Latinos in Baseball 1

Jacob Garcia

HST 306 Honors Contract

April 4, 2014

Latinos in Baseball: A Story of Hypocrisy, Ambiguity, and Racial Insensitivity

As Dave Zirin exposes in the film that is the foundation for this course Not Just a Game,

throughout the history of sports, many have made concerted efforts to make sports apolitical.

That is, some have argued that mixing politics with sports distorts the purity of the game.

Nevertheless, sports like baseball have been used to conceal the injustices of the world,

conveniently disregarding atrocities like discrimination and imperialism in order to create what

appears to be an accepting environment. As Adrián Burgos documents in his work, Playing

America’s Game, many Americans claimed that “baseball ‘Know[s] No Race’ and that baseball

had become a place where, through ‘the stress of contest,’ race prejudice was combated and

participants were transformed into fellow Americans” (Burgos, 101). However, while baseball

brought different cultures together, the sport did much to ensure that equality was not a part of

the game. An in-depth look at the circumstances of the Latino culture reveals this sad truth.

Understanding Latino participation during Jim Crow shows that baseball’s color line was

hypocritical and ambiguous. Furthermore, despite Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color

barrier and integrating U.S. professional baseball in 1946, the racialization of Latinos baseball

players (and Latinos in general) continues into present day.

Latino participation in baseball during the Jim Crow era was quite different from that of

African Americans. While African Americans were still forbidden from participating in

professional baseball, Latinos were essentially the group to test the level of racial tolerance: the

group that was exploited to set the precedent and determine where white leaders drew the line of

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inclusion. The sole determining factor was the color of skin, and as result, baseball’s color line

was open to the interpretation of the particular team manager. As Burgos states, “Baseball lacked

a uniform policy regarding race-based segregation. The question of the color line was viewed as

a local matter for individual associations and professional teams to consider for themselves”

(Burgos, 21). The ambiguous situation of Latinos, as they were neither white nor black, resulted

in inclusion for fortunate ones and exclusion for others.

Due to the color line’s ambiguity—which essentially permitted Latinos with lighter skin

to play and forbade Latinos with darker skin (resembling African Americans) from playing—

many Latino ballplayers who had the obvious talents to compete were excluded from the realm

of professional baseball because of their skin. Regarding pitcher José Mendez, Burgos states,

“José Méndez clearly had the talent, but not the racial pedigree” (Burgos, 106). Scouts raved

about the pitching ability of Méndez, and many claimed that there was little doubt that he would

have succeeded in professional baseball—of course, if he had had lighter skin. New York Giants

manager John McGraw even told a sportswriter that if, “‘Mendez was a white man he would pay

$50,000 for his release from Almendares [Méndez’s Negro League team]’” (106). By excluding

Latino players who resembled African Americans due to their darker skin, the hypocritical nature

of baseball’s color line is shown. Only allowing those with lighter skin to participate fails to

abide by the cardinal rule of all sports, in which the best talent wins out. Thus, by looking at

Latino participation (or lack thereof) in the Jim Crow era, one sees that baseball’s color line was

perfectly in-sync with the discriminatory thought of larger society—where skin color was

regarded as the most important factor in determining one’s ability to participate in life.

Furthermore, the treatment of Latinos in professional baseball demonstrates that baseball’s color

Latinos in Baseball 3

line only had a concept of black and white—a simplified segregation that fails to account for a

multitude of cultures that not only includes Latinos, but also Asians and Native Americans.

There were Latino players, however, who were allowed to participate. Latinos with

lighter skin were included in professional baseball, as white leaders were able to claim them as

Europeans. Yet as Burgos frequently states, “Inclusion did not mean equality.” Those who were

included, such as Vicente Nava, were ultimately regarded as “in-between space,” “exotic others”

and foreigners to “America’s pastime.” Burgos makes it clear that many felt that there was an

obvious demand for Latinos in baseball. For the most part, however, the talents of Latinos were

simply exploited in order to increase revenue and spectatorship: “It was in this vein that the

Providence board agreed to sign Nava, not as a challenge to the gentleman’s agreement or the

color line, but rather as an exotic drawing card” (Burgos, 38). The ethnicity and racial ambiguity

of Nava was exploited immediately, as he and the team’s other reserve players were ordered to

collect tickets upon entrance to the stadium on Opening Day of 1882 (Burgos, 41). Ultimately,

while Latinos were not subject to complete exclusion from baseball as African Americans were,

the disregard for their humanity and casting them as outsiders were nevertheless equally as

prevalent.

Players like Nava who were (un)fortunate enough to earn employment in professional

baseball by gaining the title of “racially ambiguous” (i.e. lighter skin) were not solely

dehumanized by serving as spectacles for fan attraction. Latinos players were also subject to

brutal acts of on-field violence by white players who detested integration of any sort. As Burgos

relates in his discussion of the Cubans who integrated the Connecticut League in 1908, “Cuban

players in the Connecticut League were the targets of knockdown pitches and attempted spikings

by opponents, much as African American players in the International League had been in the late

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1880s…The first time [Ray] Fisher [a white pitcher] faced New Britain, he knocked two Cubans

out of the game, including Cabrera, who ‘was carried off the field unconscious’” (Burgos, 92).

Even worse than the on-field disrespect and harsh treatment in the Jim Crow era, Latinos

baseball players experienced a severe loss of culture—an essence predominantly due to the white

leaders’ desire to conceal any remote presence of African heritage. Along with name changes,

like Roberto Clemente to “Bob” Clemente, the management of professional baseball made every

effort to ensure that the Latino player they signed were as “white” as possible. Burgos reveals

this when he conveys that the portrayal of social class and wealth seemingly lightened the

players’ skin, “Team officials and sportswriters who supported the Reds’ signing stressed that

Almeida and Marsans came from the island’s elite and that their ethnoracial ancestry placed

them well above typical Cubans” (Burgos, 96). Their efforts culminated in turning a Latino

baseball player into the “Purest Bar[s] of Castilian Soap” (Burgos, 92). Due to baseball’s

oversimplified and ambiguous color line, white management would not accept the inclusion of a

Latino who resembled an African American in appearance or ancestry. Thus, they created a

hypocritical environment that allowed them to exclude “regular” Latinos and occasionally

include one from a “Castilian” background to create the image that sport transcends race.

In a sense, Latinos such as Vicente Nava, Alfredo Cabrera, and José Gómez were the

pioneers of the racial integration of professional baseball. Because of their inconsistent inclusion,

Latinos essentially acted as the test-subjects and set the precedent for Jackie Robinson (Burgos,

179). Integration of professional baseball gave Latinos and African Americans in Negro Leagues

and transnational leagues cultural pride, confidence, and a fervent desire to become the next

American success story. Yet while strides have been made in creating a more accepting

environment for all cultures, the racialization of Latinos baseball players has sadly continued.

Latinos in Baseball 5

When considering the racialization of Latinos post-integration, or how American society

has categorized Latino players on the basis of race, one must look no farther than the press.

Latinos were and continue to be misrepresented and humiliated by the English-only speaking

press, which is largely composed of white males. Burgos agrees when he states, “Rather than

publicizing their grievances or concerns, the press often posed another hurdle in Latinos’

adjustment to life in organized baseball and participated in their racialization” (Burgos, 221). San

Francisco Giants manager Alvin Dark and sportscaster Larry Kreuger (also of the Giants)

certainly are proof of this remark. Both issued racially insensitive remarks that “racialized”

Latinos as hot-blooded and animalistic. After being fired from his position as a sports radio host,

Kreuger was then heralded as a martyr for free speech.

Burgos goes on to assert that the sporting press purposely focused on the accents of

Latino players, further isolating them as outsiders (Burgos, 221). The most blatant example of

such practice was the Associated Press wire story regarding the Sammy Sosa corked bat scandal,

in which the reporter failed to clean up Sosa’s grammatical mistakes—thus reinforcing the

popular image of Sosa as a “moody Latino who spoke unintelligible English” (Burgos, 255).

Based on experience as a sports journalist and transcribing quotes, lack of grammatical prowess

is by no means exclusive to Latino players. If one were to quote word-for-word many college-

educated, Anglo-Saxon head coaches, the result would be a jumble of stream-of-conscious-like

thoughts that only represent fragmented ideas rather than coherent thoughts. Among the SPJ

Code of Ethics for journalists, minimizing harm is one of the fundamental rules. Failure to “clean

up quotes” creates unneeded harm and humiliation to any individual, regardless of race. Latinos

undoubtedly are impacted even worse: already under intense pressure and scrutiny to assimilate

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and learn English as quickly as possible, many may decide to avoid the press entirely, thus

perpetuating the cycle of underrepresentation.

The scouting practices employed by white management are further proof that the

racialization of Latinos has continued. As Burgos remarks of the Washington Senators president

Clark Griffith, “[his] interest in Cuba had little to do with integration or social justice… Their

turn to Latin American was rooted in the racialized economy of organized baseball, in which

foreign-born Latinos were much less expensive in terms of acquisition, player development, and

salary if the Latino player panned out” (Burgos, 143). Professional baseball organizations erected

transnational leagues, in which teenage Latino players were encouraged to participate in hopes of

landing a spot on a big-league roster in America. Unfortunately, these Latino children were

forced to drop out of school, and thus were deprived of secondary and post-secondary education.

If the players were not talented enough to reach America or if once they got to America they

were stymied in the minor leagues for too long, they were discarded as commodities and left

without both baseball and education.

While it is crucial that we acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of Jackie Robinson in

integrating professional baseball, solely praising him ignores the rich history of Latino racial

pioneers. Burgos ridicules the lack of Latino inclusion in President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on

Race and proceeds to state, “Other commemorative events demonstrated similar blindness to the

impact of integration on Latinos and to Latino contributions in the process” (Burgos, 196). Long

before African Americans were allowed admittance into the realm of American professional

baseball, Latinos were being used to experiment with how far the color line could be expanded.

Players like José Méndez and Vicente Nava were among the many who experienced baseball’s

ambiguous and hypocritical color line, in which only Latinos who had “Castilian” ancestry were

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allowed participation and darker Latinos were excluded, regardless of their skillset. Furthermore,

once the color barrier was broken, the racialization of Latinos persevered. Yasiel Puig has

become a common example. Puig, a 23-year-old Cuban outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers,

is incessantly ridiculed for his hard-nosed, passionate style of playing baseball. Hall of Fame

broadcaster Vin Scully likened Puig to a “horse that needs to be tamed.” Many, including Scully

and his own manager, fail to realize that his play is a protest: a protest that claims that the

difficulties of assimilating to a new culture, learning English, and appeasing the American press,

all while continuing to have success on the diamond, are the same issues that Latino players were

dealing with 100 years ago. Puig’s statement shows how sports and politics do mix. And, his

statement does not distort the “purity of the game.” Rather, it contributes to the evolution of the

game, as Puig sheds light on the difficulties that Latino American players face in hopes of

gaining acceptance. The day we understand, appreciate, and celebrate players like Puig, Méndez,

Nava and thousands of other lesser-known Latino players will be the day that baseball’s color

line is truly broken.