100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 11 PROFESSIONAL SPORT 100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 12 100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 13 2 LATINOS IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL by Richard Lapchick A few years ago, Jayson Stark wrote, “Baseball isn’t just America’s sport anymore” for ESPN.com. He concluded that, “What is actu- ally being invaded here is America and its hold on its theoretical na- tional pastime. We’re not sure exactly when this happened—possi- bly while you were busy watching a Yankees-Red Sox game—but this isn’t just America’s sport anymore. It is Latin America’s sport.” While it may not have gone that far yet, the presence of Latino players in baseball, especially in Major League Baseball, has grown enormously. In 1990, the Racial and Gender Report Card recorded that 13 percent of MLB players were Latino. In the 2009 MLB Racial and Gender Report Card, 27 percent of the players were La- tino. The all-time high was 29.4 percent in 2006. Teams from South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean enter the World Baseball Classic with superstar MLB players on their ros- ters. Stark wrote, “The term, ‘baseball game,’ won’t be adequate to describe it. These games will be practically a cultural symposium— where we provide the greatest Latino players of our time a monstrous stage to demonstrate what baseball means to them, versus what baseball now means to us.” American youth have an array of sports to play besides base- ball, including soccer, basketball, football, and hockey. Now more and more play tennis, golf, and X-Game sports. Some Latinos think baseball is the only sport and in many countries that is true. This is especially the case in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Nearly four out of every five international 100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 14 14 Part 1: Professional Sport players in the minor leagues are from those two countries. And more than 40 percent of minor league players are from outside the US. It is also not lost on corporate America that Latinos now com- prise the second-largest population group in the United States, only surpassed by whites. They provide a huge marketplace and fan bases. Endorsement deals have made Latino athletes even richer. When the athlete is bilingual, his potential to reach Latinos in the US and in his or her home country is even broader. Lots of MLB clubs market heavily to the Latino community but perhaps none more than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This approach soared after Arte Moreno bought the club in 2003 as pro sports’ first Latino owner. They market their Latino stars in a bilingual blitz, putting the faces of the stars on billboards across L.A. Spanish language broadcasts are given on many teams. How- ever, the influence of Latinos in professional baseball is hardly new. That is a fact that sportswriters, league and team administrators, fans, and even players are just starting to embrace. It is our intent in this section on baseball to illuminate not only the greatest Latino names in baseball but also those that played his- torical roles in the game. Before MLB was integrated by Jackie Robinson in 1947, Lati- nos played ball on both sides of the color line. Some light-skinned Latinos passed in MLB while others of all skin colors played in the Negro Leagues. In one of the ironies of racism, African-American players in the Negro Leagues were able to play winter ball in Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America but could not play in their own country’s MLB. It was no cakewalk for Latinos in baseball. Viva Baseball, di- rected by Dan Klores, allowed some of the silent voices of the early days after integration to be heard. Luis Tiant, one of the greatest pitchers of his time, said in the film, “I used to go to my room and cry.” He faced a double barrier because of his skin color and the fact that he had no English lan- guage skills when he entered pro baseball in the minors and MLB. Tiant became a dear friend and worked with me at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society in the 1990s. He would share with Boston-area youth the battles he faced from fans making racist assumptions. Tiant came from Cuba and by the time he joined us at NU, he was beloved in Boston. 100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 15 Latinos in Major League Baseball 15 The San Francisco Giants had great Latino talent including Felipe, Matty, and Jesús Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Juan Marichal. They were actually ordered not to speak in their own language so they would not be suspected of talking about teammates in negative terms. Some Latino players anglicized their names. Vic Pellot be- came Vic Power. Some Latinos with darker complexions faced racism because people thought they were Black. When he was de- nied entrance to a movie theater, Cepeda tried to explain that he was Puerto Rican. He said the owner only saw him as being Black. Stereotypes went both ways. Felipe Alou said, “I thought all Ameri- cans were white . The first time I heard a black man speaking Eng- lish, I was confused.” Players were criticized or stereotyped. Alvin Dark was the Gi- ants manager in that era and admitted in the film that he did not un- derstand Latinos. When he was manager, Dark suggested that Latino players were less intelligent and were not clutch hitters. Forty years later, he admitted, “I really did not know enough about their cul- ture.” Roberto Clemente was one of the greatest players of all-time yet at points in his Hall of Fame career he was criticized for not being a clutch hitter. There were so many stories like this. Tony Menéndez compiled a list of the top 20 Latinos in MLB by country in the “Bleacher Report.” Each country including Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela could have fielded its own MLB All-Star team. Menéndez noted to not for- get “the greats from Central America, such as Nicaragua’s Dennis Martínez and Panama’s Rod Carew, Ben Oglivie, Carlos Lee, and Mariano Rivera; and the great shortstops from Colombia, Orlando Cabrera and Edgar Rentería.” So you can see how hard it was to choose those Latinos pro- filed in this chapter on baseball. To some degree we were guided by those who made the Hall of Fame. But there were others included for their special roles who are not in the Hall. And Albert Pujols, the only modern day player, was chosen because of his unique greatness as a player and as a humanitarian. The Players Historians credit Esteban Bellán with introducing Cubans to their national pastime. He was the first Latino and Cuban baseball player in the American Major Leagues. Bellán played baseball for the 100Campeones_Text.qxp 8/31/10 8:12 PM Page 16 16 Part 1: Professional Sport Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club while attending Fordham Univer- sity in New York and participated in the first ever nine-man team college baseball game in 1859. In 1871, he joined the Troy Haymak- ers, which later became the New York Giants. Bellán returned to Cuba, where he participated in the country’s first organized baseball game in December of 1874 and helped create the Habana Baseball Club, the country’s first club dedicated to the sport. In the early 1900s, José Méndez became the first baseball leg- end from Cuba. He was called “El Diamante Negro,” or the “Black Diamond,” and because the nickname was a giveaway for the color of his skin, there was no hope that Méndez would ever play in the major leagues. Méndez was 8-7 in exhibition games against major league competition and finished his Cuban League career with a 76-28 record. His .731 winning percentage is the highest among players with a minimum of 40 wins in Cuban League history. Cristóbal Torriente earned the nickname “The Cuban Babe Ruth” for his tremendous power displayed in a 1921 showdown vs. the Major League’s New York Giants who were touring with Ruth. For the series, Torriente batted .378 to Ruth’s .345, and he hit three home runs to Ruth’s two and his team won the series. In 1918, Tor- riente signed with the Negro League’s Chicago American Giants. He would lead the American Giants to three consecutive championships by hitting .411, .338, and .342 during the three-year championship run. For his career, Torriente ranks 11th on the Negro League all- time list in RBI’s with 309, 12th in slugging percentage with a .517 mark, and 16th in total bases with 1,055. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. Hall of Famer and Negro League legend Buck Leonard said the best player of all time was Cuba’s Martín Dihigo. Dihigo was legendary for being able to play all nine positions at an All-Star level. Dihigo played 22 seasons in Cuba (1922–29, 1931–46) and finished with a lifetime .291 batting average. As a pitcher he went 119–57 and in his career, spanning across several leagues in different countries, Dihigo is credited with more than 260 wins. In 1977, he was the first Cuban elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. In 1972, Lefty Gómez was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, decades after his career as one of the 1930’s most dominant pitchers ended.