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.

1895: The earliest images known in the history of Venezuelan baseball

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.

Abner Doubleday in Mexico

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.