[...]... Samuel Johnson said of Shakespeare’s histories, every virtue except that of being right? A close examination of the Cuban Giants first year will address these matters and reveal much about the nature of African American baseball and its uneasy relationship with white baseball and white America Neither Giants Nor Cubans The Cuban Giants, who by the way, are neither giants nor Cubans, but thick-set... coverage of a trip the Cuban Giants made to Boston On October 15, 1887 their Boston correspondent wrote: Mr F P Thompson, formerly of Philadelphia, but now of the Hotel Vendome [in Boston], organized in May 1885, in Philadelphia, the Keystone Athletics On July 1, they were transferred to Babylon, L.I During the month of August a consolidation of the Keystone Athletics, the Manhattans of Washington, D.C.,... for himself with the curiosity of an all-black baseball team The players may have supplemented their incomes by working as waiters, bellhops, porters, and the like, but these occupations were incidental to their employment as professional baseball players The owner of the Orions played no role after the team was formed The key to the early history of the Cuban Giants is in the careers of Thompson and... George Stovey, and the great Frank Grant Even more importantly, the Cuban Giants, salaried, year-round professionals, proved their mettle by surviving the ineffably difficult times of the 1890s This great black baseball team is a case study of the broader theme of black America’s struggle to respond to an increasingly hostile and predatory environment The creation of the Cuban Giants meant the birth of an... 25, he struck out eleven in a 4–3 loss to Bridgeport, of the Eastern League But before the Cuban Giants had time to use him again, Stovey was literally stolen from them by Jersey City’s Eastern League team Jersey City manager Pat Powers was in need of pitching, so he returned to his hometown of Trenton for a midnight raid Years later he told the story to an African American newspaper, the Cleveland... the standards of the white community that rejected them, while maintaining the unique African American heritage that was the root cause of that exclusion In the birth of the Cuban Giants, we witness the emergence of this development in baseball African American baseball survived sixty years of oppression in a way that demonstrated its ingenuity in making the best of the most disheartening of circumstances... Library The Cuban Giants lost both games, 11–3 to the Mets and 13–7 to the A’s According to the Trenton Times, May 10, 1886, Trusty pitched both games 23 All 1886 game accounts are from Trenton’s two daily newspapers, the Times and the True American 24 Sporting Life, September 21, 1887 Nonetheless, within a month after the Browns’ boycott, the Cuban Giants played two other Major League teams, Boston of the. .. accompany him to Palm Beach, but African American baseball certainly did Two decades into the twentieth century, well into the heyday of Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants, the Royal Poinciana and the Breakers were still providing their distinguished guests with the highest caliber of American baseball 11 The Cuban Giants (and black baseball) benefited greatly by this association with Henry Flagler The late... when the Big Gorhams played a memorable half-year Bright was able to reassemble the dissident players annually until they finally found an owner to their liking: E B Lamar Jr of Brooklyn In 1896, Lamar signed them all, and called his team of ex -Cuban Giants the Cuban X Giants. ”31 Thereafter, Bright’s team, usually inferior to the X’s, often was called the “Genuine Cuban Giants or “Original Cuban Giants. ”... Giants. ” The nominal similarity, which occasioned legal contretemps, was the source of no end of confusion to contemporary fans no less than future historians Both teams played well past the turn of the century, and Lamar’s Cuban X Giants fashioned a successful ten-year run as one of the premier African American teams in the East But by the turn of the century, they no longer dominated African American baseball . alt="" c University of Nebraska Press : Lincoln and London Out of the Shadows African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson { Edited. Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Out of the shadows: African American baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson / [edited by] Bill Kirwin. p.