Early U.S. Blackball Teams in Cuba

Book excerpt: Before they were the stars of the Negro Leagues--before the Negro Leagues even began--outstanding African American players like Rube Foster, Charles Grant and Pop Lloyd competed against the leading players of Cuba. In the early years of the 20th century, winners of the "colored" championship in the United States traveled to Cuba to compete against the top Cuban League teams, amateur clubs, and All-Star squads. Part of the "American Series" that brought teams from the major, minor, and Negro leagues to the island nation for more than six decades, these games are arguably the most important in a baseball relationship that was vital to the game's history. Since the end of Cuban professional baseball in 1961, games like those of the American Series have become a distant memory. Scores and statistics are difficult to track down, and few could say who played in those long-ago contests. Fortunately, dedicated baseball historian Severo Nieto has spent a lifetime accumulating and preserving the facts and figures of Cuban baseball. Here he presents box scores, statistics, rosters, and summaries of the games, as well as biographical information for the players, of the American Series from 1900 through 1945.