How to form a BaseBall Club in Cuba, 1881

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.