history of baseball in Argentina. Yes… Argentina! It was odd enough to find a book on Argentinian baseball, but it was absolutely amazing to read in its pages that the game is being played in that South American country since 1888.

The title of the book is “BEISBOL. Reseña histórica internacional y argentina.” by Héctor Pastrian. The book was published in 1977 by the Argentinian Baseball Federation (yes! there is one since 1954, but there was an association since 1925.)

A chapter is dedicated to the origin of the game in the country that provides interesting information “having as the only source of information” the sporadic reports by the newspaper “La Prensa” which was edited in the capital city of Buenos Aires since 1869.

According to the book, baseball was an amusement for the employees and workers of the numerous American industries based in the country.

It was Jorge Newberry who made the first attempt to implant the game in the country with the help of executives, employees and workers of the different industries, specially those of American origin.

One of them, Jorge MacNally, contributed the sum of 5,000 argentinian pesos that were used to acquire “complete equipment from the United States for the effective practice” of the game.

Several Americans formed, in 1888, the Buenos Aires Base Ball Club, that played its first match against the Rosario Cricket Club in an open field located in Cabildo street, in the neighborhood of Belgrano. The game was not finished, because of the disparity of intepretation in the rules. Soon, the Buenos Aires B.B.C. disappeared.

The American citizens continued to play the game, without official competition, until 1908 when Thomas Newberry and Dr. Homer Prettyman formed a team and played several intrasquad games in the Palermo Sports Society.

Due to the economic capability of this men, they decided to form a new club in 1909 and challenged the American Base Ball Club, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to a three game series that went undefined, since each side won a game and the other ended in a tie. The series was played in the grounds of the Buenos Aires Cricket Club in Palermo.

Not as popular as soccer, of course, but our favorite game has a rich history in Argentina, where it has been played for more than 120 years.

An interesting artifact arrived to my collection on recent days. It gives useful information on the procedure of how to formalize an early baseball club in Cuba. It is a letter dated on November 14th, 1881 and is directed to the major of the city of Cardenas who is required to send a copy of the regulations document in order to proceed with the creation of the club. The letter is signed by “Dias, V.”

Baseball started to be played in the island around the mid 1860s, but the formal organization of clubs started between the end of the 1860s and the beginning of the 1870s. The first documented baseball game in Cuba occured on December 1874 when the Habana B.B.C visited the port of Matanzas to play against the local team. A tournament was organized in 1878, and baseball was already spread around many regions of Cuba, that was still part of the Spanish crown.

The municipality of Cardenas, a port located in the northwestern shore of the island, is pointed as one of the places where baseball was first played in Cuba, according to Wenceslao Galvez who did the first effort to narrate the history of the game in the country in his 1889 book “El Base Ball en Cuba” the first book about the game that was published in all Latin America.

In this document the major of the municipality of Cardenas seems to be promoting the formation of a baseball club and he is required to send an additional copy of the set of rules in order to the official conformation of the club to proceed. The letter is signed by Dias, V.

One of the most remarkable details of the letter is that the game is not referred to as baseball, but as “ball game of American style” which seems to indicate that there was another kind of ball game, possibly the Spanish game of Basque ball that was present in many countries that were part of the Spanish territories in the New World.

A baseball club in the need to receive official recognition of its existente, had to send a set of documents that included the name of the club with its players, and the rules and regulations governing the club. The Spanish goverment granted the official recognition of the baseball club, as it did with many public amusements like bull fighting in which the representatives of the goverment decided the prizes that the matador would receive based on his merits.

The translation of the letter:

To Mr. Major of the Municipality of Cardenas

November 14/881

To resolve about the instance that several neighbours of that city promoted asking to establish a Club or society of the ball game of American style, and its procedure, it is necessary to provide a duplicate of the Rules that accompanies your request and I participate to you, so you can arrange its remittance.

Dias, V.

]]> http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/how-to-form-a-baseball-club-in-cuba-1881/feed/ 0 origenesdelbeisbol.com beisbol18811 http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/identifying-rafael-de-la-rua-a-cuban-pioneer-in-the-national-association-1868/ http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/identifying-rafael-de-la-rua-a-cuban-pioneer-in-the-national-association-1868/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 07:31:08 +0000 origenesdelbeisbol.com http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/?p=37 ]]>

When Esteban Bellán left St. John’s College in 1868 to pursue a career in baseball (with the Unions of Morrisania) he was not the only Cuban to do so.

Rafael de la Rúa, a native of Matanzas, Cuba, played 12 games for the Unions of Lansingburgh of the National Association in that same year of 1868. He was a pitcher, with a good screwball but some control problems.

De la Rúa joins Bellán as the first Latin player in an organized and highly competitive league. The National Association would not be considered a Major League until it became professional in 1871, and still that is debatable. But what is clear is that they are the first Latin ballplayers to compete at the highest level of baseball in the United States.

This was a discovery made by the great investigators Peter Morris and John Thorn, and I have been helping in the last couple of days trying to figure out some aspects of his biography.

This is what we have at the moment:

Rafael Julián de la Rúa was born on January 28th, 1848 in Matanzas, Cuba.

In 1860, he appears with an age of 12 in an official United States census living in Newton, Massachusetts. He was studying in a small school directed by R.B. Blaisdell in Newton. There is also a Finomen Rua in that census, 18 years old, apparently Rafael’s brother.

In June 1864, he was one of the passengers of the steamship Havana that arrived at New York from La Habana, according to a note published by The New York Times. Rafael was about to start his preparatory education at St. John’s College (Fordham) on September 1864, and he stayed there until July 1867. He studied there at the same time as Bellán. In the official student catalogues of St. John’s College he is listed as Julian R. Rua from Matanzas, Cuba.

In the academic year of 1868-69. he is listed studying at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, under the name of Rafael J. Rua, from Matanzas, Cuba. He stayed there only for one year and did not graduate.

It was in that same town of Troy that the Unions of Lansingburgh, members of the National Association, were based. De la Rua played for them in 12 games, mostly as a pitcher. At that time, the National Association was still officially an amateur competition. There is in existence an image of the 1868 Unions of Lansingburgh.  You can see it in the book Smoke by Peter Bjarkman and Mark Rucker, though one of the players is mistakenly identified as Bellán (he didn’t play for Lansingburgh until 1869). However, we are working to try to identify De la Rua in that same image.

Official documents were found for Rafael de la Rúa in which he applied for U.S. citizenship on September 23, 1874, declaring himself a merchant. When naturalization was granted he applied for his first American passport, filing as Rafael de la Rúa, living on 15th and 32nd streets in New York, born on January 28th, 1848, in Matanzas, Cuba. His height, according to these documents, was 5 ft. 9 in.

According to encyclopedias with early Cuban League listings by Jorge Figueredo and Severo Nieto, Rafael de la Rúa never played in the Cuban League.

Without a doubt, a very important piece of Latin American baseball history.

Documentation of Rafael de la Rúa from 1874 and 1875 where he applies for American citizenship and passport.

]]> http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/identifying-rafael-de-la-rua-a-cuban-pioneer-in-the-national-association-1868/feed/ 0 origenesdelbeisbol.com Report of a game in which De la Rúa pitches in 1868 rafaelrua1875passport rafaeldelaruapassportapp1 http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/1895-the-earliest-images-known-in-the-history-of-venezuelan-baseball/ http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/1895-the-earliest-images-known-in-the-history-of-venezuelan-baseball/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:13:05 +0000 origenesdelbeisbol.com http://latinbaseballorigins.wordpress.com/?p=26 ]]>

On August 15th, 1895, Mariano Domingo Becerra makes a contribution for the magazine El Cojo Ilustrado in Caracas, Venezuela. He wanted to publicize the recent foundation of the Caracas club that was practicing a game, that even though had been played since 1892 in Venezuela, it was about to take new life in the country: the game of base ball.

El Cojo Ilustrado was a literary magazine published twice a month, and was a modernist icon in Latin America. Baseball could not be ignored in it, since it was a trend that the game was covered in publications devoted to literature and poetry during the 19th century, as was the case in Cuba.

This magazine prints in August, 1895, the earliest images known in the history of Venezuelan baseball which are of a notorious technical quality. El Cojo Ilustrado had a legendary team of photographers who were likely sent in assignment to register the action of the game.

The photographer from El Cojo accomplishes an extraordinary image. In his intention to capture the essence of the sport, requires the players to pose an action of the game. The defensive team is deployed all over the field, while the batting players remain crowded enough to be captured by the lens beside of the action scene.

The pitcher, in an elegant figure, hides the ball in both hands behind his back, while the batter holds firmly his hand to the grip of the bat mimicking the action of starting his swing. The Umpire, without losing in elegance, wears a hat in perfect match with the color of his trousers, and is placed in an excellent location, almost resting his chin on the shoulder of the pitcher to have the best perspective and the most precise judgement. The fielders, behind his pitcher, are all ready, with their hands on their knees to react quickly.

Everything would seem a perfect action image, except for the catcher who, even in his position, is far from waiting the ball since he has the mask on his hand, totally unaware of the game and looking handsomely to the camera.

Actually, is a simulated action posing for the photographer of El Cojo Ilustrado, and the objective has been accomplished. With the exception of the distracted catcher, all the players of the pioneer Caracas Base Ball Club have been portrayed ellegantly.

Next, in another image, the ballplayers pose as a complete baseball club. Twenty players, uniformed in a dark color and the legend Caracas embroidered in the chest. The uniforms look home made, and it is likely that each member has received the assignment of producing them, since the typography and size of the legend Caracas is the less uniform in the uniform, and one of the players, standing at the far right, has decided to rebel to the uniformity sewing the letter S inversely. He plays for Caracaz and is wearing a light colored tie contrasting with the dark color of the jersey, and possibly converting himself in the only baseball player with tie in the history of the game. Proud of his joke, he stands in a protagonic pose with a sarcastic smile, without knowing that the image would survive for the perpetuity of Venezuelan baseball.

In addition to the images, Mariano Domingo Becerra, one of the most visible leaders of the Caracas Base Ball Club has drafted a great description on how to play baseball, and he even takes the time to draw a very precise and detailed diagram of the baseball field to include it with the text and the images of the team. For the first time, he incorporates a collection of baseball anglicisms to the Venezuelan lexicon.

Becerra was a perfect connossieur of the game since his student years. He had studied with his brother Ricardo, at Georgetown College, in Washington in 1884 and 1885, and it is very likely that it was then the moment that he learns the game and flourishes, in him, the seed of Venezuelan baseball.

Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in 1839. We have discussed that for years but, however, he will always be a name associated to baseball as the protagonist of one of the most persistent myths in history.

If few know that Doubleday didn’t invent baseball, even fewer know that this character passed some time in Mexico. He fought as a young soldier in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848, and took part in the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista, near Saltillo in the state of Coahuila.

It was precisely at Saltillo where he stood for some years. He lived among the saltillians, observed and detailed in his personal memories the mexican society of that period. He even learned how to speak Spanish before resuming his military career back in the United States.

Dr. Pablo Ramos, an expert investigator of the Battle of Monterrey and researcher of many aspects of this war, sent me a digital version of a daguerreotype image taken around 1846 or 1847, where Abner Doubleday poses, young and slim, with his characteristic mustache and curly hair under his cap.

He poses in the company of a group of native saltillians kids dresses in the characteristic sarape of that Mexican region.

The image is a daguerreotype, a pioneer format of potography, invented just a couple of years before, in 1839, and made that war one of the first military conflicts to be registered in images. The poor visual quality of the photo can be explained by this period of experimentation, contrasting with its huge historical value.

We thank Dr. Ramos for this priceless contribution.

Abner Doubleday left very detailed documentation of his passage through Mexico, in his memories that narrate the development of the battles, as well as his very severe observations of the mexican society.

This is a topic that I will be writing about with more details in this blog in the future.

I visited Brownsville, Texas, last week. My purpose was to follow the historical path of the Union Base Ball Club of Matamoros, Mexico, whose appearance in newspapers from 1869 make it the earliest baseball club that has been documented in Latin America. I wanted to find the exact points where the games were celebrated according to the information contained in the newspaper reports from that year.

The Union Club crossed the border, marked by the Rio Grande river, from Matamoros to Brownsville to play in the grounds of Fort Brown, an important military garrison. Actually, the Fort was just some feet away from the international crossing point, and a portion of the huge grounds used then to play are at the present, a part of the american immigration facilities.

The rest of the playing grounds are now occupied by the facilites of the University of Texas in Brownsville and the Texas Southmost College. UTB is the institution that holds the collections used in this investigation.

The Union Club played at the cavalry and infantry grounds at the Fort, since there were a couple of teams composed of soldiers (many of them Civil War veterans) from the garrison such as the McClellan B.B.C from the 10th Infantry and the Sheridan B.B.C. that represented a cavalry unit.

The Union Base Ball Club is first reported on October 23rd, 1869 in the newspaper The Daily Ranchero of Brownsville, Texas. It presents the result of a game between the Union club and the Rio Grande B.B.C. in which the latter won 29 to 22. In the box score of the game, some hispanic last names can be seen in the Union club like Bañado, Garcia, Caceres or Elizondo. Others are from European origin, but who had migrated to Matamoros, like Shreck or Bres. The 1870 census of Texas shows that Manuel Bañado and Plácido García were Mexican natives who were living in Brownsville. The ages of the several ballplayers ranges from 19 to 25 years old.

First report of the Union B.B.C. appeared on the Daily Ranchero on October 23rd, 1869.

This Mexican baseball club is reported playing four games by the same Daily Ranchero newspaper in the last months of 1869 and first days of 1870. These reports serve as evidence that places this team as the first baseball club documented in all Latin America. Some sources assure that, in Cuba, the Habana Base Ball Club was founded as early as 1868 (this was stated by one of its founders, Nemesio Guillo, in 1923) but there are no contemporary accounts for this club until 1874 when the game against Matanzas B.B.C. in the Palmar de Junco grounds is reported in a newspaper.

After visiting the place where the garrison was located and take some photos, I was able to find a map from Fort Brown made in that same year of 1869 and superimposed it on a satellite image from Google Earth so I could use some modern references to locate where those baseball grounds are now and what has been constructed on them at the passage of time. To my surprise, a part of the ground where the Union club played at the cavalry field is today a small park with benches in front of a Barnes and Noble library and a Starbucks. In those benches, I enjoyed a cup of coffee, totally unaware at that moment that I was standing at the point where the first baseball club documented in Mexico and all Latin America had its games.

Some of the original buildings from Fort Brown remain in their place and are used by the university. The cavalry barracks building is today the operations center of the campus police.

Images of the cavalry barracks building. In front of it, there was one of the grounds where the Union Base Ball Club from Matamoros Mexico played some games in 1869.