We all owe a tremendous debt to Jackie Robinson. Not only because of Major League baseball integration, but more importantly, because of the significant advancement of race relations worldwide that was the real aftermath of his actions during and after his baseball career. His sacrifices must never be forgotten or diminished, and Robinson was and will always be a hero, not just for Americans, but for mankind.
Also important, and rarely discussed, are the Latin American baseball players, some of African ancestry, who played in the Majors before Robinson. These men, like Robinson, were often showered with abuses and insults, and like Robinson, were required to ignore these insults, but unlike Robinson, have now faded into forgotten pages of baseball history. I believe that these men played a crucial part in paving the way for Robinson. I also believe that they helped Branch Rickey to gather the courage to break officially the color line. And equally important, they helped the other team owners and white baseball players to accept African-Americans and other players of color, into the Major Leagues.
This story is all about the Cubans, and the American confusion between race and ethnicity and the racist notion of the "one drop rule." At the heart of the story is the fact that Caucasian Cubans who could prove pure European ancestry were allowed to play in the United States, and many American white players played professional winter baseball in Cuba. In Cuba professional baseball was fully integrated (curiously though, amateur Cuban baseball was segregated and only white Cubans could play in amateur teams). As a result of this background, American baseball team owners saw first-hand many great Cuban players of all shades and races play in Cuba, and some of the more enterprising ones began to test the limits and patience of a racist society by introducing some of them to the US public many years before Robinson. But let us first review a little history.
During his time at Fordham, Bellan played for the newly created Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club. This was the team that history tells us played the first ever nine-man team college baseball game in the United States against St. Francis Xavier College on November 3, 1859. In 1868 Bellan began to play for the Unions of Morrisania, an upstate New York team. A year later he joined the Troy Haymakers for whom he played third base until 1872. In 1871 the Haymakers had joined the National Association, which became the National League in 1876. The Haymakers later became the New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants. Later on Bellan was instrumental, both as a player and manager, in establishing professional baseball in Cuba in 1878. He died in 1932.
Although Cuban baseball legend has it that the native "Taino" Indians really invented the sport, baseball started to happen in Cuba around 1865. It was then that American students studying in the island taught fellow Cuban students how to play the sport. The game spread quickly, mostly due to the fact that the sons of wealthy Cuban families usually studied in American universities, where baseball was also spreading quite rapidly. Apparently the first organized baseball game in Cuba took place on December 27, 1874, when the Havana team beat the Matanzas team 51-9 at "El Palmar del Junco" baseball field. One of the Havana players was named Esteban Bellan, a catcher who was the first Cuban and the first Latin American to play major league baseball. Bellan learned how to play baseball while he was a student at Fordham University from 1863-1868.
Article comments