Miners, Mormons and 120 Years of Baseball in South Africa

If you run a basic internet search for the history of baseball in South Africa, you'll find a few articles that start with the game's appearance in 1895 and then quickly jump ahead to the 2000 Olympics.  To discover what happened during the century in between requires some digging.  You must dig past the greater popularity of "the big three" (soccer, cricket and rugby); past the absence of head-line grabbing superstars in the likeness of Babe Ruth or Willie Mays; and down deep through the decades of segregation and discrimination that conceal a large part of the story.  If you dig deep enough, you'll eventually unearth a treasure chest full of the surprising and curious events that led to the unlikely rise of baseball far away from its native land.

1908 World Series: The Curse Begins

The day is October 14, 1908.  The Chicago Cubs have just defeated the Tigers to repeat as World Series Champions.  The win caps a five-game match-up featuring a hall of fame infield of Tinkers, Evers and Chance, a 21-year old Ty Cobb, and great pitching from Cubs' hurlers Orval Overall and Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown.  Yet there is no joy in Chicago.  Cubs fans are angry and the players feel betrayed.  Sports writers are fed up with their working conditions and team owners will soon meet to debate, among other topics, whether to do away with the World Series all together.  Just one week earlier, the city was riding high with anticipation.  To find out what went wrong, let's rewind the clock.

The Unknown Journey of the Havana Sugar Kings

The Havana Sugar Kings was a Cuban-based team, founded in 1946 by Joe Cambria, an Italian-born scout in the U.S. professional baseball system, and sold in 1954 to Roberto "Bobby" Maduro, a Cuban of Jewish descent.  They won league championships in 1947, '48, and '57 as minor-league affiliates of the Senators and Reds, before growing tensions with Castro's government prompted the them to embark on a journey of Homeric proportions.  The year was 1960 and the team once known as The Cubans was heading to America.  It would take them a full decade to find a permanent home there.

The Opposite of Baseball Diplomacy

A few months ago, I posted two articles about America's baseball diplomacy with Japan and Cuba.  It made me wonder, if baseball could be used to build good will between nations, could it also be used for military gains?  In other words, could baseball literally be a game of war?

Shoeless Joe: The Rest of the Story

Stop me if you've heard this one.  Shoeless Joe Jackson was a naive, uneducated mill worker who was taken advantage of by corrupt gamblers.  Along with seven of his teammates, he was banned from baseball for his alleged involvement in the 1919 World Series scandal - despite his excellent play during the series (.375 batting average with no errors) and favorable verdict from a grand jury.  Afterwards, a heartbroken Jackson quietly disappeared from the limelight.  Unable to walk away from the game he loved, he continued to play under an alias for small-town and semi-pro teams.  According to one well-known source, Jackson appeared post-humously on a magic field in the middle of an Iowa corn farm, where his ghost was at long last able to enjoy the sport free from the harsh accusations of team owners and league commissioners. There is a tragic romanticism induced by these stories, and if that's how you'd like to remember the legendary player then stop reading now.  If you'd like to hear the rest of the story, continue on...

The Ghost of Josh Gibson

Josh Gibson, one of the greatest hitters of all time, dreamed of breaking baseball's color barrier.  It may be that he nearly got his wish.  It's rumored that at least two teams, the Pirates and the Senators, pursued Gibson during his prime in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Sadly, the powers that kept black players out of the Majors were very strong and neither team could get the deal done.  Some say the team owners caved to pressure from the Commissioner's Office.  Others speculate that the influential Negro Leagues boss Cum Posey had his hand in delaying integration, knowing that it would be the beginning of the end for his lucrative franchise.  Several popular white sports figures of the day, such as pitcher Walter Johnson and journalist Shirley Povich, opined for Gibson's inclusion in the MLB - along with other talented black players - but to no avail.  Years after Gibson's death, Larry Doby (the player who integrated the American League) said "One of the things that was disappointing and disheartening to a lot of the black players at the time was that Jackie [Robinson] was not the best player.  The best was Josh Gibson.  I think that's one of the reasons Josh died so early.  He was heartbroken."

The History of Baseball Diplomacy Part II: Cuba

Through the first half of the 20th Century, Major League Baseball enjoyed a healthy fellowship with the Cuban leagues.  Cuba hosted MLB spring training games, the U.S. hosted traveling Cuban teams, and for a few years the Cincinnati Reds incorporated the Havana Sugar Kings into their minor league system.   In 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers held their Spring Training in Havana to make life a little easier for Jackie Robinson (who was about to break MLB's color barrier).  But the fellowship came to a grinding halt shortly after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.  It would be 40 years before an American baseball team returned to the island nation.

The History of Baseball Diplomacy Part I: Japan

It has been called by many names - Baseball Diplomacy, Diamond Diplomacy, Home Run Diplomacy - but the concept is always the same.  By exchanging ball-players instead of politicians, and competing on athletic fields instead of battlefields, two countries can bypass complex government relations and generate a sense of good will among the people.  And it's not just baseball.  Basketball, soccer, ping pong and pretty much any sport you can think of has served this purpose at one point or another over the past several decades.

Finding Baseball in the Philippines

Baseball has a long and interesting history in the Philippines, dating back to 1898 and its introduction by U.S. soldiers.  In the 1910s and 20s, the Philippines had regular exchanges with the United States and Japan.  Well known stars such as Tris Speaker, Red Faber, and John McGraw toured the islands, while Filipino players barnstormed through America.  In 1934, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth hit the first two home runs at the newly constructed Jose Rizal Memorial Stadium - a ballpark in Manila that still hosts games to this day.  The sport's popularity declined after World War II, but experienced a brief resurgence in the 1950s, culminating in 1954 with a first place finish at the Asian Baseball Championships.  Even today there are active little league systems and collegiate circuits, and the national team slowly comes closer to qualifying for the World Baseball Classic.  There's only one problem with baseball in the Philippines... nobody knows about it!  Not even people in the Philippines!

Babe Ruth and Leon Day

Ever since their playing days, baseball followers have been comparing Babe Ruth and Negro Leagues slugger Josh Gibson.  In some ways, it's a fair comparison.  Both men were the defining home run hitters in their respective leagues and generations.  I could go on for a long time about Josh Gibson's athletic accomplishments, as I intend to in a future article, but in my opinion a better comparison would be Babe Ruth and hall-of-fame pitcher Leon Day.  Ruth and Day both grew up in Baltimore.  They were both child prodigies and initially signed as teenagers by Baltimore teams.   Both were great pitchers who  also became known for their hitting prowess.  Both played professional ball for 22 years.  And the similarities don't stop there.  Ruth's last full season as a player was the same year as Day's first season in the Negro Leagues (1934).  At the beginning of that year, Ruth's New York team (the Yankees) offered him a position as the manager of the Newark Bears (he declined).  Two years later, Day's New York team (the Eagles) left New York and moved to Newark, where they shared a stadium with the Bears.  But my favorite similarity is how both men are honored and remembered in the Baltimore area.